More news on Sweden

While the Red Wings are over in Sweden next fall, hopefully bringing it to the St. Louis Blues, they'll play a game against Färjestad BK, Hakan Loob's old team (and current team. He's the GM). I don't really follow the Swedish Elite League very closely, other than being aware that it exists, and being able to name (but not pronounce) a few of the teams that play in it, but I guess Färjestad is in a sense comparable to Red Wings right now, having won seven championships since 1975, the most recent in 2006.

They're thinking this game will be played September 30th. Swedes against Swedes. Madness. Tickets are being released tomorrow at 10am. The arena only claims to seat 8,250, so if you're interested, you'll want to jump on this fast.

Not much more information can be found here, in English, and here, not so much in English, but Google Translate does a suprisingly passing job on Swedish, I've found.

Also of note - Wings 06 pick Dick Axelsson currently plays for Färjestad. So... yeah. Rock on.

Tonight's first star - MacDonald's Goalposts

Red Wings lose to Islanders, 2-0.

Am I sad? Yes, I'm sad. Am I frustrated? Yes, I'm frustrated. Am I surprised?

Honestly, no. The top team in the league plays the bottom team in the league. The bottom team brings their A game. The top team maybe throws out a solid B+, if they're feeling fiesty. Tell me you haven't heard this story before.

MacDonald deserves the credit for some ridiculous saves. And hitting goalposts instead of the net is a matter of centimeters. There were some ass-ugly stretches, but it's not like the Wings slept the full 60 minutes. They didn't make it as hard for New York as they could have, but they didn't hand them the game on a silver platter, either. I'll give credit where credit is due.

Still. Losing to the Islanders is still losing to the Islanders. Gross.

Happy Birthday Jimmy

On this most historic of days, Jimmy Howard turned 25 and was named Griffin's Man of the Year.

The Griffins organization will present him with "an etched crystal trophy" at the next home game on April 10th in honor of the many, many, community service projects he's been involved with this year. He will also be in the running with 29 other players "for the Yanick Dupre Memorial Award, honoring the overall American Specialty/AHL Man of the Year".

p.s. If you click on the link about the Man of the Year award, you get to see the Wing's prospect in a silly hat posing with a St. Bernard wearing antlers. The picture gets bigger on the homepage. If you can load it. The Griffins site has been acting up for me lately.


San Jose lost to Nashville 3-2 tonight, leaving the Sharks and the Wings tied in points with 107 a piece. Hopefully the Wings can squeak ahead of them tomorrow, not just because it would make me smile for the Wings to stay at the top of the standings (because, believe me, it would), but also because I would get to change the number on my kitchen messageboard from 387 to 388, provided Ozzie is, as everyone says he is, starting in net.

No, this isn't to point out some sort of record that will be tied or beaten tomorrow with a win, other than then being just one behind Dom, but to point out the inherent pathetic-ness of keeping a Chris Osgood All-Time Wins counter going on your wall. I get to watch that number not go up very quickly every time I leave, come back, make food, or go to the bathroom. But, dammit, I still love Ozzie, so I still keep counting. My roommate thinks the whole thing's a laugh-riot.

No doubt as he suits up for what could potentially be the Hasek-passing move into the definitive number 10 spot (390), Ken Daniels will CURSE HIM TO LOSE HIS NEXT 15 GAMES by mentioning it. Ken curses everything. I love him, but if he talked in pregame about the unholy strength of the Wings' lower bodies, by the second period, each and every Red Wing (even the goalie on the bench), Babcock, equipment manager Paul Boyer, former players on other teams, prospects still in Sweden, and Orange Hat Guy would suddenly come down with a case of exploding ankles.

And as we all know, this season Ozzie doesn't need the Daniels Curse to help him let goals in.

Um... but I'm keeping positive thoughts.

On the topic of goalies...

It's been reported that Ozzie will be back between the pipes Friday against his former team, the Islanders.

It still looks weird. And the colors really don't match.


Over in Europe, speculations are being made about a potential comeback in the KHL by Dominik Hasek... He had this to say, as reported in the Edmonton Journal: "I'm healthy now, no aches, no pains, and if I decide to return, I'd just get back to my training regimen." By training regimen I assume he means starving himself like he did while he was still in the NHL.


Seriously Dom, eat a cheeseburger.

Last but definately not least, people are still dwelling on the idea of Roberto Luongo coming to Detroit. This is an even stranger idea to me than Dom making a comeback (which I guess isn't all that strange. This would be possible-return-from-retirement number what now?). It's not impossible, but it is definitely not going to happen until some players retire, regardless of whether or not Luongo's willing to take a pay cut to win the Cup. Personally, I don't want to think about Bobby Lu becoming a Wing any time soon because essentially it involves either half the team leaving for parts unknown, or Nick Lidstrom retiring to clear up cap space, and I am in complete and total denial of that event. It will never happen, and Nick will be here forever (I can dream, right?).

Ugh. Why do all my favorite hockey players have to keep getting old?



Too bad they used the version of the Roy-Ozzie fight with the delusional announcer who thinks Roy won.

... but it turned out alright in the end

Most of last night's game made me want to bang my head against a wall. The Red Wings not-scoring-parade (though it didn't seem like it was for lack of trying) was broken up only by interviews with Sam Gagner's mullet-in-progress and Ethan Moreau's creepy blown pupil. Luckily, the Wings decided it would be fun to score twelve goals in the last thirty-seconds of the game again, so things worked out in the end.

I hope Ericsson can eventually figure out how to score in places other than Edmonton though.

Oh, and it's the day after Tuesday, which means it must be time for another installment of WTF Wednesdays. I think when Lindsay talked me into doing this, she severely over-estimated our ability to come up with weekly content that maintained any sort of level of decent quality, but here goes -

I have a saying. It goes "The only thing weirder than a Finn/goalie is a Finnish goalie." Here to demonstrate is Vesa Toskala. You've probably (or maybe you haven't) already seen him profess his love for his sparkly Mickey Mouse t-shirt and man-purse, but this one was new to me:



I don't actually speak Finnish, so god knows how accurate those subtitles are, but since he actually says "Mitsubishi Colt", I'll trust them.

Am I up early... or am I up late?

Were those refs crappy again? I've heard as much. I don't know. After the first Calgary goal, I only looked up six times.

The first couple of those times, Chris Osgood was doing this thing where he could have had his skate against the little red bar that marks off the rectangle where the other team was aiming the puck, but instead, he... didn't.

And wouldn't you know it - that's where the puck went in. Twice. I think my neighbors in this walls-of-paper building now probably know me as "that girl who yells HOLD THE POST!!!" I'll fit right in with "creepy chick" and "dude who whistles too early in the morning." Why do you do this to me, Ozzie? After I've defended you to everyone I know...

I was going through my old bookmarks this weekend and found this. Bow down in awe and terror at the impressive spectacle that is The Kevin Dineen Card Museum. That, my friends, is devotion. I'm personally a fan of the 94-95 pog, and the primal scream, but adorable Wendy's juniors Dineen also makes me smile. I kind of wish I remembered where I found the link in the first place, but oh well...

Game tonight vs Calgary...

From what I've heard, nothing should be changing in the lineup. Homer and Lilja are both still out with injuries and Ozzie could get the start again.

Personally, I'm not looking forward to this game. Mainly because I still hate Calgary.

In other news, Hossa's brain is functioning properly. I don't know how long it took him to figure it out, but he decided he would rather take a pay cut to stay in Detroit then continue to hop around the NHL making trillions of dollars. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? I honestly want to know what makes this franchise so much more desirable than others. I already have some idea of why, but Detroit has been my team since before I could read, (which was convenient because I never had to figure out how "Yzerman" was pronounced Yzerman; I knew the word before I knew the letters) so I might be slightly biased. Is it the crazy Ilitch family? The management? The continuous winning? All of the above and then some?

Whatever the reasons, high caliber players keep managing to find themselves in Detroit and then decide they never want to never leave. Too bad the rest of the city is booking it out of Motown faster than you can say Hank's full name.

She was about to go all Jedi on Hollweg's ass

Last night Lindsay and I were apparently witness to the first game in Griffins history where no penalties were called (maybe in response to Friday night's game where the worst penalty I have ever seen in my life was called. It wasn't even questionable. There was no question. Helm was a good six feet away. But I digress...)

It was Star Wars night. We had standing room only tickets, there were stormtroopers on the concourse, Darth Vader was walking around... I was kind of dorking out.

Lindsay almost had to be held back from hitting Ryan Hollweg with her $5 plastic lightsaber as he passed us on his way out of the arena. You may remember Ryan Hollweg from such timeless classics as Ryan Hollweg hits Sergei Kostitsyn from behind, Chris Simon tries to kill Ryan Hollweg, and Ryan Hollweg dances like a fool while Shanny laughs at him. I'm not sure where Lindsay developed such a seething, burning hatred for the man (I didn't think she liked the Kostitsyns that much) but there's no arguing with her once she's formed an opinion. Her and her lightsaber were bent on vengance. (If it was vengance against his creeper-stache, I could see where she was coming from.)

I don't know about her sometimes. Oh well. Anything for the Justin Abdelkader bobbleheads.

And that's only my nightstand because none of my shelves get enough light to take a decent picture. Really.

I'm just a dirty complainer like that

I think it's awfully funny (by which I mean not funny at all, but a sad remark on my life and humanity in general) that when the Red Wings aren't sucking hard, I don't really have anything to say about them. It's laziness on my part; I could have written something about what I thought they've been doing right lately, or something about Ozzie getting his game back together, or something about Lilja's injury, or something about... I don't know - Konstantinov, maybe, since it was his birthday yesterday.

But I guess I've fallen into that trap of 'if you don't have anything bitchy to say, don't say anything at all.'

What I want to talk about right now was tonight's game against Atlanta, because I think there's probably a lot to talk about. Sadly, I haven't seen it yet. We had to tape it, and the tape's 160 miles south east of here right now. I was hoping to catch the replay on FSN tonight, but I guess they're playing tennis until six in the morning or something.

All I know of the game was texted to Lindsay's phone by our mom while we were at a Griffins game. Our mommy-play-by-play was pretty sparse, but it included telling us that the crowd was chanting Ozzie's name, to which I had the following response:

"Oh, that's good - wait. Ozzie's starting again? Wait. Isn't this an away game?" I fear I may have missed something truely epic, and for that I'm a little sad.

My tradeoff was getting to witness the unbridled freaking-out joy of a guy down the row from us who took until the middle of the second period to realize that Darren McCarty was playing in front of him.

Guy down the row: "Wait. Holy crap. Is that McCarty? McCarty? McCarty's playing tonight? Darren McCarty? That's McCarty??!?"
Guy next to me: "Dude, yeah. He scored the goal."
Guy down the row: "OMGOMGOMG MCCARTY. Right there. That's Darren McCarty."

He spent the rest of the period grinning like a 12 year old, which made me smile inside. You go to so many Griffins games and you start to forget who it is you're watching down there, people like Helm, and Leino, and Ericsson, and Downey, and Darren freaking McCarty, and it's nice to be reminded that for a $10 student ticket, you get to watch past, present, and potential Red Wings play hockey. Also, on Fridays you can enjoy $1 beers.

I swear I'm not getting paid to plug Griffins games; this is just the most live hockey I've gone to in a year since I was ten, and it's kind of made my semester awesome.

Plus, not having actually seen tonight's game, and not willing to read everything that's already been said about it and regurgitate it in a half-assed game report, it's the closest thing to Red Wings-related information I have anything to say about right now.

We'll call it... a prospects scouting report? So... Leino still holds onto the puck too long, and Jimmy looked alright in the shootout...

(Oh, and the mascot broke his arm sledding down the stairs in the lower bowl. Yeah, I don't know. They have a hydrolics-powered gatling gun that somebody built in their garage out of pvc pipe that shoots hot dogs and t-shirts - it's a dangerous job.)