The Triple Deke

Top 20 Sports Network Theme Songs of All Time

2012-02-12T02:14:00.001-05:00

Hello and welcome back! (Talking to myself).

After being on blogging hiatus for nearly a year, I still sort of am. I know that's not much of an update, but even though I hate the once-a-month infrequency of updating a website, if that's what this thing is called, I'll still do it because Jenn MacRostie said I should. Now onto this extremely irrelevant piece of writing.

I was trying to remember what the NHL on Versus theme sounded like, even though it's only been a month since it disappeared from television. That led to a sports theme song link-jumping spree that lasted for so long that the constant exposure to '80s TV graphics briefly gave me the ability to taste shapes. I've gone on sports TV theme benders before, but never like this. I mean it drove me here for fuck's sake, I was in the zone. So in the zone that the words "Turn that annoying shit off or I'm leaving you" didn't faze me one bit, and it's because of that extreme apathy toward getting married one day that I bring this to you: The Top 20 Sports Network Theme Songs of All Time. And by "All Time" I mean "my lifetime" because I'm not convinced yet that everything pre-1986 wasn't just a dream Larry Murphy had. (Seriously, explain slavery. PEOPLE OWNED PEOPLE. That is fucked up.)

Before beginning, I will lay out the seemingly arbitrary criteria used for compiling this list: In no particular order of importance, each song had to carry some measure of nostalgia, originality and actual quality. So to the both of you still lost out here in our neck of the woods, buckle up for an adventure through time so exciting you'd swear LeVar Burton was reading about Ted Lindsay shitting a giant rainbow over Joe Louis Arena.

#20 ~ NHL on ESPN 2

What a terrible song. (Good start to the list.) As far as TV themes go, it pretty much fails at being anthemic or memorable or catchy in any possible way. If I were to hum it to you and say, "Is this the NHL on ESPN2 theme, or is it the sound that naked Ed Olczyk makes when he's piecing together his Joel Quenneville mustache hair doll?", you would be thoroughly confused. But it signified a greater purpose. I remember the exact moment that I discovered ESPN 2; it was a Blues/Maple Leafs game during the 1996 playoffs. ESPN 2 had been added to our cable package just in time for the playoffs, and that shitty music rang in the joy as a second all-sports-all-the-time channel existed in my household. Stick Stickly and his afternoon of fun couldn't hold a candle to multiple channels of playoff hockey. He just couldn't. He was a popsicle stick. He didn't have hands.

#19 ~ Golf on NBC

I like golf, so right there I've said a sentence that has caused you great anguish and really there's no point in finishing this thing because everyone is gone now. Fuck you, I like golf. I like that song. You know what gets me pumped for watching stuffy white guys (and the really good Blasian guy who cheated on his hot wife) on the Sunday evening of the U.S. Open trying to delicately roll a small white ball into a little hole while a crowd of thousands has to sit on their hands and be quiet? This song. It does the job, man. And if you don't like watching golf on TV, then show me how you do that because I feel kind of weird enjoying it.

#18 ~ NFL on NBC (1993)

I didn't link the actual song. Instead, I linked the pinnacle of NFL coverage on NBC during that era: O.J. Simpson playing Mike Ditka in a game of Madden. It's riveting as fuck. Let's break it down:

A) This took place during the pregame of Super Bowl XXVII, January 1993. I was 6 years old and it's the first Super Bowl that I truly remember watching, not just the game itself, but the entire day's worth of pregame festivities. The Cowboys beating the Bills 52-17 was only the 3rd biggest highlight of the night behind Michael Jackson's bewildering halftime performance and this video game matchup between Ditka and the Juice.

B) It's inexplicably called "Computer Bowl '93" even though they are playing Sega.

C) At the 1:05 mark we see clear evidence that this is the first time in O.J.'s life that he has ever picked up a video game controller. He's holding it as if he's trying to set a clock radio. As a video game player, it is quite embarrassing to watch. The fact that the producer chose to cut to the camera directly focused on O.J.'s clumsy hands shows that he did not have the respect of his peers, and that my friends was the first domino to fall that led to the killing of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

D) At 3:35, O.J. pulls out a late touchdown to take the lead and absolutely loses his shit. A man who once won the Heisman Trophy was now celebrating on his couch as he was about to win something inaccurately called "Computer Bowl" using a gaming device he probably thinks is capable of printing out money. I feel it is necessary to point out that during this video, O.J. yells the words, "IT'S A BOMB" and "THERE'S A GOD IN HEAVEN AND HE LOVES THE BILLS". But mainly "IT'S A BOMB!"

#17 ~ NFL on CBS (1986)

While this did take place in my lifetime, technically, it was not on the air long enough for me to actually experience it. But as you can hear, the song is too brilliant for me not to include it on this list. It's much further down than it's capable of being, but without the nostalgia factor it will have to settle for 17th. It's a near masterpiece, though. You could swap this song out with any song in Rocky IV and it would still work. Rocky would still miraculously beat the Russian, end the Cold War and bring Apollo back to life at the end with the help of his robot maid. (I'm assuming that's what happens; every time I see it I'm crying and doing pushups at the end so I just assume the resurrection happens while the final credits are rolling.)

#16 ~ NBA on CBS

Basketball makes it's first appearance with the NBA on CBS, which provided the soundtrack to the Bad Boys era Detroit Pistons. And when I think of the Bad Boys, my first memory is my mom pounding on the walls in celebration after winning the 1990 NBA title as a means of communicating to our neighbors that she was either ecstatic that the Pistons had won their second straight championship or that she was a raging alcoholic and oh my god who are we trying to kid it was both.

#15 ~ Olympics on NBC
For lack of a better word, it is truly epic. No other theme song fits as well with its sporting event than this one. It tricks me into believing that events like dudes running on skis for 3 miles and then stopping to shoot guns or whatever is a big deal. By certain definitions that should put it a lot closer to #1, but #15 isn't bad. Brandon Inge wears #15, and that guy's terrible. (Wait, I'm doing this wrong.) Brandon Inge wears #15 and he's not terrible? (Well this is just stupid. I can't lie, lying is bad. God dammit I should have just let this blog lay dormant.) Nick Lidstrom has 15 testicles, one for each Stanley Cup he plans on winning before he retires. There -- at least I didn't lie.

#14 ~ American Gladiators

Not a real sport? Get dicked, I say. Try looking directly into the bulge of Nitro and speak otherwise. Nostalgia points are huge here as I loved American Gladiators so much that I was irate the day my sister was born because she made me miss an episode. That whore. Also: it was composed by Bill Conti, who created the Rocky theme, the score for The Karate Kid, and wrote the theme song for Life Styles of the Rich and Famous. Bill Conti's face should appear on our currency.

#13 ~ NHL on FOX

I don't have any idea where people stand on this one. In 1995, the NHL debuted on FOX and the music hasn't changed to date, remaining the same as it has transitioned from a national broadcast theme to the local FOX Sports theme you still hear today. You hear it probably a thousand times each hockey season and while you very well may be completely sick of it, I obviously think that it still holds up. If they were to change it at this point it would just feel weird and forced. Longevity is a hard thing to accomplish in the world of network theme songs; if FOX can keep the same theme song for an entire lifespan of one sport's coverage before the world ends later this year, I say we should all chip in and give them a plaque or something.

#12 ~ WDIV Sports Final Edition

A surprise for the #12 spot, it's the local sports news brought to you by Scott Wahle. Just listen to that intro. It builds to a cavalcade of tumbling psychedelic synths and percussion that is almost unmatched by any other song on this list. Before I had cable, this was it as far as sports coverage went -- waiting for the sports segment of the local news. So of course they're going to complement it with an apocalyptic keyboard tune that for some weird reason includes video of a pro wrestler performing a remarkably awkward knee wobbling dance (0:28 mark). By the way, how amazing was it that pro wrestling highlights used to be included in local sports recaps? Holy shit the 80s were great.

#11 ~ NHLPA '93 theme song

This might be my favorite song on the list, but because I'm bending the rules by including a video game theme (This game includes John Keating-lookalike Ron Barr as an anchorperson so it's close enough to a TV theme for our judges) it's getting pushed down to #11. This song is so great that I cannot even use my own words to describe it. Instead I will call your attention over to the great Mickey Tettleton Memorial Overpass, where 6 years ago it was described in negative tones but nonetheless funny enough for me to remember all this time later:

"The opening music which was so shrill and grating that it made your ears bleed and you were forced to listen to it for at least 10 seconds as the game scrolled through a list of programmers and producers. It's impossible to describe how horrendous this music was but I'll try. Imagine if John Tesh's magnificent NBA on NBC theme was played by deaf retarded chimps on synthesizers, and produced by Satan, Pol Pot, and Ty Cobb, then multiply that by 100x and your almost there."

#10 ~ Coach's Corner
Hate him or hate him, this is an old-school, joyous romp of piccolos and xylophones and trumpets. I don't actually know if any of those instruments are in that song, but they sure are fun to say out loud. Say "piccolo". Go ahead say it, your dog doesn't know what the fuck it means, he won't be that confused. Yeah, that's it. Don't you feel a thousand times happier now after saying "piccolo"? Piccolo. Piccolo. This is stupid.

#9 ~ MLB on FOX

Here's what dumb people do. They take a fantastic theme song like this one that everybody likes, and they replace it with the NFL on FOX theme song because that's what they want to use for every single sporting event that they cover. NASCAR, baseball, football, soccer American Idol, local news, national news, Terry Bradshaw buying a gerbil, it doesn't matter. Same song for all. Yes, the MLB on FOX theme is still heard on FSD broadcasts of Tiger baseball, but still. That song sounds like a big playoff game on an October night. And they changed it because they didn't notice that a large portion of their viewership (it's just me, but I take up a lot of space) cares about theme songs.

#8 ~ College Football on ABC

Plenty of good memories here. And yet: I lived for Saturday afternoons and for college football in the 90s with the hope that when Brent Musburger revved up his famous "YOU ARE LOOKING LIVE" introduction, he would just once finish that statement with, ".....at MY OLD BALLS" before two interns had to drag his drunken ass out of the booth and beat him with rolled up phone books. And not once did this happen. Not one fucking time.

#7 ~ Monday Night Football

Not that "Hank Williams Jr. + a shitload of cocaine" Monday Night Football song. The other one. This song gets heavy nostalgia points because when I was a little kid I got to stay up an hour later on Monday nights to watch football. Which was sort of stupid now that I think about it, because I would end up going to bed in like the 3rd quarter instead of before halftime. So it still wasn't the whole game. You know, when I have kids, they aren't going to have bed times. Bed times are for people who think their kids need to quit at being awake, and I won't raise quitters. They can stay up as late as they want, and if they fall asleep in school the next day, the teacher has my full permission to sell my child into Eastern European slavery.

#6 ~ Red Wings on FOX 50

It's the total package of song, intro video, and the great Ray Lane making an appearance at the end. Ray Lane shitting his pants is a better song than the current NHL on NBC theme, for what it's worth.

#5 ~ College Basketball on CBS

When a song instantly makes you think of the sport it's connected to, and in actuality is probably better than the product about to be televised, it has gone above and beyond its job. It's so good in fact that CBS decided to tinker with it in 2004. Does that make sense? No, it does not make sense. Planet Earth: stop fucking up things that people like. Everyone who watched college hoops from 1993 to 2003 on CBS and heard this song was a better human being for experiencing it. I know that if I hadn't heard it, I would've cheated on my fiance a good two dozen times by now and burned down Sarah McLaughlin's puppy museum.

#4 ~ NHL on ESPN

It's perfect. It's intense, it's dramatic, it's Gary Thorne and Bill Clement, it's Wings/Avalanche, it's back-to-back Cups, it's everything. Hold me to this: If the NHL ever comes back to ESPN, and ESPN doesn't use this same exact song, I'm taking hostages. If it isn't Thorne and Clement, I'm taking hostages. If they don't use the same graphics ..... hostages. Basically if it isn't 1997 when I wake up tomorrow I'm going to have to kill everyone. You better start looking up ways to find P. Diddy's time machine.

#3 ~ Hockey Night in Canada

Is #3 too low? For you, perhaps. For many, it was a big enough of a deal to be considered Canada's second national anthem. It has a Wiki page. It has a Facebook page. It probably has a Jimmy Page. It's a big deal. Seriously, read this sentence from CTV president Rick Brace after CTV acquired the rights to the song in 2008:

"The song has a long and storied history in Canadian sports and has become ingrained in the hearts and minds of hockey fans across the country. It is an iconic tune, embraced by Canadians everywhere, and we felt it was imperative to save it."

We felt it was imperative to save it. God I love Canada. A network theme song goes astray from the network it was associated with for 4 decades and people swoop in to save it like it's a dying child. People do care! They just all live in Canada.

#2 ~ College Football on CBS

Maybe the best song ever, theme songs or otherwise. Just superb. This boner-inducing tune is so fantastic that even CBS couldn't bring themselves to tinker with it, as it has appeared unchanged before football telecasts every year for the past 25 years. It's a crazy adrenaline-filled rush that sounds like a cross between the American Gladiators theme and me having sex with marching band.

#1 ~ NBA on NBC

The first thing I did during the research and development phase of this list was pencil in John Tesh's classic "Roundball Rock" at the #1 spot. If this needs an explanation, then you are deaf.

Hi

2011-12-15T18:19:00.003-05:00

Greetings and happy holidays. We took 13 minutes out of our day to bring you this.

Go Wings.

2011-03-28T13:20:00.000-04:00

I've become pretty bad at this.

A month between updating a hockey blog during the stretch run of the season is no way to operate, and it's also a good way to alienate both of your loyal readers. I apologize to you, Cregg and Karen. You guys are our biggest fans. (Cregg and Karen are my parents and if they actually have ever figured out how to stumble across this site without setting the house on fire, well, it's not possible so I hope my childhood home is still intact.)

I haven't balanced the working life with the writing life. I'm not going to say I've been too busy, because we all are, but during the non-busy times I haven't had the slightest desire to write anything. This sounds familiar. I think I might've said something like this 6 months ago..........
no -- I think that was Scott Niedermayer. Might have even been Rob Niedermayer. Whatever. Point is, I'm just letting you know that we're moving onto other stuff now from daily (haha) writing, so, thanks for reading. We might still post videos or something, but my main point here is that TTD is on my back burner and I'm putting my imaginary blogging pen down.

It's been real. We appreciate every nice thing that any of you have said to us personally or about the site. Three years ago I started this site thinking that I had a lot of shit to say and that I liked to write, but subconsciously it was probably because there was a missing connection with bat-shit crazy Wings fans from my real life. Over the following three years, I never would have expected to make dozens of new friends with people that were just as awkwardly insane about Red Wings hockey as myself. In fact that would be a ridiculous thing to expect, which is why you people are so cool. I consider many of you to be more than just 21st century pen pals. This has been above and beyond anything I would have imagined.

You can still catch us on Twitter @TheTripleDeke, @TheDecentGatsby, and @AstRegionalMngr. And eventually more videos will be added to our YouTube channel. Until next time, adios everybody. We'll be in the lounge with Kyle from Babcock's Death Stare.

Go Wings

Game #62 -- Red Wings at Sabres

2011-02-27T01:22:00.001-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 3 - 2 BUFFALO SABRES (SO)

While Jiri Hudler was awkwardly trying to readjust to North American hockey (and failing) for the first half of this season, he wasn't catching any breaks. Tonight, he got a picture perfect rebound land on his stick to tie the game, and then he won it in the shootout with help from a very lucky bounce off the post. If only he could teach Zetterberg how to do that.

I'd have a bad taste in my mouth if I were a Sabres fan. Detroit plays 2/3 of game and still wins. That ain't right. But Sabres fans don't read this blog so fuck those guys haha we win, here's some bullets:

MIKE MODANO! VALTTERI FILPPULA! IT'S RED WINGS HOCKEY, ON FOX SPO................ Oh god damn you Brian Rafalski. Once again, Boner Killington over here has a wonky back and throws a wet blanket over our parade. And he sort of resembles a boner, he should be all about them.

A simply horrific start. Not for the Wings -- I was talking about this recap.

Mrs. Johan Franzen was due to have their first baby today, says Ken Daniels. Almost instantaneously I Googled what a baby mule is called, when I read this on Wikipedia:

"Mules and Hinnies have 63 chromosomes, a mixture of the horse's 64 and the donkey's 62. The different structure and number usually prevents the chromosomes from pairing up properly and creating successful embryos, rendering most mules infertile."

In a related story, Johan Franzen hasn't scored in 13 games.

Murph mentioned that Mike Babcock and Lindy Ruff share scouting reports with each other for teams in their respective conferences. If this is true, I think it's about time for Babs to swallow his pride, dial Lindy Ruff's number, and find a way to utter the words, "I give up ...... how do you beat the New York Islanders?"

Surprising to see Ruslan Salei caught in a pinch, especially paired with Nik Kronwall, causing an odd man rush and a goal the other way. Had to rewind it twice just to make sure it wasn't Brad May.

FSD showed a clip from the press conference of the new Sabres owner wherein the mere presence of his Sabre heroes in attendance had him fighting back tears. I love that -- owners who give a shit. In fact it should be a requirement. If at your first presser as owner you do not cry, or at least look like an 8 year old who was just handed a Tonka truck full of pogs, the first season of TailSpin on DVD and methamphetamines (I was a strange child), the team should be immediately put up for adoption or on Craigslist or whatever the fuck they do. If it were me taking control of the Wings and Gordie Howe was sitting off to the side at my press conference, shit would literally be falling out of my pants. Within 10 minutes I'd be crying and reciting President Whitmore's speech from Independence Day while people looked on in terror and wondered if it was too late to get a refund on their season tickets. Then Gordie would slap me and tell me to quit being a Mary.

So here's what a typical mid-season Wings game includes now: The almighty offensive tandem of Mike Grier and Andrej Sekera blowing through the neutral zone and past the blue line with zero resistance, and scoring a goal with the likes of Nick Lidstrom and Henrik Zetterberg on the ice. That sentence makes me want to take a blow torch to my eye balls.

Datsyuk's power play goal was essentially Homer's. That screen was eclipse-like. Ryan Miller was on his knees and practically buried in his own net as if Homer had just finished a burrito during the commercial break.

Don't know if Modano could have looked much better without scoring a goal. He was flying. Pretty impressive to come back from a scary injury like 'severed tendon' and not look hesitant.

Really interesting setup to Jiri Hudler's equalizing goal. As the Wings were dumping the puck into the zone, and even as the puck was held up behind the net, Joey MacDonald was still not off the ice. As it happened I was about to complain about what was taking so long, but Jiri came roaring toward the net at the precise moment that a rebound landed on his stick for an easy goal. Had Joey gone to the bench as early as I had hoped, Jiri wouldn't have been in that same spot at the right time.

Buffalo exclusively went to the trap in the 3rd. With at least a two goal lead, I'd absolutely employ this against the Wings; we don't dump in chase, so why not try to force us to while limiting the transition opportunities that we thrive on. But you're tempting fate by doing it with a one goal lead for an entire period (especially when the previous even-strength strategy seemed to be really working).

Good show from Joey Mac. He looked so old, making those shootout saves all half-standing up and stuff. Tom Barrasso, this guy.

Go Wings.

Game #61 -- Red Wings vs. Stars

2011-02-24T23:32:00.003-05:00

DALLAS STARS 4 - 1 DETROIT RED WINGS

???

My favorite "Murph-ism" ever was created last night. In describing Patrick Eaves: "He's very tough hockey." I'm just .......... I'm not going to say anything. I don't want to ruin the moment. Just gonna leave it be, take it in. He is very tough hockey. By God.

Odd moment happened midway through the 1st. Dallas' Jason Williams played a shift and inadvertently went to take a seat on the Red Wings bench, but nobody on either team seemed to notice.

Toby Petersen. Haha, Toby. That's a dog's name.

Goofy first goal from Dallas, in that you don't ever see a goal result from a defensive breakdown from Pavel Datsyuk. Stuart chased out to the high slot, leaving Pav the only Star to cover down low, Mike Ribiero, who was alone for the easiest non-empty net goal I think I've ever seen.

2-0 Stars .... disgusting goal from Loui Eriksson. Kronner had to have felt like the loneliest man in Detroit not keeping that puck in at the blue line. And then a rarity for Joe Louis Arena, with the home fans showing their displeasure with some annoyed boos.

At the halfway point of the game, I was just waiting for the third Stars goal. It's a pretty embarrassing game when Mike Ribiero is doing whatever he wants (including jawing with JLA fans a little later). Then it happened, almost mercifully just to kill the tension. 3-0 Stars. You could tell that Jimmy was pissed about what was going on in front of him -- he showed it from the first Dallas goal.

Then Ribiero got checked into Jimmy's lap and he just about lost it. Not sure I blame him.

The best thing that Jonathan Ericsson has done in weeks is get a few punches in on Steve Ott in a 3-0 contest.

If this game were a meal, it would be a dog shit enchilada. Fuck.

Go Wings.

Game #60 -- Red Wings vs. Sharks

2011-02-23T02:38:00.001-05:00

SAN JOSE SHARKS 4 - 3 DETROIT RED WINGS

The Sharks take their seventh victory from the Wings in the last nine matchups. They must be getting used to this.

I want to play a game. Not with those of you who saw the Sharks beat the Wings tonight. Just the people who follow the Wings, missed tonight's game, and before hearing or reading anything about it decided to stop here at TTD. So nobody, essentially. Whatever. Here it is:

Hypothetical situation .... puck gets moved back to the point along the boards, is then passed across the blue line to the other defenseman. Without looking up to see if an opposing forward is rushing at him, this defenseman winds up for a one-timer. The shot is then blocked, resulting in a breakaway for the other team and, of course, a goal. If you could somehow bet money as to who this mystery Red Wings defenseman is, the odds would look something like this:

15-1 ..... Brad Stuart

20-1 ..... Brian Rafalski

20-1 ..... Niklas Kronwall

150-1 ..... Ruslan Salei. Mainly because I think he's attempted something like negative-3 shots this year.

Infinity-1 ..... Nick Lidstrom. Infinity dollars would be the result of winning this bet. An impossible amount. This would be you -- which is also impossible, since you can't turn yourself into a cartoon. Unless you've clicked on one of those Internet ads that literally say "turn yourself into a cartoon!". Then it's possible, I guess. You've taken the first step to becoming an infinitely rich uncle duck with an enormous vault of gold coinage. Hey, remember that weird half animated movie Cool World with Brad Pitt? I'm drunk.

3-1 ..... Jonathan Ericsson.

I'll blow the surprise for the zero people whom I've allowed to play my little game: It was Johnny E. Not to pin this whole loss on the poor good-looking dumb guy -- I just wanted to concoct yet another reason for me to link the Scrooge McDuck picture again.

But that's been the Sharks/Wings games of the past year. San Jose wanting it just a smidgen more, making smarter plays, and probably doing a tiny bit of out-coaching.

Just a few recap bullets:

Shots were 43-38 San Jose. When's the last time the Wings played a game where both teams had that many shots? Probably like a week ago, or more frequently than I think and I'm just really unobservant. But that caught my eye.

After pulling out two more goals, it's time for the obligatory "this line needs a name" movement. Huds/Pav/Cleary is too white hot to go nameless. And, naturally, I have no ideas. It's Cleary that ruins it, honestly. If he had an oddly shaped head like the other two, we'd have the "Holy fuck, please put your helmet back on" line.

Ryane Clowe, who was doomed at birth to be a cock because of the spelling of his first name, slew footed Johan Franzen and then ate his own shit in anger when called for a penalty. It was truly a sight. He committed a blatant penalty, and yet, reacted like somebody who couldn't believe the "you ARE the father" results on Maury. Imagine how he'd react if he were actually wrongly accused of something? That reminds me, stay tuned next week for the conclusion of my "Frame Ryane Clowe for an unspeakably heinous crime just to see his reaction" experiment.

That's all. Go Wings.

TTD Minute: Checking in with Herm

2011-02-22T00:39:00.003-05:00

On March 11th, Red Wings fans from far and wide will gather for the 2nd annual Herm to Hockeytown extravaganza. In the newest episode of TTD Minute we pick up the phone and catch up with the event's namesake, our good friend Herm.

Getting the whole band back together

2011-02-15T17:50:00.000-05:00

Jinx! I just broke Zetterberg's foot with that title.

"Defenseman Brad Stuart was cleared to play by the Detroit Red Wings' medical staff and said he'll be in the lineup Thursday, when the Wings visit the Tampa Bay Lightning." (Freep)

Check out the big jaw on Brad. Our boy Stuart was killed, like legitimately murdered dead, by Tom Kostopoulos only five weeks ago. He somehow came back to life albeit with a broken jaw, and will be playing hockey again in two days. This shit never ceases to amaze me. If I ever break my jaw, I will either be bed-ridden for 10 months or simply commit suicide over not being able to eat jerky for that long. Speaking of suicide, the Freep also reports that Mike Modano is slated to return in 11 days after taking a blade to his wrist and missing three months.

While it wasn't a humongous slip, Stu's absence has helped us to a sparkling penalty kill of 79% in his wake (82% prior to his January 7th injury). And after all of the glum reports after Modano went down I am thrilled that he'll get back in the lineup before the beginning of March. Things are looking up, for the moment.

Game #55 -- Red Wings at Bruins

2011-02-12T06:20:00.000-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 6 - 1 BOSTON BRUINS

What a perfect game.

Bullets:

Brian Rafalski joined John Keating on the ice before the game to talk about the team's inability to start on time. But the only thing I could concentrate on was the difference in cranium sizes that these two men share. You put anyone's head next to Keats' and it's a no-contest, but when compared to Raf's bald melon, it is exceptionally startling. I mean seriously, look at this. Whoops. Oh hell, it's close enough.

Keating closed the segment by mentioning Boston's "Taylor Seguin". Not to pile on Keats here, whom we truly love by the way (don't think I've ever said anything other than petty jokes about the man -- I should point out that I actually enjoy him), but as a Tyler who has been called Taylor roughly 2 quazillion times in my life I have to put my foot down and say enough is enough. I know you other Tylers out there are tired of being called everything from Trevor to Tyrone and I say the most sensible action that we can take is to kill everybody else on the face of the Earth. So starting tomorrow, all 75 of us are going to meet at my house, pick up a phone book and start exterminating. I say we start with all of our friends' moms because they are the biggest culprits, then work our way through elementary school teachers, and finally, put John Keating in shackles and hire Brad Pitt -- who will be playing Tyler Durden -- to dump hot wax onto his scalp and punch his nose until it turns and even stranger shade of red. Perhaps I've put too much thought into this.

The game had an odd start to it, as the Bruins still had four guys in the penalty box left over from the Montreal game the other night.

#44 scores just over a minute in, and I am bloody shocked. Not only a good start, but also a good sign to see us break out of our own zone with some authority and create a scoring chance like that right away. Those quick breakouts have been nothing but a foggy memory of late.

I'm even more shocked as Dan Cleary makes it 2-0 3:10 in. Two goals on the first two shots. Pretty backhanded setup from Huds. I do believe these fellas were listening when Babcock brought out the Angry Voice the other night.

There was a shift by the Hudler/Datsyuk/Cleary line midway through the 1st that was absolutely mesmerizing. There's no other Red Wing who makes us worry about linemate chemistry like Huds, so seeing this line take off is encouraging.

Oscar analysis from none other than Larry Murphy, saying The King's Speech is the favorite for Best Picture, but that The Fighter is a dark horse candidate. I know this is weird, but I was crushed by hearing this. The fact that Murph is aware of the existence of movies other than Weekend at Bernie's makes me sad.

It didn't amount to anything, but at about the 11 minute mark of the 2nd period, Darren Helm made a one-on-one move on Nathan Horton that about broke the dudes fibulas. These guys are pros; you rarely see somebody get burned that bad and look that bad while it happens.

Mark Recchi still plays hockey. Insane.

Hank's backhander had quite a night. An awesome pass to set up Huds' one-timer goal and a much needed power play goal of his own.

I have no choice but to say Bert's name now -- he scored the greatest goal you can score: The Behind the Net Bank Shot sponsored by Brendan Shanahan. For a three month stretch one summer it was the only shot I would attempt in street hockey. It cost me most of my friends, but considering that completing a successful bank shot is the hockey equivalent of this, you know that it's as good a feeling as a human can experience.

Hockey is a funny sport. I got out of work an hour and a half ago, watching this on DVR at 6:15 am, my eyes barely able to stay open. Yet I can't bring myself to fast forward through a 6-1 game in the 3rd period because I feel like I have to make sure nobody broke their face or had their neck sliced open with a skate. You know how it goes.

Good start, good middle, good finish. Can't ask for more than that.

Go Wings.

Gameday -- Red Wings vs. Predators

2011-02-09T15:02:00.000-05:00

7:30 -- Joe Louis Arena

Wings: 32-15-6 (70 points) 2nd in West | Predators: 28-19-7 (63 points) 5th in West
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If you haven't already, be sure to catch Petrella's first installment of his romantic getaway with the Red Wings this past weekend. It's the opening to a riveting tale of magic wands, hot dogs, the human spirit and Italian people. Probably the coolest thing that will happen to any of us blogger folk unless we band together and help bring a guy from a different hemisphere up to Joe Louis and raise a bunch of money for charity or some improbable shit like that. While a bunch of folks are going to express jealousy and probably some form of bodily harm against you, Mike, I'd just like to say that I'm immensely happy for you and that it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Unless it were me.

While Mike took a lot of heat for being present for back-to-back shutouts and obviously having some sort of negative impact on the team, Nashville's stout defense and ability to always provide a tough match-up to us can be said to be part of the reason as well. They're a Top-5 squad in goals against per-game and penalty killing, and they're also within range of a long grenade toss to challenge for the division title. Nobody in their right mind actually thinks that's going to happen, but at the very least those guys can be very distracting when glancing at our rear-view mirror.

The Preds will go with Rinne between the pipes tonight, so I have concocted a master plan to start him on my fantasy team to lay the jinx hammer down. (Mini pessimist's pointless prediction: Wings will now lose 9-8.) They're coming off a 4-0 loss the mighty Oilers so I'm expecting nothing less than a hellacious effort out of them to start the game.

Oh, and Homer's back, by God. With him out of the lineup the last nine games, we've gone 2 for 27 on the power play. Eight of those nine we didn't score a goal. In three games against Nashville we've gone 1 for 14 -- the lone goal scored by Tomas Holmstrom.

POINTLESS PRECITION

Nashville plays the 1st period with their hair on fire, but we'll still be riding that turning-it-around momentum with Datsyuk and Homer back in the lineup to combat it. 4-3 shootout win for the good guys to avoid a 3rd straight loss to the Preds. Hank scores the winner with his first shootout goal since a locker room game of NHL 94 against Kyle Calder.

Go Wings.

Game #53 -- Red Wings vs. Rangers

2011-02-07T23:25:00.001-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 3 - 2 NEW YORK RANGERS

The Wings get back in the W column and on the scoreboard with a tough win against the Rangers. While it's a good feeling to celebrate the actual scoring of goals again, I must ask: 47 shots allowed? 47? If not for a fucking wall between the pipes tonight we'd all be more than a little disgruntled right now. But there was, so we won't be too worried until we drop another game to the Preds on Wednesday, amirite?yeahprobably.

Bullets:

Obligatory jersey notes: Rangers heritage jerseys are FAB-U-LOUS. I actually tried to write "really cool" but when your with a blog for as long as we've been with TTD, it knows how to show your true colors. They're an A+. And I'm always for the Wings wearing white at home, always a bonus.

Pierre McGuire, pregame with the Mule: "What do you have to do to beat an Original Six team like the Rangers?" Because Franzen plays the Pierre McGuire Drinking Game, he took a shot. And because the translation of the rules is unclear to him, the shot he took was at Pierre's head.

Sloppy first 10 minutes to this game, and then everybody started getting it together. Drapes talked about having to turn this slump around and playing with some pride and the organization and some stuff (I was half listening, I spend most Draper segments trying to will a beard permanently onto his face), and they appeared to dig in and get back to doing that. What "that" is I'm not sure because I'm half listening to myself, actually, but I recognize it when I see it because I'm from Detroit and Chrysler and Eminem and all that.

Doc Emerick referred to Dan(ny) Cleary as "Daniel". Pfffft, that's so (looking through Daniel Cleary Name Encyclopedia) 2007. Hell I don't even know anymore. In real life he probably goes by Cybertron or Jeffery. Maybe he's just "Eleven". Or as I like to imagine: "Sleazy D" -- a wayward Newfy from the wrong side of the tracks who turned tricks for beer money and couldn't pronounce his R's correctly until Ken Holland adopted him and his dirty orphan friends.

Oh how we missed the musk of Pavel. Goes to the corner and forces a turnover by himself, goes to the net while taking on multiple Rangers and bangs home the first goal in three games. This came seconds after they mentioned that the Wings have never been shut out three straight times in their history, causing my right eyeball to fall out of its socket.

If someone asked me why I like hockey, a clip of Jerry Hudler's 3rd period goal is what I would show them. Four guys touch the puck in a span of like three seconds. Two cross-ice passes, the second one being a perfect backdoor cut for a one-timer goal. A goal like this looks so good, it nearly gives me a boner. I mean ehhhh -- it gives Brent a boner. Wait that sounds worse. God dammit. I really shouldn't have invested in this new computer that replaced the backspace key with a tiny picture of a little laughing Asian baby.

Speaking of, a fellow named Scared Stiff point out that my first Pointless Prediction in ages wound up being the final score. S'pose I should do this more often.

During the game, Fil left with a lower body injury. My uneducated pessimistic diagnosis: broken thigh, out until 2012. Fuck.

A number of people are annoyed by Doc Emrick, but he's one of my favorite announcers ever, any sport. Maybe I'm in the minority. I would definitely be in the minority if I were Mexican, but that's not important. There's nothing like Doc calling the final minute of a one-goal game, goalie pulled, all hell breaking loose. That's right in his wheelhouse and he fucking nails it every single time. I stand by what I wrote during the '08 Finals: "My only gripe with him is that he's a little too good for games like that. Every shot had me shitting my pants because there's something about his voice that can make a mundane 65 foot wrist shot sound as epic as Christ coming back to Earth." Sidenote: assholes quote themselves.

Mike Milbury said that he thought "without question" Jimmy Howard was suffering mentally from the Wings going after Evgeni Nabokov. "Without question". Need I remind you of other things Milbury? Sidenote: embedding a video of yourself twice in one week is also done by assholes.

Every hockey game should end with Sean Avery getting his faced slashed twice while your team still wins.

Go Wings.

Gameday -- Red Wings vs. Rangers

2011-02-06T23:18:00.002-05:00

7:30 -- Joe Louis Arena

Wings: 31-15-6 (68 points) 2nd in West | Rangers: 29-22-4 (62 points) 7th in East
___________________________________________________________

I'm going to try and re-jump-start my writing by pretending like you will read a TTD game preview (It won't work. In fact, I think it was a Super Bowl prop bet). Now's as good a time as any considering the apparent return of our fallen egg-headed hero:

(Khan) "Detroit Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said Pavel Datsyuk is expected to return to the lineup Monday at home against the New York Rangers. Datsyuk has missed 19 games with a broken right hand."

We went 10-7-2 with Pavel nursing his dominant dangling hand, and seemed to have a tough time battling inconsistency, the other team's offense, and most of all, sheer boredom. Pav makes any hockey game 65% more watchable with his presence, and I'd have to assume he makes the game more fun to play for his teammates. Even on the bench. One time Datsyuk told Tomas Holmstrom a joke during a TV timeout, to which Homer replied, "I don't speak Martian, but I bet that joke was really fucking funny." Then he went out and scored a double hat trick and became a licensed elephant trainer all before the start of the 3rd period. This team has missed their best forward in ways that numbers can't measure. So here's some numbers:

In the first 33 games before the injury, the Wings allowed 2.64 goals per game. In the 19 games since, they've allowed 3.21, and also, they suddenly can't score. (By the way, no Stanley Cup-winning team has ever been shutout back-to-back games in the regular season. Did that scare you at all? Because I completely made it up. It happened to the 2007 Anaheim Ducks.) The jump in goals allowed obviously isn't entirely due to one man's injury, but rather a whole bunch of injuries, and probably our seemingly annual, seemingly unavoidable mid-winter malaise, and probably Doug Janik to some degree (I'm just whoring for cheep applause at this point). But that multiple Selke-winning guy being out of the lineup sure didn't help.

I expect a big spark to re-enter the lineup tomorrow as the Wings slowly get back into winning form.

POINTLESS PREDICTION

3-2 Wings. Two assists from Pavel and both Ranger goals scored by Henrik Lundqvist's new buddy Justin Bieber.

H2H2 Pledge Drive Commercial

2011-02-03T03:55:00.003-05:00

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Here's a little ad I did for this year's pledge drive hosted by our friends at The Production Line.

H2H2 Commercial

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Game #48 -- Red Wings vs. Blackhawks

2011-01-23T13:28:00.000-05:00

CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS 4 - 1 DETROIT RED WINGS

So was that the worst Wings game of the year, or did it just seem like it because I saw it in person?

Every pass, every clearance, every breakout seemed like a monumental challenge. Much to the dismay of Mike Babcock I'm sure, there was zero structure to anything the Wings were doing. If not for Jimmy Howard, this was a 7-1, 8-1 type of game. Jonathan Ericsson was indescribably awful; you really had to see it to believe it. And I'm still reeling from the shock of, "Is that a number 48 out there? Who the fuck is that?"

On to the next one.

Go Wings.

Game #47 -- Red Wings at Blues

2011-01-21T00:05:00.000-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 4 - 3 ST. LOUIS BLUES (OT)

Is it possible to steal a win when you held a 3-0 lead? The Blues outworked the Wings and looked much more deserving of a victory over the latter half of this game. But one play was the difference, and it notched Jiri Hudler his 3rd assist of the game (no really) and Darren Helm's 11th point in as many games.

(By the way, this post will be 100% Nabokov free because ........ because I just have no fucking idea. It's too weird. I wrote an entire post this afternoon about it and deleted it because I was 17 times more confused than when I started.)

Recap bullets:

It took all of 20 seconds for a Wing to get hurt as Kronner took a puck off his right hand. Not even half a minute and we're worrying about more broken bones. I hate sports.

We had another injury at the 4 minute mark -- this time to me -- after Jiri Hudler actually attempted a shot and I experienced a mild heart attack.

First goal, 1-0 Wings: My GOD what a pass from Hank. From his backhand in the corner and through a defender, right on the tape of Eaves, who seems to know that being in front of the net on Zetterberg's line is not a bad idea.

Has it ever been answered why Kronwall wears a visor that covers only 1/20 of his face? Is he only worried about the part of his forehead just below his hair line? I would bet money that he also wears sunglasses indoors.

#44 had one of the easiest non-empty net goals that you will ever, ever see. It's true. I'm not just saying that because I'm playing out a tired gimmick where pretend to hate the guy and print his number instead of his name. Also: he nearly missed the net!

Congratulations to longtime reader and first time NHL goal scorer, Yak Kindl.

This is more curiosity than a statement, but I would really like to know the honest truth of what Jimmy Howard thinks when a guy like David Backes gives him a WWF-style running knee to the chest -- and there is absolutely no response from his teammates. Again, I'm just curious, not making a claim that I want Backes' head on a stick. You might say that the play was still going, but I'd also counter that this happens a lot and nothing happens after the whistle anyhow. Oh, and how 'bout a penalt.... oh forget it.

The 3rd period featured an extended anecdote from Ken Daniels on the original Mighty Ducks movie, talking about Mike Modano and Basil McRae. Just hearing Ken say the words "Coach Bombay" on live TV was enough to make me momentarily forget that the Wings had just fucked away a 3-0 lead. So thank you, Ken.

My thought process in the 30 seconds that led up to Darren Helm's game winner:

"Dammit Helm!" (D-zone turnover)

"FASDFFFFFFF" (Potential goal saved by Kronwall)

"Just get it out and get off the ice." (puck along boards at blue line)

"Hey wait a minute--" (Helm pokes puck up for a 2-on-1)

"Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds -- Shoot it Huds ....." (Jiri Hudler staring a hole through Darren Helm)

"YOU ASSHO-- YES!" (What do I know.)

Go Wings

Game #46 -- Red Wings at Penguins

2011-01-19T02:39:00.002-05:00

PITTSBURGH PENGUINS 4 -1 DETROIT RED WINGS

The context isn't important, but Brent sent me a text yesterday afternoon that read, "It feels like I was ass raped by a gorilla yesterday." And now I can say I know how he feels.

This was a shit bowl. A waste of two and a half hours as a Crosbyless team that was far from dominant still beat our team by three goals. Credit to Fleury for a rock solid performance, the rare times that he was called upon. This was a decidedly un-gutsy effort from a team that didn't look that interested and is fighting off a midseason malaise.

The bullets:

The pregame included a mini-montage of Jonathan Ericsson and a brief discussion from Mick about Big E's mini-resurgence, which has become a nearly every-other-game episode. E goes into a funk for a game or two, then he comes out of it; then he goes back to making your brain bleed for a little bit, then he makes it stop momentarily. The point being, every time he has one of these little comebacks, I feel slightly less and less optimistic. Let's see him consistently win some man-on-man battles along the boards and avoid chewing his own hand for a few weeks before we go nuts.

Our number four goaltender made news for breaking his finger and forcing our already-injured starting goalie into emergency backup duty, playing behind one Joseph MacDonald. These are things that I would not like to hear about when I'm trying to get through the rest of my life without shitting my pants.

Legitimately disappointed as a hockey fan that Sidney Crosby didn't play this game. As a Red Wings fan just wanting to see a victory, I'll obviously take it. But as a fan of the game, not getting to see that Zetterberg-Crosby matchup takes away quite a bit of juice from what has proven to be a really good if not great modern rivalry. It's just too bad Sid sat this one out to protest the league's refusal to protect players from overly chapped lips.

Happy birthday, Jordan Staal. As if we weren't still entirely mortified of you after the '09 Finals and that absurd hat trick a couple Novembers ago, Joey Mac all but says aloud, "I have money on the Penguins" and hands you a goal. (I loved the ensuing faceoff too, when Fil and Kronner nearly sleepwalked their way to a giveaway goal of their own. Uncanny. Through 46 games, our guys have been awake for roughly 11 total minutes of 1st period action.)

Ridiculously bad first 12 minutes of play from the Wings, with the exception of a few Eaves/Hank/Mule shifts. Can't remember seeing that many breakaways and clean looks given up in such a short period of time. Maddening. (If you were watching the FSD broadcast, surely you noticed the video being half a second behind the audio. I found this funny; it was as if the Wings were literally playing from behind from the very start.)

Oh God, it's Zapruder footage of the infamous preseason knee-on-knee delivered from Brooks Orpik to Johan Franzen! Unless I'm wildly mistaken, this is the first video we have seen of this incident. I remember hearing the radio call of it vaguely before blacking out and nearly drowning in a bowl of Ramen noodles. When I was revived by paramedics, the Internet was still on fire from Wings fan hatred and I felt like I was actually going to throw up. I'd rather just forget that night altogether, while still hanging onto the notion that I'd like to strap Orpik to a space shuttle and fly him into the sun.

I'm marking 14:58 in the 2nd period as the moment I accepted that Marc-Andre Fleury was locked in and not giving up a 2-0 lead in hopes of a reverse jinx. This came after a bad angle save on Hudler that was followed by cameras catching Jiri saying "Fuck me." This marked the first time in Huds' adult life that those words were not uttered through a ball gag.

I don't understand what has to happen to be awarded a penalty shot. Before Connor scored for the Penguins on one in the 1st period, I actually thought Yak Kindl's trip on whichever Pen that was he tripped on an obvious breakaway was a SURE penalty shot. Then the Drew Miller incident, which, I don't know, if that isn't a PS I don't know what one is. Granted, I would rather have a power play than Drew Miller on a penalty shot, but I'm just saying.

[Franzen's goal, 2-1 Penguins]: Bylsma had the Staal line up against the Zetterberg line the entire game up until this goal, when the Staal line was out one shift prior to this. That put Talbot Monster's line on Hank's; Wings won the faceoff, held possession and ended up scoring with Franzen finding an opening on the left side of the net. (This was one of like three shifts where I noticed PIT not getting that matchup. Feel free to link me a site that actually tells me stuff like this so I don't throw guesstimations out there like a schmuck.) Of course, the Wings gave the Pens life back mere seconds later.

Bernstein Advantage Player Profile on Franzen (these are always too fun not to comment on): "Hockey inspirations: Wayne Gretzky & Peter Forsberg". I find it interesting that two phenomenal playmaking centerman are the biggest hockey inspirations for a hulking power forward and deadly sniper. I mean the Gretzky thing would totally throw me off if the guy wasn't the best player ever, just going by styles of play. Sort of like if Ron Jeremy listed one of his biggest inspirations as George Clooney. (And yes, somebody nicknamed "The Mule" was the porn star in that terrible analogy.)

Mick had some notable comments after the game. Namely that injuries aren't the biggest problem, but rather bad decisions and a loosey-goosey offensive mindset in our players that is causing them to jump up in the play too recklessly without thinking. It might be a wild idea, but in times of injury crisis like this, I would hope that "thinking" isn't one of our weaknesses.

What a turd of a game. Just a moldy, rotten turd. Go Wings.

Game #45 -- Red Wings vs. Blue Jackets

2011-01-16T01:10:00.000-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 6 - 5 COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS (OT)

I can't not do this: it's another transcript of Larry Murphy's between the benches segment before opening face off. It was too "Murph" not to go undocumented.

"EVENING KEN, and we ARE .... seeing TOMAS TATAR .... for his sec-- his second stint with the Wingsplayed five games .... previous to this .... scoring a GOAL ....... in his first NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE gamethis is somebody that brings a lot of ENERGY .... A SKILLED PLAYER HE'S NOT TALL, BUT HE'S WILLING TO MIX IT UP .... creating TURNOVERS ............. STRONG HANDS AROUND THE NET AND HE'S W I L L I N' ..............

............. TO GO TO THOSE DIRTY PLACES .... TOMAS TATAR SHOWING HIMSELF WELL .... HIS FIRST TIME AROUND WITH THE WINGS .... THIS TWENTY-TWO YEAR OLLLLLDDD ............ (Editor's Note: the hell??) .... will have a great opportunity with four regulars .... OFF the POWER PLAY .... don't be surprised to SEE HIM ..... SEE SOME PP TIME ............. Ken ...."

Recap bullets:

Coming into this game, Joey Mac had a 0-1-1 record in two relief appearances, despite only allowing one goal. Something about that doesn't exactly seem fair. I hope Jimmy has the decency to repay Joey somehow. Perhaps by listening to more of those mind-numbing Jamie Tardif stories and saying a little more than just "Yeah that's cool can you pass the Doritos?"

So, 2-0 Blue Jackets less than five minutes in? Forget fighting the urge to hit fast forward on the DVR of this game -- I wanted to hit fast forward on the next five weeks of this season.

Rick Nash did a swell job of pulling up on Nick Lidstrom's stick and drawing that hooking penalty. That was a pretty crafty job by the future goalie murderer. Then the unthinkable happened -- Nick started talking shit to the referee. By God, my eyes were not ready to see that. It felt like seeing your dad swear at a cop over a bogus parking ticket.

Shocked -- SHOCKED that Fil finished on that one-timer. Is that the first time he's ever scored from that far out? I'm kidding, I think. I was "unexpectedly see somebody who's missing and eyeball"-level surprised. (By the way, that rush was started by a heady defensive play from Jiri Hudler, People Who Look For Signs of an Imminent Apocalypse.)

On the Blue Jackets breakaway goal that made it 3-2 Columbus: Who do you blame here? Kronner for staying in too deep or Hank for not covering for him? Either way, I'm not sure why Kronner is playing that risky in a tie game early in the 2nd period. Oh wait, yeah I do, it's because he's Nik Kronwall.

I loved the goal from Raf. He jumped up quickly to force a 3-on-2, wanted the puck, got it, knew he had to get it off quickly and scored (thanks to a goofy bounce. This whole game was goofy bounces.)

Joey MacDonald, FSD Player Profile: "Works on parents' farm during offseason." Huh? What is this, the 40s? There are still players who work second jobs during the offseason? Does he smoke cigarettes during intermissions too?

Funny moment when Murph catches a puck between the benches and looks legitimately like it may have given him a boner. That's how happy he was. Then the puck exchanged hands a few times and ended up in the possession of a little girl in the stands, who looked 1/1000th as excited as Murph. Larry Murphy is one of the greatest hockey players ever and was more excited to catch a puck than a child. It was like somebody handed her a can of baked beans. What an ungrateful whore.

Drapes' had a one-handed poke goal to put the Wings on top 5-4. He now officially has more one-handed goals and goals scored with his face than he does with the conventional slap shot.

5-5, Rick Nash, with only a minute to go. Surprised? Of course not.

But never fear. Want to lose a game? Give Johan Franzen three and a half years of alone time in the slot and he'll bury it. Ballgame.

Good for Joey Mac. Gives up 5 and still wins. That probably didn't happen a whole lot in Toronto.

Go Wings.

Game #44 -- Red Wings at Blue Jackets

2011-01-15T02:58:00.001-05:00

COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS 3 - 2 DETROIT RED WINGS (SO)

Hi again, it's a recap from that guy who writes the blogs sometimes. What are we down to ... weekly? Biweekly? Holidays? Yes, holidays. This is your Martin Luther King AIN'T NO SCHOOL MONDAY, MOTHERFUCKER Day recap.

Posting this at 3 in the morning, I'm not going to bother looking up how badly Jimmy Howard was injured when he apparently took a puck off an exposed part of the leg in the first period. I don't want to read that he shattered his knee cap and will miss the next infinity weeks. (If this is actually the case I'm sorry that I didn't also subject myself this as you did. And God help us all.)

The one point we snagged belonged to a couple of grinders and a 3rd string goalie called upon unexpectedly who showed some serious sack. The bullets:

The opening segment of the broadcast features Ken Daniels' wondering aloud whether Nick Lidstrom -- if he is named an All Star Game captain -- should pick Rick Nash for his squad. I will answer this question on behalf of Nick. Yes, yes he should. He should be the first pick. Also the second pick, and probably the 5th, 6th and 7th pick, and for good measure, picks 12 through 18. You realize what this prevents? It prevents yet another game in which Nick has to defend against Nash cutting to the crease at 70 miles per hour with both skates wobbling and threatening to kick up into the air and slice Nick's head off like a Friday the 13th victim. I might worry too much.

God, that canon at Nationwide Arena drives me nuts. I can't begin to imagine how Chris Chelios ever dealt with it. No way he ever got through a game in Columbus without having traumatic Civil War flashbacks.

CBJ first goal: Nash has his shot deflect off Nick's stick .... it goes behind the net and takes a perfect bounce to Jakub Voracek on the other side .... Jonathan Ericsson meanwhile is still mentally distracted after Derick Brassard asked him what the square root of 100 is and never sees the puck until after Voracek scored.

Random thought after watching Franzen-to-Zetterberg nearly hook up for a cross ice one-timer goal: Mule has improved leaps and bounds as a passer since coming into the league. Nobody really talks about this. After breaking out in 2008 as a score-at-will power forward, his passing game has slowly picked up some pace to the point where he can now have his head up and look for that type of pass and pull the trigger with confidence routinely.

8:49, 1st period, high comedy: Columbus on a 5-on-3 when Hank plays a puck with a high stick, referee signals it and play continues -- and the crowd cheers as they anticipate a high sticking penalty and a 5-on-2 power play.

While it was a two man advantage, Grant Clitsome (who is somehow not a 70's Bond villain) scored a weak goal on Jimmy that everyone wishes they could have back. That's a rare 5-on-3 goal where you pin all blame on the goalie. You can still blame Jiri and Johnny for their penalties, because I know half of you want to. The brains of the Anti-Jiri/Anti-Johnny crowd had to have melted out of their ears at the site of both those guys in the box together. I'm sure it was like a David Lee Roth fan seeing two Sammy Hagars.

Scarring, slow motion shot of Jimmy squirting water on his face as FSD goes to commercial. Can we agree as humans to never, ever record a dude squirting anything onto his face in slow motion again? Seriously, ever? No good results from this. None.

And Jimmy Howard leaves the game with a painful injury! Hooray! I just shat out of my mouth. I'm writing this as I watch so I have no idea what the extent of this injury is, but I put full blame on Joey MacDonald regardless of what it is. With Ozzie out and MacDonald taking his spot on the team plane next to Jimmy, I can only assume that Joey drove Jimmy nuts the entire flight, regaling him with lame AHL stories like the time Jamie Tardif ate half a box of wax paper or when Tomas Tatar made their bus driver pull over outside of a farm so he could arm wrestle a baby horse. It's obvious that Jimmy didn't have his full focus on this game and it was all Joey Mac's fault.

Remember that one time Tomas Holmstrom drew a penalty? Haha I'm just kidding that never happened.

Drew Miller all by his damn self. My goodness what a goal. That was the official "Just For Men: Touch of Gray" goal of the season: He had the youthfulness to speed around his defender, but also had the experience to know how to pull the move off. IT'S THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS.

Miller's shorthanded goal turned the momentum 180 degrees in our favor. Not long after, Helm's speed draws a power play (nearly a penalty shot .... for the love of hockey somebody needs to create a 10 minute video just of Ken Daniels shouting, "IS IT A PENALTY SHOT?" Please. I don't ask for much.) Then Jiri swallowed all of his sadness from Ozzie not being at this game and slam dunked a goal to tie the game at 2.

Back to the All Star Game captaincy thing for a second, (since it was brought up again in the 3rd period): Obviously Crosby will be one of them. There's a 112% chance of that happening. But if the other isn't Nick it will be a reprehensible, unmitigated skullfucking the likes of which won't be able to be processed by human intelligence. On the surface it sounds like it's really not that big of a deal; it's an exhibition game after all. But if you're going to tell one of the 10 greatest players in NHL history in what may be his final season (in what has been an AWESOME season) that he's not the other captain? You might as well slap him across the face with your balls. That's a pretty loud message.

Jokes aside: Joey Mac was really good all things considered. (Considering he's Joey MacDonald.) Overtime was Joeytime.

Mac was also admirable in the shootout, surviving an attempted homicide from Rick Nash. Shootouts are the worst.

Go Wings.

Must read of the day

2011-01-03T21:58:00.002-05:00

Via Baroque: Chris Osgood and the Hall of Fame

Read of the year, really. All three days worth.

"Part of it, I think, is that Chris Osgood just doesn’t seem like a truly dominant, elite goaltender. He’s never been the best goaltender in the league by the end of the year, he’s never been flashy, he’s never been signed to an enormous contract, he makes the fans nervous when he gives up a really strange goal…yet he has persisted through his own self-doubt, the extremely critical gaze of fans, being traded, being benched, reinventing his technique to remain effective as younger, quicker, larger goaltenders were coming into the league all around him, and has just kept winning more often than not."

I'm glad all of our badgering to get Baroque writing paid off like this. Great stuff.

Game #38 -- Red Wings vs. Islanders

2010-12-31T22:43:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK ISLANDERS 4 - 3 DETROIT RED WINGS (OT) (SOMEHOW)

I posted a recap of Patrick Eaves' hat trick, but deleted it yesterday morning thinking that I had hallucinated that game. Lo and behold it actually happened. So that's my bad Patrick, I'll give you your time now as reader Jay sends desktop-worthy gem:

You did it, Jay. My computer desktop is now your picture and not a candid shot of my mom's cat after crushing a fifth of Grey Goose.

As for this game? Fuck it. I'm mailing the rest of this in and pretending I like things like Ke$ha and Ryan Seacrest for the rest of 2010. Happy New Year gang.

Recap Bullets:

The PC way to say a team completely sucks, by Mickey Redmond: "(The Islanders) give up more goals than most every team in the NHL, and they're second worst on the offensive side."

The previous two games against the Islanders were 2-0 and 6-0 losses. I remember these things happening, and I remember watching and talking about these things happening, but I don't really believe they happened. Whoa hold on, Curtis Joseph flashback ....

During the first TV timeout, Joe Louis Arena honored Chris Osgood's 4ooth victory by giving him a video tribute. How do you honor a guy who is nearing the end of a career spent perpetually fighting for respect? Apparently you make him a video accompanied by a song titled, "Good Riddance".

Ken Daniels: "Mike Babcock says Tomas Tatar reminds him of Jiri Hudler." Great, he hates him already.

How many times has an icing in the last ten seconds of a period actually bit a team in the ass like that? Every time there's an icing in that scenario you get the ominous "Oh and we have an icing here..." feel to go along with it, but nothing really ever happens, right? Only when we play the Islanders would this happen. A team that we have to practically spot a handicap for in order to make a game competitive. But no, these teams only meet in the Twilight Zone and thus Joey MacDonald can shut us out 2-0 on our ice, we can give up six of the Islanders' season total of like 22 goals, and a lazy icing can actually result in a last-second goal against.

(Red Wings power play, Overtime:) I'll update the scoreboard later, but boy it looks like we've got this one wrapped up. Already on a 4-on-3, Mule has his stick slashed in half in broad daylight. Two man advantage coming up. Ballgame. Losing streak to the vaunted Isle coming to an end. Yep, I'm turning the ol' brain off now, not even gonna watch the rest of this. Go Wings!

Have a safe New Year's Eve, people who planned on not partying until they read this at 10:45 PM.

Osgood's 400th -- Red Wings @ Avalanche

2010-12-28T20:37:00.000-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 4 - 3 COLORADO AVALANCHE (OT)

I've let too many notable games go post-less around here of late and that just can't happen after this one.

Congratulations to longtime reader Chris Osgood on his 400th victory, a well-deserved W made all the sweeter by taking place on rival ice. It wasn't pretty but I will never, ever call a win a bad performance when it's Game 2 of a back-to-back on the road. You take two points under those circumstances and you are absolved from the word "bad", I think. The absences of Datsyuk and Cleary and Rafalski certainly account for the number of shots allowed to a large degree.

Reader Jay sends in this beauty in commemoration of the OT winner:

As usual I'll now make some hollow promise to update more often in the near future. This time we'll aim for after the New Year.

Go Wings.

Liveblog -- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

2010-12-22T17:24:00.001-05:00

Here it is, the liveblog that none of you asked for and all of you shall receive: the retelling of the greatest Christmas story of all time.

The 1964 claymation classic is surely a movie that you have seen countless times. It's likely that there is a dusty, recorded VHS copy sitting in your basement right now. I implore you to dig it out and watch along with me, and despite how much we like this movie and swear by it's greatness, we will still be forced to make fun of how odd and unintentionally funny it can be . But nevertheless it provides a nostalgic escape to a simpler time and is an annual tradition at TTD Headquarters. Without further ado, I will now press play.

We are greeted with black and white images of a ferocious snow storm and swirling newspaper headlines bemoaning the possibility of Christmas being postponed. I really hope Santa's sleigh can handle this weather. I hate it when the snow pushes back Christmas to February 11th, the birth date of Jesus' brother Larry Christ.

Our narrator Sam the Snowman waddles in, voiced by Burl Ives. As the only sane person in this movie, he provides a calming voice to put our fears of mammoth blizzards and psychotic snow men to rest. He carries an umbrella, sports a mustache, wears a vest and has a human's name, just like no other snow man ever.

Our first glimpse of the Claus household, the only castle at the North Pole, owned by that elitist St. Nick. Mrs. Claus is trying to get her skinny husband fattened up for Christmas Eve, like he's a offensive lineman trying to make weight for football season. "Eat. EAT," she yells. This is the only Christmas movie in the history of the world in which Santa is not fat and jolly. In fact he's the opposite: he's an 85-pound anorexic narcissist. It makes no sense. It's as if the producers were trying to do parents everywhere a favor, by bracing the children for the news of Santa's non-existence. "Well yeah he's not 'real' per se, but who cares, right? Remember the Rudolph movie? He was an asshole anyway."

Another oddity about this version of Santa is that he's a freak in the sack. How do I know? He and the missus refer to each other as "Mama" and "Papa". That's fucked up, man.

Now we are at the cave of Donner and his wife, Mrs. Donner (So his name is Donner Donner, apparently.) I feel like I should point out that Mrs. Donner is wearing pink eye shadow. She's a reindeer. Here we witness the birth of their son Rudolph, who believe it or not, was born with a strange birth defect that caused his nose to beam a shiny red light. "His beak blinks like a blinkin' beacon!" says Donner, startled. Santa then enters to congratulate the Donners and drop not so vague hints that Rudolph better grow out of that red nose bullshit, otherwise the whole neighborhood is going to call him a fucking retard.

Santa, verbatim: "Every year I shine up my jingle bells," then he breaks into a song. "I'm the king of jing-a-ling," he sings. I bet they had fun sneaking that one in there. Afterward, Donner scrapes up some shit off the floor of the cave and covers Rudolph's nose with it, but to no avail. He is deeply ashamed of his son.

We cut to Santa's workshop where the elves making toys. We are introduced to Hermey the elf, who absolutely hates making toys. One of the most annoying characters in movie history.... just a whiny, lip-stick wearing sonofabitch that doesn't understand the value of a hard day's work. I'm totally siding with Hermey's boss here, as he's going ape shit trying to get this little turd to do his job. "I don't like to make toys," Hermey says. Someday, I'd like to be a dentist!" The boss is apoplectic. He looks like somebody just told him they broke into his house and shat in his fireplace. Seething with anger, he makes Hermey finish toys instead of going on break with the other elves. Obviously, the elves aren't a part of a union.

Back at the cave, Donner has drummed up a way to disguise Rudolph's nose with a black cover-up. Watching this as an adult, it is astounding to see how awful they made Donner seem. The guy is a total dick. This is literally what he says to his only son: "There are things more important things than comfort. Like self respect." It's just a nose for crying out loud! I mean shit, you'd think he's a ginger or something.

Rudolph goes to play reindeer games, sadly without Ben Affleck getting involved. He runs into an outgoing new friend. "Hi, my name's Fireball!" The fucker has blonde hair. I myself have blonde hair and even I must admit that this is a bit weird. Shouldn't this guy be the outcast? At least Rudy's defect eventually proves to be practical in the end. Fireball on the other hand is just a dumb jock on the hunt for some doe ass.

At the castle, the elves have gathered to sing for Santa Claus. Santa couldn't give less of a shit about this. "Well, let's get this over with." Elves are all happy with their Christmas spirit like you would expect for a Christmas movie, and Santa all the while is bored out of his mind, probably day dreaming about different spots he's going to get laid on Christmas Eve. "Mmm. It needs work. I have to go," Santa says after removing the gun from his mouth. Best part of this scene is the wide shot of everybody just as the song ends, with Santa slouched in his chair, not paying attention and gazing out a window.

It's discovered that Hermey wasn't at singing practice, though. The boss elf loses his mind with anger yet again. He finds him in the workshop making toys with teeth, as Hermey tries to combine his toy-making obligations with his aspirations of becoming a dentist. "YOU'LL NEVER FIT IN," the boss shouts. Fed up with everything, Hermey runs away.

Back at the Reindeer games, all of the young bucks are learning to fly. Here we meet Rudolph's love interest, Clarice. Fireball, ever the poon hound, urges Rudolph to go talk to her. She tells Rudolph he's cute and he shits his pants, or at least does the reindeer equivalent and flies around for about five seconds. This impresses everybody. Rudolph then celebrates with Fireball in homoerotic fashion by rubbing their antlers together -- but suddenly, Rudolph's fake nose falls off and his red nose is revealed. Fireball reacts like he just saw the Arc of the Covenant. The entire group shuns Rudolph from playing in any more reindeer games.

Santa gets wind of this and confronts Rudolph's parents. "Donner, you should be ashamed of yourself." He literally says this. And not to defend that asshole Donner, but it's not like he could have prevented that. Rudolph isn't the lovechild of a reindeer and a house covered in Christmas lights. Furthermore -- could a movie this inexplicably irrational and un-P.C. fly in today's world? No way. I can't see Dora and Diego trying to celebrate Christmas at school and the principal walks in and tells them they have to jump the fence back to Mexico. That's essentially what this is.

Rudolph decides to run away. As fate would have it, he and Hermey meet and run away together, ironically so that they can be "independent". Here we see our first peak at the antagonist: the abominable snow monster. I can't believe I watched this shit when I was two years old. I'm 24 right now and I'm more than a little worried that this thing is going to crawl out of the TV like it's The Ring and eat my face off.

As Rudolph and Hermey venture through the snow, Yukon Cornelius is introduced. He's a crazy combination of an Eskimo and Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Actual line: "GOLD AND SILVER! SILVER AND GOLD! WAHOOOOO!!" Then he throws his ice pick up the air, let's it land in the snow, and licks it. You can't find two things in any movie ever that are more strange this scene. "I'm off to get corn meal and gun powder and ham hocks and guitar strings." Then the snow monster appears behind them and the three of them are forced to flee.

After setting sail on a severed piece of ice, they land on the Island of Misfit Toys. Charlie-in-the-Box greets them and directs them up to see King Moonracer and ask his permission for them to live on the island. As you would imagine, he's a lion with wings and looks just like Scar from the Lion King, only if Scar had 40 more pounds of muscle and didn't do coke. "King Moonracer" is just a bad-ass name, by the way. Definitely the name of my first born, boy or girl.

Moonracer tells them that they can't live on the island, but they can stay the night. Rudolph decides that he's putting his friends in danger by being around them, because his nose keeps attracting the snow monster. So he decides to sneak out at night and go it alone. (In the special features, Rudolph reveals that the true reason he abandoned his friends was because Yukon smelled like dead rabbits and spoiled goat milk.)

Now grown up, Rudolph returns home to discover his family and Clarice went looking for him. He knows where to find them: the dreaded cave of abominable snow monster. He goes there to save Clarice and the Donners, but he just can't do it on his own.

Wouldn't you know it -- Yukon and Hermey arrive just in time to save the reindeer. Hermey lures the monster out of the cave by making pig noises, because as Yukon says, snow monsters prefer pork to deer meat. Brilliant plan. Yukon whacks the monster over the head with a 2x4 and the two of them go tumbling over the cliff, and it appears as though the brave Yukon Cornelius sacrificed his own life to save his friends.

The gang makes it back to Santa's castle, grieving the loss of Yukon. But just as children new to this story were being traumatized over such a gruesome death, Yukon busts through the door. Not only is he alive, but he has reformed the snow monster and now everything is fine. Yeah okay. Hermey rips out all of the monster's teeth, Yukon pushes him over the edge and lied to him about a pork dinner, but he's totally cool in front of all these people? Yukon is either a master of hypnosis or he had a killer back of weed.

Santa gets the weather report and determines that Christmas has to be canceled. "Christmas is going to be canceled," he says to a dejected room of elves and reindeer. Then Rudolph's nose shines and it gives Santa a crazy idea. "Rudolph with your nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?" Oh THE NERVE of this motherfucker. Soon as some shit's about to hit the fan he turns to the reindeer he treated like a failed abortion.

Best line of the whole movie: Donner says, "I knew that nose would be usefull someday. I knew all along." Kills me every time I hear that. It kills me to think that there were people who set out to write a movie in which Santa and one of his reindeer were morally corrupt douche bags.

Santa, a day later and about 250 pounds heavier magically, sets off to deliver presents. He would die of heart attack the next day. You can't gain that much weight in one day and not die, I'm sorry. It's physically impossible.

Christmas had been saved. All of the toys on the misfit island were delivered to boys and girls around the world, and Rudolph's story would be taugh us a valuable lesson of acceptance for generations. He would go down in history.

Merry Christmas

Game #32 -- Red Wings vs. Stars.

2010-12-20T02:40:00.000-05:00

DALLAS STARS 4 - 3 DETROIT RED WINGS (OT)

As I go into my DVR recordings to start the game, I notice for the first time that "NHL Hockey" is rated TV-PG for violence, language and sex. It's a violent game, obviously, and you may occasionally lip read a curse word or two. But the sex part? I have no idea. These are my best guesses:

- The possibility of the referees boning your team over.

- Hooking.

- Any game involving Krys Barch and Brad May.

- The somewhat awkward flexibility of the goaltenders.

- Excessive mentioning of "hot dogs" by Larry Murphy.

- Any game involving Mike Richards and Pierre McGuire's mouth.

- Valterri Filppula.

- J.J.'s right: the faceoff circles do look like boobs.

1ST PERIOD

18:20 -- The best way to start a game is drawing an early penalty and capitalizing on it. To force the other team into a mental error and put them down one, to a good team no less, that's a tough mental hurdle to overcome. Homer was running traffic in front of goal and drew an interference call, then Pavel scores on a fluttering backhander. 1-0 Wings. Actually, I change my mind: scoring three seconds in on a slapshot off the face off would be the best possible way to start a game. And I'm not ruling that shit out until Nick Lidstrom retires. Nine years from now.

9:36 -- Granted I've been thinking of different ways that a hockey broadcast can be seen as sexual for the first half of this period, but I don't think I've seen the Stars get a shot on Ozzie. Wouldn't it be fitting if his 400th win came in a game where he didn't have to do anything and he benefited entirely from the team in front of him? I'm a complete asshole.

7:35 -- The Unscratchable One scores, and it's 2-0 Wings. A perfect post-up from Eaves on Skrastins, he catches a perfect rebound and slams it home. Basketball words.

6:04 -- Datsyuk fails to convert on a very slow pseudo breakaway attempt at the end of a shift. Stars score coming back the other way on a total flung turd of a goal from Brad Richards. Shot it standing flat footed from like 50 feet, it's three feet wide and still manages to get deflected in. This was the "Johnny Depp getting a Golden Globe nod for 'The Tourist'" of goals. 2-1 Wings.

2:03 -- 2-2 game. Trevor Daley had an acre of ice to shoot.

42.5 -- Employee #44 takes a fucktastically stupid penalty in the offensive zone. Jesus Christ, this guy. I think I just shat blood.

2ND PERIOD

20:00 -- Trevor Thompson tells us that the Wings are 8-0-1 when tied after the 1st period. Babcock lights up a cigar and mutters, "I love it when a plan comes together." Speaking of, if the A-Team was made up of Red Wings, Babcock would obviously be Hannibal, Zetterberg would be Face, Hudler would be Murdock, and Franzen would be B.A. Namely because I picture the Mule to be the one keeping Huds in check calling him a "crazy fool" while having an intense fear of flying. And because he's black.

20:00 -- Player Profile: Chris Osgood. "Has a hockey rink in his backyard with an electronic scoreboard". On it, score is not kept but there is a spot where Oz has a countdown to his Hall of Fame induction, as well as a bright neon picture of him crossing through finish line tape with the number "400" stretched across.

20:00 -- And I'm not ever buying that Ozzie's favorite musical act is the Black Eyed Peas. No way. Dude is from Peace River, Alberta -- his favorite musical act is listening to Dark Side of the Moon while lit beyond belief and thinking about eating the contents of his lava lamp.

16:00 -- Am I the only one who doesn't give two shits about Hank's consecutive games with at least two shots streak?

9:16 -- Abby drops the gloves with the well-liked Steve Ott. I'm half hoping that these Abdelkader scraps build up into an actual fight and not just a hug-fest. The other half of me thinks that Abby has a really soft looking head and fears that one punch might turn him into the Elephant Man.

2:19 -- Pretty good action the last few minutes. Draper flying around, Franzen, Helm creating chances. Salei clanks one of the post with some serious ping. Ozzie makes a humongous save on a one timer from the top of the crease. Then:

0:17 -- MULE, 3-2 Wings. Great last five minutes of hockey. This Homer/Pav/Mule line has been really buzzing. Raf with a great touch pass as well.

3RD PERIOD

19:00 -- The action continues as Oz makes a Hall of Fame caliber stop, according to Ken Daniles. Then Pav and Mule nearly team up for another goal on a 2-on-1, but as it seems to be contagious with this team, they elect to pass instead of shoot and end up without a shot on goal.

13:32 -- Lengthy discussion during play of Chris Osgood's Hall of Fame credentials between Ken and Mick. I myself have spent years flip-flopping back and forth between whether I think he is or isn't. I really don't know. I toil with the whole, "If you have to really think about it, then he doesn't belong" sort of thing. Same with retiring numbers. Certainly not something to decide in one bullet point.

11:55 -- And all the while, Oz is capping this off with some spectacular saves. Pretty cool. Great showing so far from the old man.

11:20 -- Ken brings up the legendary Bowman/Crawford spat and mentions that Crawford's retort to Bowman's famous line was just as good. He couldn't repeat it, of course. Ken, I know you read all of these blogs so go ahead and shoot me an email. I won't tell anyone. And they don't just give away these Blogger sites to any schmuck off the streets so you know I'm reliable.

10:55 -- Sellout crowd really getting into now after Helm again nearly nets one on the penalty kill. It is insane how dangerous he is 4-on-5. Every other PK he's generating scoring opportunities and near breakaways. Or drawing penalties.

4:00 -- For 30 seconds there appears to be screaming coming from a child in the crowd. Coincidentally Todd Bertuzzi is not on the ice.

3:14 -- Some "OZ-ZIE" chants, Mick mentions the Wings have to buckle down defensively ..... Tie ...game. A god awful turnover from Raf. For some reason, I really can't believe he just did that.

OVERTIME

3:26 -- Mike Ribiero makes some shifty moves and draws a penalty. Wings had a 2-0 lead, then a 3-2 lead with three minutes to play, and now might give up two points again at home.

1:23 -- Wings kill it. I was just trying to jinx the Stars there. (I was trying to jinx a team on a DVR recording of a game that was over with seven hours ago.)

0:45 -- Oh god, 3 on 1 for the Stars. They're going to score.

0:41 -- They score. 4-3 Stars. Heartbreaker for Ozzie. What a fucking waste.

Long sigh. Go Wings.

Game #26 -- Red Wings vs. Predators

2010-12-09T02:27:00.000-05:00

NASHVILLE PREDATORS 3 - 2 DETROIT RED WINGS

Not two weeks ago I remarked about how this team could play poorly and still win by two or three goals because they're that good. I still think they're that good. This is a rut. The team we saw prior to this week is the norm and will eventually return.

Rest easy, reader, for I have never steered you wrong before. I mean really. Remember that time we all got in my car and went to IHOP at 3:30 in the morning? I steered you around pretty well. We got there in one piece. We sat around for an hour and half waiting for our food, and we enjoyed our cold eggs and the assortment of syrups.

We've got the Habs on Friday, and because it's a Friday it's going to be a liveblog recap. That's just been the routine the last few weeks and I don't want to mess with that.

The real highlight of this game was on Red Wings Live, when John Keating said the words "The Production Line", "Operation Curly Fries" and "Blog site" in one segment. Because he was name droppin' TPL, and it was sweet. I caught it with this expert camerawork:

Between Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports Detroit, I think the Operation has to be deemed a success. Curly Fries has this victory all but sewn up and it's all thanks to your friends at The Production Line.

Real recap Friday, pinky swear.

Go Wings.

Game #25 -- Red Wings vs. San Jose

2010-12-07T03:24:00.000-05:00

SAN JOSE SHARKS 5 - 2 DETROIT RED WINGS

I don't feel like doing this. The only highlights, in order:

Homer has always been a bit of an underrated passer, and that one was sick.

Kronner boomsticks Ryan Clowe. Randy Couture or whoever didn't care for it.

And of course: Mike Babcock, interview with Lindsay Soto: "We're having a cute-fest out there this period."

Yep.

Go Wings.

Game #24 -- Red Wings at Kings

2010-12-05T01:13:00.000-05:00

LOS ANGELES KINGS 3 - 2 DETROIT RED WINGS (OT)

I don't think I would ever outright predict the Wings to lose a game (except for that one time), but at the very least, I spent Saturday afternoon thinking that I would be almost pleasantly surprised to see them pull two points out of L.A. given the Osgoodness and back-to-backness. To get to OT tied at two goals apiece, I was definitely satisfied. I'd take that if you offered it beforehand.

Oz was about as good as any of us could have hoped for, or as good as a fully rested Jim Howard would have been, for that matter. All things considered this is about the least upset I have ever been over a non-preseason loss.

Recap bullets:

First five minutes were encouraging in terms of energy level. The foremost thing you're looking for in the second game of a back-to-back is how the guys are moving their feet, how hard going after 50/50 pucks, etc. And the foremost thing you're worried about in a back-to-back with Chris Osgood playing for the first time in over a month is escaping the arena without being covered in napalm.

Big response goal from Bertuzzi early in the 2nd period, moments after the Kings had tied the game at 1-1. Bert immediately apologized to the Kings for shooting. (Ken Daniels pulled out his "SNIPED" catchphrase for this goal. Unfortunately, simply putting "Todd Bertuzzi" and "snipe" in the same sentence has made Ken Daniels a fugitive of the FBI.)

Jonathan Ericsson is a sky scraper sized plasma-breathing woolly mammoth of hockey fiction. He's more awesome than two monster trucks trying to make a baby.

Brad Stuart kills.

I love the lady furiously scribbling notes in the T-Pain commercial as he's flinging his sandwich around in that boardroom. " 'Mega ..... giga ...... byte ................. son' ? Or did he mean 'Sun'? Harnessing the Sun's energy, perhaps? My word, that's it: solar computers! Genius -- this man is a genius!"

Oz took the rare delay of game penalty for playing the puck outside of the trapezoid. "YOU KIDS WITH YOUR FUCKING .... SHAPES," he shouted.

Nick Lidstrom played the biggest role in the Kings game winning goal, trying to force a cross-ice pass in the L.A. end which resulted in a turnover going the other way. This happens maybe once every 86 years.

Now here's a stat: FSD shows that Larry Murphy was 1 for 1 in his career on faceoffs, winning his only draw against Florida as a Wing in 2000. "I'll have to look that up later," Murph said. Lord, what I wouldn't give to be looking over his shoulder as he Googles, "LARRY MERPHY + FACE OFF + A PLATE OF CONEYS PLEASE?", before jamming his printer with a hot dog bun.

End of road trip, end of post.

Go Wings.

Game #23 -- Red Wings at Ducks

2010-12-04T03:15:00.001-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 4 - 0 ANAHEIM DUCKS

Any time you're doing your all-important 550th "Larry Murphy-commemorated" post, and it's early Saturday morning after work and you're firing up the DVR to recap a game, you have live blog it. It's just the rule. Thus, this is an official TTD DRW LB recap, complemented with PHD, LSD and OPP. I'm lost.

John Keating was down at ice level before the game interviewing the current #55, reminding him that Teemu Selanne bathed his beautiful Salma Hayek-looking face with his own tears a month ago after Kron destroyed him at the Joe, and asked if he thought the Ducks would be head hunting tonight. Kronner just sort of shook it off and said, "If I dies, I dies" and gave Keating a suplex onto the Honda Center ice.

Sorry for ruining Salma Hayek for you, by the way.

1ST PERIOD

20:00 -- Brad Watson is reffing this game. Yeah okay.

20:00 -- Anaheim is wearing their disastrous, disastrous alternate uniforms. All the random orange and stripes .... it's as if it were designed by an actual, for real duck. Who was also blind and retarded. Like they kidnapped a duck, took it down into George Parros' 70s porn cavern, handed it some black cloth and bucket of orange paint and told it to make magic.

19:05 -- Is that ..... a Let's Go Red Wings chant? Definitely a four syllable chant, if you were there I'd love to know. Plus, it was pretty damn loud when:

18:51 -- GOAL ... Mule scores a minute in from a bad angle after a horrible Lubo Visnovsky giveaway. Visnovsky sat behind the net for 10 solid seconds before deciding that being down 1-0 early was the best route to go.

14:55 -- Today is Igor Larionov's 50th birthday. Fifty! I was certainly caught off guard by this. Not only was it not that long ago that he was in the NHL, but also, I never really looked at him as being decrepitly old like I did with Chelios.

13:48 -- Crazy near-goal sequence. Wings win a scrum at the half boards in Anaheim's zone, forcing a turnover. Puck comes in from the point; Helm has a gaping net but a bad angle and hits the post, and Hiller covers before Homer can slam a rebound in.

13:48 -- Mega gigabyte, son.

11:50 -- After years of Vancouver training, Bertuzzi tries the Sedin twins' trademark backdoor pass to Mule. It fails. Bert is sort of a (really really) poor man's "Sedin twin", if you think about it, with the attempts at all of the cute stick handling and puck possession stuff. If we found out that he was actually their long lost older Canadian brother, I wouldn't be so shocked about it. I also wouldn't be shocked to find out that he was raised by a family of Kodiak bears.

4:27 -- Pav high sticks Paul Mara, and apologizes to him as the play is still going on. I have absolutely never seen that in hockey before, not ever. The game was delayed for five minutes as Datsyuk was immediately awarded the 2011 Lady Byng trophy. And then another 15 minutes to explain to each Duck player what the Lady Byng is.

2ND PERIOD

19:20 -- Another shaky start to a period by Anaheim as the Wings nearly score twice. The Ducks were honoring their southern California crowd by showing up as late as they usually do.

14:56 -- A highlight package of the high-scoring George Parros is shown, and then a graphic showing that Parros has the same number of goals (3) as Henrik Sedin. I don't buy this for a second. It's more believable that Parros is actually Gallagher.

13:31 -- Yet again, a deadly Anaheim giveaway in their own end. Helm is ROBBED by the unbeatable glove of Jonas Hiller. It's still 1-0.

11:31 -- Corey Perry is stopped on a breakaway while Lidstrom hustles back to hassle him. Random thought: You know what really annoys me? People who, here in 2010, are still saying it LIND-strom. Oh it's out there, friends. He's been here for two decades and is one of the 10 greatest players of all time. 100% of hockey fans should probably be pronouncing the name correctly.

8:52 -- Tim Allen is shown in the stands. When he's not doing voice-over work for every other commercial, he is now appearing on the programs between the commercials.

5:58 -- BANG, 2-0. Linderstrom heads the puck up the middle to Datsyuk, leaves for Hank who shoots, Homer pounds in the rebound. Corey Perry, who couldn't muscle Homer away from the crease to prevent the goal, cross checks him afterward. The biggest reason that I couldn't be a professional athlete isn't the lack of skill or work ethic -- it's that I couldn't let something like this pass without chopping the guy's head off with my hockey stick.

1:34 -- CLEARY. 3-0. We're closer to goon-it-up territory if this carries through the 3rd period, which is worrisome, but for now let's bask in Dan(ny) Cleary's amazing golden balls. He has to stop scoring eventually, right? This isn't normal.

3RD PERIOD

18:45 -- Big E makes a nice defensive play, as Ken mentions that he's +2 and looking solid tonight. Haters keep hatin'.

17:40 -- Nick takes a puck off the helmet, but he's okay. The puck became 12% more intelligent from coming in contact with his brain.

16:35 -- BIG hit from Brad Stuart, Wings kill another Duck power play. The Ducks are a good power play team at home, but with Selanne out recovering from being in the horrible movie "Grown Ups" they aren't as potent.

14:00 -- The Ducks take their first penalty of the game. This is the latest into a game that they have taken their first penalty since facing Germany in the 1994 Junior Goodwill Games.

11:15 -- If you didn't laugh your ass off when Murph let out a Rick Flair-like "WOOOOOOOOO" at the $1 Hot Dog Night graphic, then we probably wouldn't make very good friends.

10:00 -- Almost hoping Kron doesn't see the ice if it's still 3-0 the later this gets, just in case somebody feels like taking a run at him. We'll know if something is afoot if Parros takes the ice with a giant fruit smashing mallet instead of a stick.

3:32 -- Okay that has to be a "Let's go Red Wings". And that is awesome.

0:30 -- Holy sack, what a pass from Ericsson. Seriously, the dude is back. Fil buries it, 4-0 ... familiar scoreline for these teams.

Ha, didn't see until now that Z popped Perry in the back of the head after he cross checked Homer.

YES.

Go Wings.

OOOH LOOK

2010-12-01T18:02:00.004-05:00

This is bad ass. Production Line:

"For those of you who didn’t see the latest on Das Twitter earlier this afternoon, super sleuth #operationcurlyfries agent @scott_sabo spotted the latest awesome twist in our greased-up campaign. We’re in Sports Illustrated.

No, you that’s not a misprint.

…and no, we’re not talking about SI for Kids, even though that magazine was THE BOMB about 15 years ago."

The Internet wins again. Very cool, fellas.

SI for Kids was wicked awesome though. Somewhere in my old bedroom I still have my Alexi Lalas tear-out poster from that magazine. Which my little sister colored on. That bitch. She colored his epic red goatee blue. Only she did a really shitty job and it just looked like he was frothing blue foam from his mouth like he just devoured an entire Smurph.

But yeah, way to go TPL.

Game #22 -- Red Wings at Sharks

2010-12-01T03:30:00.001-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 5 - 3 SAN JOSE SHARKS

Lacking time for the typical recap, so I'll just state the obvious: This team is the nuts right now.

Don't talk to Sharks fans about it, though. Just ask J.J. Something about class, or .... I don't know. I don't know what that word even means anymore. There's been a drastic inflation of the word 'class' and now I think it somehow stands for less than what it did before. Let's cut out the entire class-to-douche bag measuring tape and come to a universal agreement:

1) Our team is good.

2) Your team is not as good.

3) Mike Modano claiming his favorite musical acts to be Hall and Oates AND Heart is the single greatest "anything" of all time. Funniest thing ever? That's Mike Modano loving Hall & Oates and Heart. Best movie? Modano loving Hall & Oates and Heart. Most influential world leader of the past 50 years? Modano loving Hall & Oates and Heart. It's almost too much, really. I mean FSD asked him what his favorite musical act is -- and he couldn't choose between the two. One or the other would have been great on their own, but he HAD to put both up there. "Ahhhhh, shit .... Heart is extraordinary, but Hall & Oates are just so damn good ..... god dammit ...... this is too tough ..... is their a time limit? Do I have to-- oh screw it, just put both on there." Someday I will stop laughing about this.

Go Wings.

Game #21 -- Red Wings vs. Blue Jackets

2010-11-29T02:12:00.001-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 4 - 2 COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS

I've always wanted to try this for fun. Below is a word-for-word transcript of Larry Murphy's pregame segment on Jimmy Howard, done in Murph's trademark choppy cadence and inexplicable emphasis on random words. Replaying this enough times to get the words right gave me voice immodulation disorder. Here it was:

"HUH YES ..... it's been an issue for the Red Wings and with last game Jimmy Howard only giving up ONE .... the Columbus Blue Jackets FELT .... that they had a number of great scoring opportunities .... they felt that they had an EXCELLENT chance to win JIMMY HOWARD WAS THE DIFFERENCE .... he faced .... THIRTY FIVE .... SHOTS ... in this one .... a number of .... CLOSE IN .... SAVES .... Jimmy Howard was STRONGmoved well LATERALLY .... FOUND THE PUCK in TRAFFIC .... on the POWER PLAY .............................."

"......................................................................."

".................THE Blue Jackets had SIX outstanding CHANCES he STOPS the PENALTY SHOT .... the Blue Jackets felt HE WAS the REASON .... the WINGS WON two nights ago AND THEY EXPECT TO PEPPER .... as many SHOTS as POSSIBLE and hope ..... they're hoping for more breaks ..... offensively." (Murph was then sprayed with a fire hose.)

Just realized that at least 50% of my material comes from Mick and Murph. If I ever move out of Michigan this blog is screwed.

The Wings wore their road whites at the Blue Jackets' request so that they could wear and promote their new 3rd jerseys. What the hell is this shit? We're accommodating other teams' wishes in our own building? They must have some dirt on us. Columbus' marketing department has pictures of Mike Ilitch fucking a Domino's pizza or something. If this were the cutthroat Norris Division of old, such a request would get you a house call from Joe Kocur and a can of gasoline. Not to mention a salty letter from Ilitch himself, which would usually arrive about a month late because it was sent by carrier pigeon.

I've written on this site before how few things in life scare me more than Rick Nash driving to the net with the puck. Every time he does this, I think his skates are going to chop off the goalie's hands like a flea market thief in the Middle East. Nash did this with under a minute to go in the first period (On Lidstrom, no less); I closed my eyes and prepared myself in the event that one of Jimmy's severed hands would slap a fan across the face in the 8th row, and when I looked up, Columbus had scored.

Gary Sinise stopped by the booth in Dino Ciccarelli's clothes to chat with Mick and Ken before the 2nd period. Sinise was promoting his movie Mission to Mars, which you can find for $4.95 at Walmart if you have the physical endurance and absence of self-respect to dig all the way to the bottom of their ridiculously huge DVD bargain bin. I'm pretty sure this exact thing was a challenge on Legends of the Hidden Temple.

Random to put a (relatively) minor officiating gripe from the 2nd period in here, but when Zetterberg was blatantly tripped with the puck about 15 feet in front of Steve Mason, right out in the open, plain as day, and no call ...... I mean, how? How? What else are you looking at?

Tronwall.

Right after the Kron goal, Babs puts the Red Bull line out there for that post-goal energy shift, and it nets them a second goal like five seconds later. I loved this. They won a scrambled faceoff and went two men deep on the forecheck; Miller prevented the BJs from sending the puck back out and Helm finished on a wrist shot. A handwritten blueprint for the ideal energy shift could not look any better than what this goal was.

It never fails. You make fun of Fil's looks in one post, and then by the next he scores a goal (That's a thing, right?) He's really good.

Derek Dorsett, high sticks Henrik Zetterberg in the face. Derek Dorsett, to official: "It never touched him in the fucking face!" LIAR. And might I add: Bagofdicks.

Three straight games for Nick without a point. Fuck's wrong with this asshole?

Columbus 5 on 3, 3rd period: I started this bullet with "Minus a flillion points to Kronner for taking a dumb holding penalty," and then it turned out to be the Blue Jackets worst case scenario. They don't know what to do on the 2 man advantage. They're totally lost. And as the penalty kill wore on, the Wings became more energized and aggressive, and the crowd capped it off with a great ovation.

Working the graveyard shift Tuesday at the Sharks, 10:30.

Go Wings.

Game #20 -- Red Wings at Blue Jackets

2010-11-27T02:28:00.000-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 2 - 1 COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS

I had trouble posting my recap of the Thrashers game, so in case you missed it, I posted it here.

Big Game James, y'all. Bullets:

"The Wings will try to stop Columbus one win shy of their franchise record of 6 consecutive wins ..."BWAHAHAHA

Nick Lidstrom saved a goal on a Blue Jackets power play three minutes into the game. The phrase, "Your goaltender has to be your best penalty killer" insults him to no end.

This was the night of Chris Osgood's 38th birthday. Before the game the team presented him with a graphing calculator. You know, in case he wants to get bat shit crazy with those face off charts.

Mike Modano left in the 2nd period because he took a skate blade to the wrist. This is unequivocally the most emo injury in Red Wings history. (I've said it a million times: I don't get how people don't die regularly playing this sport.)

Fact: Whenever Murph gets pulled over by a cop, they skip the normal sobriety tests and instead ask him to say, "Rostislav Klesla" without his head falling off.

I'm trying to picture the conversation between Mike Babcock and Jiri Hudler as Babs was telling Jiri to go serve the penalty for too many men:

Babcock: "Huds, go to the box."

Hudler: "What? Why coach? I do nothing! No literally."

Babcock: "Too many men, someone has to sit."

Hudler: "Oh no, coach, that not going to happen."

Babcock: "Is that so?"

Hudler: "No way. I will have nothing to do with anything called Too Many Men."

Babcock: "We don't have all day Huds, just go to the box."

Hudler: "Coach, you not understand. Many girls come to watch Jiri. If they think I am involved with this 'too many men' then they won't agree to have the sex with me afterward."

Todd Bertuzzi: "Wait a minute, they're supposed to agree?"

Hudler: "Please coach, I beg. I need the after the game sexing, it is essential. I promise, I will consider the bank checking thing,"

Henrik Zetterberg: "Back checking, Huds."

Hudler: "Yeah that too, and whatever else you say during practice when I'm busy tricking Ericsson into getting his tongue stuck to the ice ... just send somebody else. I mean really, shouldn't it be Filppula?"

Babcock: "I don't give two moose shits what you say, you're gonna take your hot air balloon head over to that box and sit in it or I'm going to send you on the first thing smokin' back to Europe."

Brad McCrimmon: "Look, Huds, if you go to the box, I'll make sure you're taken care of after the game."

Hudler: "Really? How?"

McCrimmon: "You can sleep with my wife."

Hudler: "Hmmm. That is quite an offer. Is she attractive?"

McCrimmon: "No."

Hudler: "Does she know about this?"

McCrimmon: "No."

Hudler: "Does she have a penis?"

McCrimmon: "No."

Hudler: "You have a deal."

Jacket again on Sunday.

Go Wings.

Abdelkader's Jump

2010-11-23T04:35:00.003-05:00

Short post here expanding on this tweet, as I try to take up my own challenge to actually add content to this site and not just my Twitter feed. (You know, for Osrt.)

Many of us have taken note of the way Justin Abdelkader is turning into a bona fide shit-wrecking anvil on skates. He's a modern day Grind Liner for this crazy new millennium we're living in where Todd Bertuzzi is a team leading plus-11 and Jonathan Ericsson shrunk and regrew 9 1/2 feet in the last 18 months. I liked this line from Chris at NOSH:

"(Abdelkader's) become some crazy version of Maltby and Dallas Drake combined into one."

I'll also assume that Chris was referring to the "50 goals in Junior" version of Kirk Maltby, the one with the velvet hands who once scored on a 450 foot slapshot from atop one of those mini blimps that drops the "5 dollars off your next car wash" coupons (according to Mickey Redmond). Maybe Abs isn't quite to that level but he's certainly a descendant from that same annoyingly tenacious family tree.

Through 10 games, Abdelkader has 3 goals and 4 assists while only getting slightly less than 12 minutes per game. Coming back to the originally linked tweet: Spread that scoring out to a per-60 minute average and he's scoring at a higher rate than everybody in the league not named Crosby at even strength. Obviously 7 points in 10 games is a small sample to pull from, but the larger point is that he has already shown great improvement in an area where he was firmly planted among the league's worst in 2009-10. On top of that, he makes the other team notice him every shift, leading the Wings in hits per game and penalties drawn-per-60.

He gets put in situations that give him a better chance of succeeding, by facing easier competition than our top guys and having his limited minutes used carefully. But the same could be said about his 2009-10 season, and he still performed like a below average player. So this start has been encouraging to say the least. Abdelkader is obviously impressing Babcock by making the most of his time on ice and thus far avoiding the quagmire of the 12th man rotation. A giant step like this is only going to tighten Babs' pants even more.

You Aren't Supposed to be Able to do This

2010-11-22T00:19:00.003-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 5 - 4 CALGARY FLAMES

Wow. Look at how huge I made that video. Not changing it.

I love this sport.

Game #16 -- Red Wings vs. Wild

2010-11-20T03:57:00.001-05:00

MINNESOTA WILD 4 - 3 DETROIT RED WINGS (OT)

For whatever reason, I felt like doing this one liveblog style. So tonight's recap is timestamped and called as I saw it.

It's hard to not start every one of these Babcock bullets with "I love everything this man says", but it's just so true. The latest great quip from our falcon-faced leader came during the pregame, on line combinations: "As a coach, if you win every night, you're in control. If your a player and play good every night with your line mates, then you're in control and you get to play with those line mates. But if it doesn't go as good, then the coach is in control and he moves you around." I don't know. It's such a simple concept and not at all controversial or anything, but when it's Babcock saying it, it sounds like something read off of a stone tablet.

This reminds me: Am I the only one who watches the pregame shows even on DVR? Even if I'm getting home late and watching the game at like 4 am, it feels too weird to just zip right to the opening face off.

1ST PERIOD

20:00 -- Joe. Zay. Theodore. Man, my day just brightens up when this guy is in goal. He comes in with a 1-2-0 record, a mouthwatering 3.02 GAA, and a .909 saves %. Which translated across a season in which he only plays the Wings equates to a negative-7-32-0 record, a goals against average of Samuel L. Jackson saying, "This is some fucked up repugnant shit" and a saves percentage of this.

17:45 -- Speaking of those combinations: I know I'm not the only one that thinks, "Poor old Homer" whenever I see his goofy face not on the top line.

16:30 -- Another very good example for Babs to never contemplate splitting Hank and Pav up. Datsyuk left a drop pass for Nick coming down the slot and he just missed a goal, but the pass from Z to Pav from the boards on the left side was a thing of beauty. His head was up the whole way waiting for that play to develop.

15:38 -- Eric Nystrom darts for the net and ends up plowing through Jimmy Howard at about 75 mph, no penalty. Jimmy gives him a shove. Nystrom thanks Jimmy for bracing his fall with his doughy 1-pack abs.

13:15 -- The "NHL's best power play" belongs to the Minnesota Wild? How long has this been going on? And Cal Clutterbuck is leading the team in goals? Who is allowing this to happen? Jesus, I need Center Ice.

11:44 -- A screen by Nystrom and 13 other players helps Brent Burns to a goal. 1-0 Wild.

7:03 -- Minnesota is playing trap hockey with a 1 goal lead and 47 minutes to go in the game.

0:00 -- Rusty Salei was your 1st intermission interview. I'll sum it up:
- Keating: "How important is it to stay out of the penalty box against this team?"
- Salei: "Well it's very important to stay 5-on-5. But I also likes savings the money, with DirecTV's five months free televisions package."

2ND PERIOD

20:00 -- Legit laugh out loud moment from Ken Daniels, as he and Mick pimp the Lions game for this Sunday: "Hang with 'em everybody, come on," said Mick. Ken retorts, " 'Hanging' might be the operative term there." Ken Daniels, once again for the record, implied that the Detroit Lions are so bad that fans want to hang themselves.

18:35 -- I hang myself after Cal Clutterbuck banks in a goal to make it 2-0.

18:35 -- Mick somehow questions whether the goal was good, even though there is zero evidence that the puck went under the net, leading me to wonder if he's even watching the same game. Oh, whoops. He's actually watching a the 1951 No Helmets / Wood Sticks / Say 'No' to New Taxes Heritage Classic game taking place in his own head.

16:23 -- What the fuck is this ad in the corner of my TV? "Dr. Richard Santucci: Urologist", then a graphic of a doctor slowly pulling down his face mask and crossing his arms like he's trying to intimidate me? Am I actually seeing this? Because if there's one thing you need going into a urology exam, it's definitely the image of a guy with a scary voice saying, "YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT. I'M GONNA BE TOUCHING YOUR PENIS."

8:20 -- Wings fail to convert on ages of 5-on-3 time, still 2-0 Minnesota. It's 3 in the morning, I've been sick all week, and I'll willfully admit that I'm staring down the fast forward button on the DVR right now. It's tempting.

5:26 -- Describing this won't do it justice, so hopefully you saw it. Tomas Holmstrom skates to a lose puck along the half boards in the Minnesota end. A Wild player is trailing behind him. Then, as only Homer would do, he fakes a gigantic slap pass back to the blue line before blindly backhanding the puck into the corner (whereupon it was immediately intercepted and cleared, of course). Think about this. As if for one second the Wild player would think, "Yeah, he's totally going to rifle a slap shot at his own defenseman standing 15 feet away. I better cover this." I love Homer.

4:44 -- The Mule is playing frighteningly tentative.

1:00 -- Mick laments against The Trap. Well Mick, it's legal, and it's a good way to beat the Detroit Red Wings.

0:33 -- YES ... Darren Helm's first of the year (exclamation point). 2-1 Wild. More 4th line beautifulness, three guys forechecking below the goal line. Obviously a huge goal, coming with a half minute to go in the period. Great set up from Abdelkader, too ...man, does that guy look confident right now.

3RD PERIOD

17:43 -- TIE GAME ... Hello, 3rd period. The tentative Mule gets just the break he needs with a lucky goal deflected off of Greg Zanon. It must be said that the power play that this was scored on came from a laaaaaaaaaaaaame ass penalty call on Matt Cullen.

16:05 -- Todd Bertuzzi takes his first shot on goal in four weeks. Mitch Albom must be in attendance or something.

15:05 -- Patrick EAVES (three exclamation points). 3-2 Wings. I love this sonnuva bitch. It looked so ugly and barely crossed the line in the end, but they all count. Abby won the faceoff that led to this, getting him another assist (If he so much as looks at a goal the right way you can probably count on me commenting on it.)

10:24 -- Jonathan Ericsson saves a goal by himself on an open net. It's yet another giant step in the right direction for him. And that direction is directly upward as he tries to regain his 9'8" form from 2009.

2:44 -- Really strong move from Mule getting a takeaway behind the Wild net and creating a scoring chance. That was very encouraging.

1:23 -- ......And I didn't see that coming. Really didn't, not like sarcastic didn't. 3-3 game. Koivu caught a gift from Jimmy's right pad and buried it. Jimmy is sprawled on the ice in disgust. On comes Overtime.

OVERTIME

3:32 -- First whistle of OT. The first 1:28 was 100% Red Wings.

1:38 -- Wings look like they're playing 4-on-1 hockey.

0:41 -- Naturally, the Wild win.

Going to fucking bed.

Go Wings.

Game #15 -- Red Wings vs. Blues

2010-11-18T06:46:00.001-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 7 - 3 ST. LOUIS BLUES

Hey!
Over here!
I'm over HERE! See me?

Oh hey, I see you over there.

Whaddya think? I'm left-aligned!
It's different!

Yeah I see that. Stop shouting, please.

Oh, sorry.

It's okay.

I'm just excited, is all. I feel born again,
you know? I can't wait to speak my mind
and be all up on the left and stuff. Like just
sitting up on this left margin and being like,
"Today there was a hockey game and this
and that." I wish I had arms and legs so I
could do a cartwheel, I really do. I mean I
guess I can just say "cartwheel" and boom,
there it is, but, you know. Know what I'm
saying?

How in the fuck would I know
what you're saying.

Huh?

I'm Right alignment, you burgled turd.
Nobody uses me.
I am nothing. I am completely worthless.
I am the condom in Tomas Kopecky's wallet.

Well I'm sorry man, I wasn't trying to...
'Burgled turd'?

Yeah, like you're not even a "turd burglar".
You are the result of the turd burglaring.

Wow, that's pretty low.

You think you're something else. You're traditional,
you have values. You stand for something.
What the fuck am I? I'm right-shitting-alignment
is what I am. I don't get used for anything important.
Sure I'll jot down a name or a date or two.
Or when Ed Belfour does a line of coke
and types mindless number coding from right to left
in a Notepad document because he woke up naked on a
stack of Time magazines and thinks he can solve
the energy crisis. It's bullshit, man. I've got
legitimate stuff to say to0. But you and the Center
guy get all the attention.

Leave me out of this.

Whatever, you guys are dicks.

I've never seen this side of you.

I have never, ever been on this blog before.
You have literally never seen any side of me.

I was just trying to make conversation.

Go to hell.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Recap bullets:

Less than 20 seconds in: Jimmy inadvertently shoveled the puck right out in front of the crease, somehow lost track of it despite it moving slower than he does through a buffet line, and if not for Datsyuk's well-placed stick it would've been a very early 1-0 hole. Since I do these posts on the fly, I've marked down here, "19:40 1st period: not a good feeling about this." I hope I'm wrong, Future Me. (Additional note to future self: Use time machine to avoid heavy investment in trapper keepers. It may seem like the apex of portable organization, but trust me on this one. Although I guess I don't have to tell you to do this if a time machine already exists in your world. But since my current reality hasn't been changed ... oh God --

Drew Miller would score a goal by having Jaro Halak deflect the puck twice off his own stick and behind him into his own net.

Feeling exponentially better about Jimmy by the end of the 1st period. A full extension toe save kept the game 1-1 going into the intermission. At this point I wasn't feeling that great about my own physical condition, as just watching this save tore both my groins clean off the bone.

Chintzy but expected hooking call on Mule (gotta know by now that reaching like that is going to put you in the box more times than not) led to an all too easy looking power play goal. The absolutely never lethal Brad Winchester had a relatively easy goal from right on top of the crease. It was Winchester's first goal recorded at any level of organized ice hockey.

Patrik TURD Berglund. Oh Yeah. Yep.

Doesn't matter what the combination is. Helm/Abdelkader/Miller. Helm/Abdelkader/Eaves. Abdelkader/Murph/Murph's lamp shade. They're all fun to watch. Wings 2nd goal: Loved seeing all three 4th liners drive the Blues D back into Halak, then immediately post up two guys at the crease for instant traffic. They're presence bought Raf enough space to place a perfect shot-pass to Abby's stick for the goal.

Credit Crafty Raf again for a great keep-in on Dan Cleary's goal. Cleary's sixth straight game with a goal. Okay fine, he's good looking.

Too many D-zone lapses. Way too many. My thought after two periods (tied at 3): If not for two lucky deflections and a phenomenal toe save from Jimmy, this isn't even a game.

Another really solid night from Big E. Hope people are taking notice.

Completely out of nowhere: Modano to Cleary, then Vintage Hank Zetterberg, then a Brad Stuart power play goal (No seriously), then a Homer. It was 3-3, and the Blues were pressing hard. The Wings somehow didn't look prepared for how heavily they were forechecking. Lack of urgency. This was the Blues game to win, not to lose by four goals.

... In other words -- sounds like we have something special here.

Few things better than an unraveling Blues team with an inferiority complex at the end of a game.

Wild on Friday.

Go Wings.

Math

2010-11-16T13:30:00.005-05:00

::UPDATE:: (2:10 PM) It has been brought to my attention via Twitter that the center alignment of our posts is not popular. Because I am a man of ALL the people, not just the ones with the Twitter, please share your vote for left alignment or center alignment in the comments. :::

Jiri Hudler, on his goal total: "One is better than zero." Indeed it is, Huds.

Weird times, we live in. On November 16, 2010, the day that we're not supposed to say goodbye to the Chief, (Smooth sailing, bitch), the most divisive issue wedging its way between the Red Wing faithful is not Todd Bertuzzi. He's not even 2nd on that list (Osgood), or 3rd (Ericsson; that is, if there are any of you out there -- *raises hand* -- who don't entirely hate him), or 4th (Aftermath of Prodano/Nodano). Bert doesn't even make the top 5 anymore, because you have to put "Dan Cleary's attractiveness" somewhere on that list. As a happily girlfriended man I'm not being petty here, I'm just genuinely confused: You women find DAN CLEARY to be an attractive dude? What is it? His Mr. Magoo-like penchant for catastrophe? The creepy "All I need is 45 seconds and a windowless van" stare? Todd Bertuzzi is so un-divisive now that I just used his name three times in a paragraph without even thinking. A deeper examination and possible apology post is coming in the near future.

#1, without question, is Jiri. You love him or hate him. As cliched as that sounds, it is fact. You either love what he brings to the table or you want to see him float slowly on a balloon raft straight into the Sun.

I've made no attempt to hide that I really like the guy. And more than Huds, I like and trust what Mike Babcock thinks. More from that first link:

While talking to reporters, one of whom pointed out Hudler had responded well to Babcock's challenge Friday, Babcock said: "So I better challenge him again today?" Seeing Hudler siting nearby, Babcock raised his voice and called over, "Huds, they're worried that I didn't get after you today. You're going to be all right, aren't you?"

Told that wasn't quite the point, Babcock smiled.

"No, I know what you're saying," he said. "But most of these guys are all the same -- they're proud guys, they want to do well. In my four years as head coach, I've never met one player that didn't want to please. Some didn't know how, and you try to help them with it, and some didn't want to dig in hard enough. Huds has been here before; he knows how hard you've got to work. And I think it's a surprise for him, when you go and you leave the best league in the world for a year, coming back and playing in it every day is hard."

Babs and Ken Holland both have this guy's back. It would be HIGHLY hypocritical of me to question your undying devotion to those two when I was so anti-Bertuzzi last year that I wrote this -- and by the end, actually half-believed it. You can question their judgment all you want, it's what we do as sports fans. It's a rite of winter, or something.

I, however, have just about given up on doing that. Not only do I like Huds as a locker room/chemistry guy, he actually has a track record of producing points. Before fleeing to Russia, he was doing that at a higher per-minute clip than most players in the entire league. As Babs said, playing a year of hockey with the difficulty level set to Rookie and then coming back to the NHL is tough, and it's really not that unbelievable that Huds is off to such a slow start. But, yes, there's the KHL thing; there will always be a portion of Wings fans who will root for his relegation to the press box or outright removal because he didn't cut his paycheck in half to play for your life-long favorite team. And where you see a guy not trying, I see a guy trying to do too much, a guy thinking too much and a guy who desperately wants to fit into the 12-man Red Wings forward puzzle again. You're entitled to have your perspective and I won't judge you for it, so long as you let me be happy cheering Happy. I like him. I like his game, I like his goofiness, and most of all, I like his weird egg-shaped head.

Game #14 -- Red Wings vs. Oilers

2010-11-11T23:01:00.000-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 6 - 2 EDMONTON OILERS

While against one of the worst teams in the league, this was a win that brought out a lot of good in the Wings. Huds looked somewhat alive for the first time this year, and I don't think it was a coincidence that he reunited his partnership with Flip. Val Filppula might be the only non-hooker on this planet that can hold Jiri's attention for more than four seconds. It's a good thing when they're on the ice together.

Babs pushes all the right buttons. Mule got his 100th goal, Cleary was a monster, the Eurotriplets each got points again. This was a rare stress-free, flat out fun game to watch.

Recap bullets:

If I didn't watch hockey, I would think that Zack Stortini is a mediocre Olive Garden dinner special. Actually, I still sort of do.

Poor Larry Murphy. He spent all day pronouncing "Magnus Paajarvi" in his room and still fucked it up on live TV.

Things I have an inexplicable love for: 1) Any movie in which somebody crawls through a vent; 2) Ham (actually that's pretty explainable. Ham is so salty and amazing and delicious that if there was a sudden glitch in the universe that made it so we had to have sex with pigs in order to eat the food products that they turn int.... on second thought, I can't in good conscience finish this sentence); 3) and saucer passes. I love seeing an awesome saucer pass, which is what Hudler delivered to Filppula to open the scoring. Just perfect. Also, definitely don't have sex with pigs.

Bertuzzi turns his stick around to assist Cleary's 2nd goal. I have never seen anybody do that before, let alone see it work. He was skating into the corner, looked behind him to assess where the defender and Cleary were, turned the stick around and, despite a deflection, got the puck to Cleary's stick for the goal.

Referees let a handful of would-be Edmonton penalties go because they felt sorry for them. I almost genuinely believe that. First Wings power play came with 4:36 to play in the 2nd period. Of course they scored on it. It was their only power play of the game.

FSD showed a clip of Taylor hall with a full beard at 18. I looked in the mirror to check how my homemade beard of glued-on dog hair looked, gave myself the finger guns and then burst into tears.

We also got a clip of Dino Ciccarelli's Hall of Fame induction speech. As my formative years as a Wings fan began in the early 90's, he was one of the first sports stars that I truly admired. My favorite Dino moment: His role as Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump.

And finally: If you saw the game, you saw the military tribute videos, in which a number of players said thank you to the veterans. Petrella summed it up best: "The thank you’s that the American Red Wings did to the troops (while very classy, touching, and deserved) are exactly why you’re instructed not to stare into the camera. I’m sure they were reading from a teleprompter, which is often directly in front of the lens, but it’s creepy. Next time you watch the news or see another type of interview, notice how they look just off of the camera (i.e. to it’s left or right). That’s because it’s a scientific fact that someone staring through a camera and into your soul scares the living shit out of people."

Sadly, FSD cut out the clip from Homer who, apparently lost on what "Veterans Day" means, thanked the local men and women who helped save the life of his cat, Shawn Purr.

Go Wings

Robert Tychkowski, You Have the Floor

2010-11-11T00:31:00.000-05:00

Edmonton Sun:

"Welcome to Detroit, where the forecast, as always, is muggy, with a chance of murder.

When you’re trying to breathe a little life back into your year, this is not the place to visit. And not just because they use more white chalk at crime scenes than they ever did in the schools."

Bob's email is robert.tychkowski@sunmedia.ca. I implore you to take 30 seconds and say hi to him today.

Game #13 -- Red Wings vs. Coyotes

2010-11-09T00:25:00.000-05:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 3 - 2 PHOENIX COYOTES (OT)

Look at this dumbass. You look at this picture for more than a minute straight and you can't not laugh. You start picturing him saying little phrases. Then you picture him doing a little jig. Before long you start to question the meaning of your own existence. And once you reach that point, you wonder what life could've been like for Boner Stabone on Growing Pains had he just met a nice country girl who accepted him for his quirks and appreciated how he always had the toilet paper rolls facing the correct way. Long story short I'm going to have "Who Let the Dogs Out" stuck in my head for the next four days.

The Wings are iffy the first game after a road trip. They don't play well on Versus under the Def Leppard Curse principle. And this being the 4th game in 6 nights against a team that always plays a tough game, I'll admit it -- I was prepared to be disappointed. Not expecting, just prepared. And still pouting about the Lions game.

They played a little flat, yet still pulled out two points. I was very pleasantly surprised.

Took less than two minutes for Rafalski to get swinging again. Versus color guy Archie Bunker said that that Raf missed his target on his shot from the point; but if you've seen more than two games at JLA you know damn well that that shot was intentionally wide, around the traffic, and it left Dan Cleary with an alley oop dunk of a goal on the other side.

Did you hear Dave Strader haplessly doing that ad for the T.Ocho show? "/reading/It's the T.Ocho show. If you think you've seen it all, you ain't seen nothin' yet. And for the record, I would rather be prison raped by a guy with a cactus dick than read that again."

I used to think that there was nothing more useless than in-game interviews, and then Mike Babcock said "Ass" on live TV. Bob Harwood had the same look on his face as someone locked in Jiri Hudler's sex dungeon.

Know what I'm tired of? Montel Williams' "Could you use an extra thousand dollars?" nonsense. This fool is on every channel with his unexposed neck flaunting his money in my face.

FUCK MONTEL WILLIAMS

Nice bounce-back for Jimmy, stopping 29 of 31. Really liked Salei, Fil, and Abdelkader. Jiri needs a goal so bad I'd willingly throw down 20 bucks to buy him one.

Nick only had 0:47 of penalty kill time. For what it's worth, he's a better penalty killer on the bench than Ericsson is on the ice.

I'm loving the schedule for the rest of this month. The next five are home against the Oilers, Avs, Blues (can't wait, seriously), Wild and Flames, then Atlanta and a home-and-home with Columbus. No back to backs, either. There are plenty of points to pick up in November.

Oilers on Thursday, back on FSD.

Go Wings.

Game #12 -- Red Wings at Canucks

2010-11-07T00:45:00.000-04:00

VANCOUVER CANUCKS 6 - 4 DETROIT RED WINGS

That's actually Anne Heche being eaten by a guy in a whale costume. Bullets:

The Canucks sported their 40th anniversary throwback jerseys, giving us three out of three Canadian games with great retro sweaters. My only gripe is that there were no last names on them; whenever the Sedins were on the ice, I couldn't tell who was the ambiguously gay one.

Ken Daniels, we know that you know that WE know you're saying "Livonia native Ryan Kesler" every single time. We're on to you. As for Mick, I was really getting the sense that he was giving himself a boner every time he said "Alain Vigneault". He was pronouncing the living shit out of that name.

Canucks goal at the end of the 1st: Uncharacteristic of the Pav/Hank line to give up a goal like this, where they get beaten down the ice after shoddy coverage at center ice. Because it was the Sedins, the play ended up developing too quickly for Ericsson to get back (You've got to give that poor guy at least 10 seconds to uncross his eyes after skating from one end to the other.)

The Wings responded with two goals in the first five minutes of the 2nd period. An ugly goal from Dan Cleary's hip (Abdelkader involved, again), and Nik Kronwall. Strange: Kronner got his 3rd goal of the season (and then his 4th .... by God, what a shot) before recording his first assist. He has zero assists!

Mikael Samuelsson scored. Of course Mikael Samuelsson scored.

Johnny got his first of the season, per his very odd belief of only scoring goals outside of the United States. Nope, no reason for you to look that up. He has definitely only scored goals in Canada and Sweden. And it's weird.

I missed what really happened on the 3rd Canuck goal. My drink was spiked with asp venom and I hallucinated Datsyuk turning the puck over and Manny Malhotra scoring a short handed goal. No don't get up, I'm okay.

Mule went from red hot to room temperature rather quickly, and I'm wondering what his actual health status is. I hate perpetually worrying about his health status.

Somewhat better night from Huds. Seemed to do a lot less thinking and moved his legs more, dug some pucks out from along the boards.

The 3rd period of a back-to-back: four penalties and 23 shots given up. With six minutes to play in the 2nd period, Vancouver had 8 shots.

No truth to the rumor that Michigan's Greg Robinson coached the Wings defense tonight. (That rumor started by me.)

After the Canucks scored their 5th goal of the game, Brent sent me this: "Should I turn that Kron picture 90 degrees and have a killer whale butt fucking the shit out of him?"

Well, it was just one game, and all that cliched stuff. Plus, Vancouver is really good. My Pointless Predictions had us facing them in the conference finals in May, so that must be true.

Monday against the Coyotes, back at the Joe. Go Wings.

Game #11 -- Red Wings at Oilers

2010-11-06T03:50:00.000-04:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 3 - 1 EDMONTON OILERS

Boom, dinner's done.

I'm almost scared to feel this good about a hockey team on November 6th. It's still so unbearably early. Our three best skaters each have 13 points in 11 games played, and they're looking electric. Our ace goalie has a 1.82 GAA and hasn't lost a non-gimmick game this year. Now that Abdelkader has provided a spark to the former Black Hole line, everything is trending upward (with the exception of Jiri Hudler, who only trends upward after feeling a tongue on his back.) This has been a lot of fun to watch so far.

Game recap:

Nikolai Khabibulin: Surprisingly good game from the old Russian, stopping 28 of 30 shots, including a ridiculous one with his glove from his back in the 2nd period. Coming into this game he sported a 3.45 GAA, a .897 Save percentage, and a league-high .20 blood alcohol content.

How weird is it hearing Mickey Redmond's voice on this western Canada road trip? Usually it's Larry Murphy accompanying Ken Daniels anytime the Wings travel west (or as Chris Pronger calls it, "backwards through time"). But for whatever reason that I apparently have no desire to look up, we've been given more Mick. My theory is that he was finally convinced that they wouldn't be traveling by railroad, which of course Mick hates because it was built by Chinese people.

Again it was Jiri Hudler's two worst enemies that created the first goal. Modano and what's left of his open ice speed, plus Abdelkader and his penchant for scoring dirty, ugly goals. I present a fairly large assumption though -- that Jiri is capable of having enemies, or hating people. I actually don't know if it's possible. I have it on good authority that Jiri has in fact never hated or even remotely disliked another human being. However, he is saving up all of his hate for the guy who inevitably cancels Lopez Tonight.

Weird sequence surrounding the Oilers' first goal. Datyuk gets hit by Gilbert Brule, and then Ericsson decides that he and Brule are going to fight. I don't know if Gilbert was aware of this, but it happened nonetheless. Brule got a chance to realize what was going on when the linesman held down Johnny's arms in a poor attempt to break up the fight, resulting in three or four flush punches to Johnny's beautiful face. This resulted in the linesman catching a bloody lip, the Wings going down a man and then the Oilers tying the game on a Taylor Hall goal. The "weird" part that I alluded to was obviously Datsyuk getting hit and nothing else I said after that. I mean that never happens.

Whether you think the Ericsson penalty was frivolous or not, there isn't much argument over Zack Stortini's a few minutes later. Wing power play, brilliant little pass from Dan Cleary with his back to the goaltender and we're back on top with a 2-1 lead.

I don't remember specifically what caused this, but I have here in my notes, "14:49 3rd period ..... Mrs. Tyler Datsyukerberg" and an MS Paint drawing of me, Pavel and Hank riding a golden unicorn with Kris Draper's beard.

Very eerie how this game played out nearly identically to the Calgary game. Low scoring, both goalies played well but Jimmy was just a tad better, and despite the game being 2-1 it never really felt in doubt. I feel so happy, and so spoiled, that this is the opposite of what we were facing 12 months ago.

Go Wings

Game #10 -- Red Wings at Flames

2010-11-04T00:50:00.001-04:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 2 - 1 CALGARY FLAMES

Justin Abdelkader is a dish best served anywhere but a press box. To the recap bullets:

Am I the only one who likes the Flames throwback uniforms? Oh, okay. Literally the only one. I'll sit back down.

Jimmy made a stellar left pad save on the Calgary's 2nd power play, keeping the score tied at zero early on. Does Chris Osgood make that save? For the love of God I am kidding, don't answer that. Of course he doesn't.

I have been completely beaten to death by the continuous Sam Bernstein commercials. Being that I also watch Tigers and Pistons games on FSD, I'm as familiar with Sam Bernstein as Larry Murphy is with Jack Daniels. They've even roped in Mickey Redmond this year and, judging by his hair, convinced him that he was doing a Mad Men cameo. Then of course there's the Bernstein intermission reports from the Call Sam Studios, as John Keating and Murph sit at a desk made of the bones and tears from the Bernsteins of yore. My biggest fear now is blacking out after a horrible car accident and waking up in a hospital to Richard Bernstein feeling my face. It's all a bit overkill.

Mule for boarding: the right call. Whether the dude turns into him, doesn't, or whatever, it's an unnecessary and potentially dangerous play.

Nick Lidstrom is so good, he doesn't even need to perform an actual hook on another player to get called for hooking. For real, look up "talent" in the dictionary right now. It's a picture of Nick Lidstrom not hooking someone.

Man oh man, loved that Modano goal. You could see the back of his jersey trying with all its might to flap up in the wind when he swooped in on that puck and raced down wing.

Wings killed off a 4 minute penalty late in the 3rd period. The weirdest part was not feeling worried at all at the time of the penalty, and even thinking, "This feels like a gigantic 1-goal lead" with two minutes remaining. You're not supposed to be thinking that when your sadistically attached to a hockey team, but that's how safe I feel with THAT penalty kill rolling and THAT goalie in net.

Modano and Abdelkader got goals for the Wings. Immediately after the game, Jiri Hudler emailed Mike Babcock this with the subject, "HAHA NO TAKE BACKS". Babcock stared blankly at his screen and then opened up yet another lame forward from Jim Devellano.

Back at it Friday night in Edmonton.

Go Wings.

Groins 'n Such

2010-11-01T20:13:00.001-04:00

"Everything in this room right now is made of wood. (Looks down.) Everything."

David Goricki reports that Ozzie left practice early after injuring himself in a non-America's Funniest Home Videos type of groin accident. Luckily, Jimmy is ready to go and will start Wednesday night.

Something called a "Doug Janik" was returned to Grand Rapids today as Johnny E is slated to return and pair up with Lidstrom. I have never heard of this Doug Janik. I hope the city of Grand Rapids is gracious enough to give us some sort of store credit for it.

Khan says that Abdelkader will stay in the lineup, which in my unexpert opinion means that Hudler is staying in his room for at least one more game. I don't know what happens from here. You can't mess with the top two units while they're excelling, and Babcock loves his penalty killers, Helm, Eaves and Miller. I don't think Modano is getting scratched less than a month into the season after Babs and Holland spent all that money on hotdogs at Comerica Park. You know that Babs also loves him some Abdelkader, too.

13 forwards and 12 spots. I mean couldn't one of these guys just get injured already and make the decisions easier? (That last line brought to you by the Drew Sharp School of Makeyourreadershateyouology.)

Game #9 -- Red Wings vs. Predatords

2010-10-31T11:20:00.001-04:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 5 - 2 NASHVILLE PREDATORS

I'm not an angry person. Probably the most harmless, least threatening person you could meet in real life. Except when one of two things happen:

#1) A holding penalty after converting a big 3rd down.

#2) When I write a long post and it gets erased.

Blogger and my computer teamed up to take a big #2 this morning. I'm walking away now.

Happy Halloween.

Game #8 -- Red Wings vs. Coyotes

2010-10-29T02:10:00.000-04:00

PHOENIX COYOTES 4 - 2 DETROIT RED WINGS

Yak Kindl was already off to a fine start with an early penalty. It continued when Radim Vrbata got him turned the wrong way and burned by him for a breakaway goal to open the scoring. Get out the salt and pepper, because this guy needs some seasoning. /high fives Bill Engval cardboard cutout with taped-on arm extension specifically made for celebrating bad jokes/

A terrible penalty by Mike Modano, giving the Coyotes their 2nd power play. Then...

... The puck comes to Keith Yandle, and Osgood goes to his knees. He then pens an eloquent cursive letter to Yandle entitled, "I Want You to Shoot Over My Left Shoulder. That's My Left, Your Right. I Don't Want There to be any Confusion Here, so if You Would Like, I Can Place a Humorously Over-sized Neon Sign Over the Goal, Pointing You in the Vicinity of Where I Want You to Shoot. I Can't Express How Sincere This Entire Letter is. If You Don't Score, I Will Consider it a Personal Insult." Frankly I thought the title was obnoxiously long, but I dropped Journalism in college, so what do I know.

Lauri (haha) Korpikoski scores a short handed goal to make it 3-0, 12 minutes in, from about 50 feet out. I laughed. I really did. Then I stopped laughing when I realized, "Fantastic. Now the Internet doesn't exist anymore because Wings fans just set it on fire."*

* I like reading the opinions of actual netminders on goals like this. Like a George Malik, or Chris at NOHS. In the past I've seen goals that looked like they should've been stopped, but it's been stressed to me that deflections really fuck with the timing and anticipation of a goaltender. In this case -- without reading anything before posting this -- I don't understand how this wasn't 100% on Ozzie. Shouldn't an NHL goalie be able to adjust when it's from that far out?

I'm very much much opposed to being a part of the crowd of people at games who yell, "SHHOOOOOOOOOOT!" (although I have done that .... go to hell), but I have to draw the line at Datsyuk making a killer move into the slot and dropping the puck to Doug Janik. To Doug Janik. The only way I can understand Pav doing this was if he thought that big #37 pinching in was actually Mikael Samuelsson. In which case the only yelling in the building would be Sammy shouting "WHERE IS THE CANDY CORN I WAS PROMISED?"

I was fast forwarding through the 2nd intermission but it did appear that Mick was performing some sort of ventriloquist routine.

You know that move Helm does, where he banks a pass to himself and then goes around his defender? That has to be his signature move, right? Does anybody else have that one claimed that I'm blanking on? He does that twice a game, minimum. And somehow it always works. He either draws a penalty or gets around the guy.

I hope everybody saw the the clip of #44 talking about how he tried to start playing guitar. If you didn't see it, it was that his instructor told him his fingers were too big, so Bert doesn't play guitar now. The clip was about how he doesn't play the guitar. That was literally the most pointless story I have ever heard in my entire life. I've heard better stories from the weirdos on Jeopardy who do the dumb biography segment after the first commercial break. And every one of those stories is something unfathomably mundane like how the person "can't eat cheese after 5 pm."

The Holmstrom goal, the Wings' second of the game, was a well-earned effort from all three forwards on that line. But it also summed up the game. The Coyotes gave the puck away, and the Wings needed about 5 or 6 point-blank shots to get by the excellent Ilya Bryzgalov. Phoenix got their goals on a breakaway and two stoppable shots, then were solid enough the rest of the way to a W.

How strange does this look?:

Means nothing on October 29, but still.

Go Wings.

The Danger Zone

2010-10-25T16:07:00.000-04:00

Writing Saturday's post within an hour of the game ending, and having only seen the Kronwall/Selanne hit as it happened live, I made no mention of the game's biggest talking point.

Also, at that time I had not heard about Selanne or Randy Carlyle's comments, which were equally talk-worthy. Selanne said, "That guy is dangerous out there," and I assume with a little bit of prodding from Corey Perry, added,"One of these days somebody's going to get him." Here is a re-enactment:

When asked about those comments -- and that weird bite that Selanne has apparently started punctuating his sentences with -- Mike Babcock said, "Probably had some peanut butter in his mouth. And I think it was a hockey play. I think one of the comments was, 'Kronner is dangerous.’ He is. That’s why we like him.”

First of all, of the 150 greatest quotes in Detroit Red Wings history, I think Babs has about 139 of them. He's the opposite of almost every hockey quote you can find; he's smart, sharp, and wickedly sarcastic. I'll be entirely disappointed if he doesn't come out with an auto-biography the nanosecond he retires.

More importantly (and, sadly, more seriously .... dammit), I spent most the night and early morning after the game contemplating the legality, and, probably more so, the humanity of it all. I know, right? 2010 sucks. It isn't possible for one of these collisions to occur -- in any contact sport -- in today's world without everybody discussing and analyzing the incident from every conceivable angle. Additionally, I can't be the only one who upon hearing "conceivable angle" thinks about somebody having intercourse with a camera.

I mean, it would almost be strange nowadays for somebody to have a Red Wings blog + enough free time + be definitely, no doubt about it, for sure un-retired and not write about this situation. I'm asking honestly here: was it even close to being like this 15 years ago? Shit... 5 years ago? I seriously don't remember. When Scott Stevens nearly murdered Slava Kozlov in the 1995 Cup Finals, I only remember the hit itself, as well as feeling for the first time in my life, "That was incredibly disturbing. I'd like to die now." That sort of thing was applauded, and the biggest takeaway was "Koz needs to have his head up next time," instead of the now routine exploration of everything under the Violence In Sports umbrella.

And I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. It's probably a good idea to think critically about high speed head-on collisions between two human beings. In the case of this open ice hit, what kept running through my mind was the justification of it, and whether or not any of it makes any logical sense. From most of the Wings fans, you see the discussions of the "legal hit" checklist: feet on ground? Check. Shoulder? Check. Avoided whatever charging is? (Usually said with a shoulder shrug): Uh, check, probably. So we're all good, right? Selanne was turned into sawdust but there's nothing to argue about because Kronner's skates were on the ground. He shouldered him, and Teemu should have had his head up knowing Nik Kronwall was standing on the blue line.

Doesn't that seem a little odd, though? If Kronner's skates were a mere inch off the ground, the NHL rule book would deem that as charging and he'd be completely vilified. (For something that actually hurts opponents less, J.J. posted earlier today.) But if he's on the ground at the point of impact, only one inch lower, regardless if he's propelling himself upward in a leaping motion, he's absolved from any criticism? Am I the only one that finds that logic a little flawed?

I understand that the nature of the rule is to prevent players from doing stuff like this, as to not completely turn the sport into the wrestling. But the way we as fans argue this stuff is getting stranger and stranger to me. "Your guy did A, B and C so therefore he's a villainous little bitch who can't play by the rules. But I mean -- if he you tweak it just slightly and he did D, E and F and our guy was summarily destroyed anyway, then we have no argument." That's how every Internet fight reads to me now. We're not talking about people getting outraged over Kronwall swinging his stick like a baseball bat into Selanne's face; we're talking about a very minute difference in the placement of his skates.

And as for Selanne's view on the hit.... I want to make clear that I liked Teemu before this game and I'll like him after; one of my biggest pet peeves about fans is taking one comment from a guy and making a blanket judgment of him for the rest of eternity. So I'm not going to pile on too much for what he said. However, threatening Kronner with that "he's going to get his" before even looking at a replay is not good at all. He claimed he felt elbow when in reality it was nothing but a shoulder. He was pissed and frustrated from losing, being shellacked in open ice and probably the realization that he's playing this season in vein on a bad team -- and now his comments have thrown even more fuel on the fire. It's obviously not out of the realm of possibility that a Duck will try to get retribution for this the next time these teams meet while crossing the line in doing so.

I don't have answers, and I barely even have functioning opinions for that matter, on what needs to change. I'm trying to talk it all out, and admittedly, I'm very confused on what to think. The line between legal and dirty seems so incredibly thin to me, when the results are largely the same. Head trauma is head trauma. The only way to justify it, seemingly, is to say that this is what these guys signed up for. That the brunt of the rules have been in place for generations so they know what they're getting themselves into. That it's their risk.

In the meantime I'll try to form my less-than-concrete opinions of what is clean or dirty on the shoddy protection of the NHL law, which isn't exactly great at setting precedents. So it's likely that I'll be sorting this out for a long while.

Game #7 -- Red Wings vs. Ducks

2010-10-24T00:02:00.001-04:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 5 - 4 ANAHEIM DUCKS

Corey Perry pimping his mom? Sure. Corey Perry pimping his mom.

In brief...

Man, isn't EVERY Game 7 against the Ducks just awesome?

Nick Lidstrom cannot be a 42 year old 40 year old like Larry Murphy says. To look at him, you'd say he's only a 28 year old 35 year old. His 3 assists give him a line of 1-7-8 on the year already. Compared to the start Lids had last year it's as if he has been born again, like a 0 year old 0 year old.

McElhinney gave up 5 goals in a loss and was the 3rd star of the game. Has this ever happened in a game that didn't take place in 1984?

Modano, Hudler ... that's for another day. I started writing a paragraph about them and it just collapsed into itself like a dying star.

Pavel Datsyuk is definitively the best player on the ice 99.9 % of his shifts. I can't imagine how badass this feels. In an attempt to replicate this feeling, I'm eating a cold Pop Tart and pretending like it tastes just as good as a toasted one. If you were sitting next to me you wouldn't be able to tell at all that I like it considerably less. It's crazy.

Wings don't play again until December of 2015. They'll be taking on the Saskatchewan Predayotes.

5-1-1. And 8-0.

Go Teams I Root For.

Game #6 -- Red Wings vs. Flames

2010-10-21T11:08:00.000-04:00

DETROIT RED WINGS 4 - 2 CALGARY FLAMES

Scoreboard, bitch.

Hi there old friends, and creepy-assed Jay Bouwmeester with the "I saw you touching my ass -- and I didn't tell you to stop" face. Glad you found the place OK.

I realized that it was pointless to not be writing recaps when I would just make the same stupid comments on Twitter. "This is the exact same thing," I said to myself, "only I'm punishing myself with the 140 character limit and destroying any semblance of an attention span that I once had." The lesson: Twitter ruins everything. Also, your "...or I'll kill you" threats had no impact whatsoever. (Except for you, Herm. Not that I felt seriously threatened, but I really didn't want the only South American that we know to be a murderer. I find it heroic that you are from there and are not a ruthless cocaine drug lord.)

Thoughts on the game:

"It's like a pick in basketball..." In discussing Kindl's 1st period interference penalty, Mickey Redmond incorrectly compares something about The New NHL to another sport for the 1,000th time. The game was then stopped momentarily as Mick was presented with the inaugural Ed Olczyk Award.

Jimmy kept the Wings afloat in the first 10 minutes with 4 or 5 big saves. The biggest save came after Stuart and Hank teamed up for an especially vomity turnover, which Jimmy cleaned up with a snow angel.

Flames first goal: Mikael Backlund was, let's say, altogether ignored. Because the Wings usually play a sound defensive game, I can only assume that Backlund was left alone because of a genital herpes scare. Understandable. But then he scores the 2nd Flames goal too? Come on, you've got to man up with this stuff eventually. I mean, it's not like herpes have ever scared off Doug Janik before.

Hank got on the scoreboard thanks largely to Pav's pass-and-movement. Datsyuk pushed the Flames' D back and then delivered a typical, perfect backhand pass to Hank's stick for the one-timer.

Great to see Kenneth Rucker, or "Orange hat guy", given a tribute at the Joe, this the first home game after his death. A season ticket holder since 1972, they draped his empty seat in an orange hat and will leave it there for the rest of the season. (I'm legally required by Internet law to place "Classy" at the end of this paragraph.)

Wings second goal: Drew Miller made a really good effort to draw a penalty on Steve Staios. Then on the power play, Datsyuk thwarted the Flames curious strategy of placing him in a phone booth and set up Lidstrom for a blue line bomb.

This pretty much sums up my feelings on Miikka Kiprusoff.

The Mule didn't punch Kipper in the face, but he sure did a nice job
banking a shot off of it and into the net for his 4th goal of the season.

Larry Murphy: "You wouldn't know (Nick Lidstrom) is 42 years old." You're right, Murph. I didn't know that 40 year-old Nick Lidstrom was 42 years old.

I've come to the conclusion that Nik Kronwall enjoys blindly giving opponents the puck in front of his own net. If he enjoyed it any more, he'd have to cut a hole out in the crotch of his pants.

Employee #44 is killing it. Did you see that assassin's bullet of shot he made to clinch the game? It was deadly accurate. He's really got that killer instinct working. He's been, 1997 version of you would say, The Bomb. Just dial 44 for murder. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen where Todd Bertuzzi is slaughtering humans. Wait don't leave, I have like 12 more of these --

And finally: You probably saw the interview midway through the Chicago game last week where Jiri Hudler confessed that, while he missed a lot of things about the NHL, it was Ozzie that he missed the most. I didn't feel like FSD did a good enough job of playing up that ~~completely fucking adorable~~ revelation, so I fixed it:

Go Wings.

TTD Resumes Regular Posting on Friday

2010-10-19T17:05:00.000-04:00

Taking a Break

2010-09-09T15:18:00.000-04:00

Here's the typical cycle of our blog since the Sharks knocked the Wings out of the playoffs:

1) We post something. In general, the post has zero relevance to anything current, and sometimes isn't even about hockey. I'm not saying that's bad. In fact, that's sort of our thing, I guess.

2) Then we don't post anything for a few weeks. During that time, we get a few emails and comments nudging us awake. I stress "few"; ain't like we mainstream. Still reppin' those working class dial-up Internet-ers. Always hood. (I like to think of Blogspot as the East Detroit of blog domains. Enjoy your new roach-free digs, Production Line.)

3) Once I feel guilty enough (because, after all, I really enjoy writing .... when I don't write for a while, I feel like I've done myself some strange disservice ..... whatever, I'm weird) I post something else.

The last part has weighed on my mind a little bit and has made me slow down lately. I don't have the same desire to do this as when I started, and I don't want to be half-assing it. So I'm going to take an indefinite break until I get it back. This is by no means a retirement, and isn't a goodbye. But rather than continue to ignore the blog for weeks at a time, I wanted to give this heads up before any "post something or I'll kill you" comments start showing up again.

There's no timetable for a return. I appreciate the pretend friendships that I've formed through this site and it is for that reason that I'm not going Brett Favre on you. This isn't a permanent farewell only to change my mind a month later. This is just a "see you later".

So, see you later, everyone.

2001 Michigan State vs. Michigan Football Game -- The Liveblog

2010-09-02T03:01:00.000-04:00

This being a hockey blog, and I being a Michigan State grad, the 2001 MSU\UofM game that would most logically appear here would be The Cold War. To that I say, "Suck it, I don't own that game."

You can find more Classic Liveblog posts by following the "Liveblog" label at the bottom of this post. You can find actual hockey content at ..... Oh who am I kidding, you probably just started your own Wings blog 15 minutes ago.

******

To usher in the 2010 college football season, I bring to you a live account of one of the most exciting and divisive games in our great state's history.

As Michigan State football fans, we haven't had all that much to cheer about over the last two decades, especially when it comes to battles with our arch nemesis. The 90s were largely a train wreck (I still see Charles Woodson's 1997 interception burned into my memory, as he borrowed Carl Lewis' legs and Rick James' cocaine to jump 25 feet into the air. Still the greatest catch I've ever seen); the 2002 game was total manslaughter; Chris Perry's unfathomable 51 carries in 2003 sucked the life out of me completely (and probably Perry's pro career); 2004 didn't happen because that's what my dad tells me -- despite what YouTube may have you believing. Same goes for '05 and '07.

But this contest -- simply known as "The Clock Game" -- was the diamond in the turd-filled rough. Did the clock hit zero before the ball was spiked? Was this an obvious case of "home timekeeper advantage"? Maybe perhaps sorta kinda. Regardless, it gave Spartan fans the bragging rights to the greatest game in this rivalry's history (Because 2004 never happened, you see). It was doubly great because not only was the game one for the ages, but it made Michigan fans whine to an extent that they never have before or since. To this day you can go up to a UM fan with a ticking clock and they will go ape shit like Captain Hook.

1ST QUARTER

15:00 -- Michigan State takes the field first, led by the embattled Jeff Smoker. Smoker was notoriously kicked off the team for the final five games of the following season due to "substance abuse". His #1 passing target, the great Charles Rogers, did three months of jail time this year over a DUI, had to give back millions of dollars to the Detroit Lions after flaming out in the pros, fathered multiple children before graduating high school, and smokes what I'm guessing to be about a half pound of weed every day. So yeah, our team in a nutshell.

14:00 -- The drive starts with three solid runs from MSU's mega-running back, the monstrous T.J. Duckett. At 6'2" / 250 lbs, Duckett was one of my all-time favorite Michigan State athletes. I feel like I can really relate to a guy who probably ate over 500 Jersey Giant sandwiches during his time in East Lansing. Ignoring the whole "I'm white/he's black" thing, we're pretty much twins.

12:50 -- Rogers catches a pass over the middle and is absolutely crushed, but he hangs onto the ball for a first down. It was the biggest hit Rogers had taken since putting away his bong right before the opening kickoff.

12:00 -- The game is being announced by the legendary Brent Musburger, who is both my least favorite and real favorite football announcer ever. He has a perfect voice for college football, but at times dares you to hate him with his over-the-top theatrics. 2001 was the tail-end of his prime, actually; nowadays he sounds far more sedated, like he's being tranquilized before each telecast. Back then he would routinely make a pedestrian 2nd and 7 sound like World War 3.

11:20 -- MSU's drive stalls just inside Michigan territory, and they line up to punt. But OH SNAP, it's a fake! For the first time in football's 100+ year history, a play is drawn up where the punter blindly throws the ball 50 yards down field to a completely covered receiver. Dumbest fake ever ... but MSU's blunder is erased when Rogers was hauled down and pass interference was called. Disaster averted, first down Spartans.

10:10 -- Two plays later, Smoker drops a perfect pass over Rogers' shoulder in the back of the endzone for a touchdown. 7-0 Michigan State. Beautiful play. In fact, I rewound it, watched it again, and had my one-thousandth career "HE COULD'VE BEEN A SUPERSTAR" Charles Rogers relapse.*

*Notice how his name keeps popping up? Rogers was all over the first five minutes. It may have been Duckett's game in the end, but Charlie Rogers was the most talented player on that field. He was loaded with talent and potential, and I loved watching him play more than any MSU football player to date. As a tall and skinny football-loving kid growing up in a Spartan family, I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to be a wide receiver. I literally wanted to be a black dude from Saginaw who had five kids by the time I was 1 years old.

2ND QUARTER

14:55 -- We cut ahead to the start of the 2nd quarter, because that's what Big Ten Network has decided to do. It's 7-3 Spartans after Michigan's Hayden Epstein hit a 57 yard field goal. Michigan has the ball after a missed field goal.

13:08 -- UM wideout Marquise Walker makes a nice catch and run for about 25 yards, which was accompanied by a long-standing Michigan State tradition: awful tackling. Every few years, State will produce a good linebacker who makes you forget about this tradition, but frequently during my lifetime, they've made tackling look like a cry for help. Highlights like this one make me want to pick up a phone and sponsor an MSU defensive back for 89 cents a day.

12:07 -- Walker makes a catch, a nice cut up field and finds the endzone to give Michigan the lead, 10-7. Of all the great wide receivers that I've seen come through Ann Arbor, Walker is the one I least hated. Unless he said some rancid shit about me, my family or Michigan State that I never heard about, I can almost say that I liked watching the guy play. I'm surprised he didn't have a notable pro career, especially after making catches like this disgusting one right here. Holy hell. Considering the Charles Woodson one-handed grab from earlier, I guess this would have to be the 2nd greatest catch I've ever seen. You know, that actually kind of sucks. I hate Marquise Walker.

10:57 -- Musburger is really starting to heat up. With former Spartan coach George Perles in the booth, he delivers the Aflac Trivia Question with such excitement that it becomes highly unlikely that he's still wearing pants. "ALRIGHT COACH, HERE'S THE QUESTION .... WHO HOLDS THE MICHIGAN STATE RECORD FOR THE HIGHEST YARDS PER RECEPTION? WHO DO YOU THINK IT IS, COACH? GO AHEAD AND GUESS. GO AHEAD AND GUESS." ..... (Perles, physically ill) "Andre Rison?" .... "ALRIGHT HE SAYS ANDRE RISON. WE'LL SEE THE ANSWER LATER, AND CHECK IF GEORGE REALLY KNOWS HIS SPARTANS. IT'S 1ST AND 10 AT THE MICHIGAN 30 AND BOY ARE MY NIPPLES A LOT HARDER THAN THEY SHOULD BE."

9:23 -- After Smoker is sacked for the 4th time already in this game (a developing theme) State converts 3rd and 17 with an 18 yard pass to Herb Haygood. T.J. Duckett runs wild through Michigan's #1 rated rushing defense to the tune of 30 more yards, as he closes in on 100 yards midway through the 2nd quarter (another developing theme). After Rogers draws another pass interference penalty in the endzone, Duckett capitalizes on the next play with a TD and MSU takes a 14-10 lead. On the pass interference call, color commentator Gary Danielson cryptically says in George Perles' direction, "Rogers could play at any level and you know he'll be in the pros as long as he keeps his nose clean." And I die inside a little bit more.

9:23 -- Perles tries to get the hell out of the booth: "Alright guys I gotta go--" before Musburger yells that they haven't heard the answer to the Aflac Trivia Question yet. Perles says, "Oh alright" like a guy who can't get his fucking girlfriend off the phone. "HE SAID ANDRE RISON AND OOOOHHHHHHHHHH KITTENS ALIVE IT'S KIRK GIBSON. 21.0 YARDS PER CATCH. THANKS FOR STOPPING BY, COACH, NOW SOMEBODY GET ME A CIGARETTE. TIMEOOOUUT."

6:34 -- Walker catches a 37 yard pass down the middle of the field to march the Wolverines into Spartan territory. He's looking rather unstoppable against this depleted MSU secondary, now with 4 catches for 97 yards. The pass was made by the painfully gumpy looking John Navarre, who -- fun fact here -- is the 2nd cousin of a dude I played little league baseball with.

5:04 -- Navarre goes up top to Marquise Walker again and connects on a 33 yard touchdown pass, putting Michigan up 17-14. Perfect example of the pro and con of Musburger: He nails the call ("OH BABY WE'VE GOT A DUEL ON OUR HANDS HERE,") and then ruins it by saying, "32 MORE YARDS FOR THE 'QUISE!". He's known for just saying the first name of a particular player, but he took it to a new level here. Literally said "The 'Quise" on national television.

2:07 -- Two more sacks for the Michigan defense, as they now have an astounding seven before halftime and put a halt to MSU's final drive before the half. The Spartan coaching staff inexplicably ignores the unstoppable running game on first and second down as head coach Bobby Williams looks on in total confusion. Williams, during his short time in East Lansing, was incapable of ever looking comfortable. Even for a second. He always had a look on his face that seemed to say, "I really hope nobody goes in that bathroom, because I just took a monster dump in there. I mean I really hope nobody goes in there." (Editor's note: "The Bathroom" is what we call the 2002 Michigan State football season.)

3RD QUARTER

12:10 -- State goes to the ground game wisely and T.J. Duckett rips off a 28 yard run. Musburger breaks out his famous, "IT'S A FOOT RACE!" for the first time this game. Contractually, he's obligated to say the word "footrace" any time Player A is chasing Player B. Personally, I never understood why he didn't just become a track and field announcer so he could say it all day. "IT'S A 200 METER FOOT RACE!" Well, yeah, no shit.

10:39 -- MSU runs the option on 3rd and 2 and Duckett scores -- but the play is called back due to holding. Instead of a touchdown, Smoker is sacked on the next play, and State misses the field goal. Huge disappointment to end a great drive. As both an MSU football and Detroit Lions fan, I'd be a millionaire if I could invest money in such things as "Touchdowns that were called back on penalties". Brent can play Xbox with Chad Ocho Cinco and I can't put my money into something like this? Come on, Internet.

2:12 -- John Navarre drops back on play action and lobs a gift of an interception to Duran Bryan, and MSU is back in business. As Navarre comes off the field, Michigan coach Lloyd Carr gives him the, "I'm going to chain you in my basement, just like I do to most young boys I meet because I'm Lloyd Carr" glare. You think that's a joke? Yeah okay. Look at that man. If you're a 12 year old boy and you're thinking about following that mysterious trail of yo-yo's and Reese's Pieces, get the fuck away from Lloyd Carr's driveway.

1:44 -- Duckett gashes the U of M defense for two more 10 yard runs. On every run he's picking up at least 10 to 12 yards and punishing Wolverine defenders who dare step in his way. The drive ends with a field goal and the 3rd quarter ends deadlocked, 17-17.

4TH QUARTER

14:56 -- On the ensuing drive, Marquise Walker drops what would have been a first down catch (Musburger is exclusively calling him "Marquise" now. He no longer has a last name.) Then on the next play, Duran Bryan makes his second interception of the game and sends Spartan Stadium into a frenzy. But nothing comes of it as MSU goes 3-and-out, a drive which included Michigan's 10th sack of Jeff Smoker. Seriously, 10 sacks. Even Sidney Crosby's chin thinks this is too many sacks for one night.

10:54 -- After a Michigan punt, Charles Rogers comes back on the next play with a full extension diving catch of 29 yards to move into U of M territory. Typing it obviously doesn't do the catch justice, but it had to make the final cut. Just a phenomenal catch, which was all the more difficult because Chuck was being held. Every time the ball would get close to him, a Michigan DB would be forced to commit interference and just hope it didn't get called. HE COULD'VE BEEN A SUPERSTAR, DAMMIT.

9:40 -- Duckett goes over 200 yards for the game on another long run down to the U of M 16 yard line. But because he's a 250 pound dude who always needed a 2 to 3 play rest after a big run, the drive stalled as soon as he went to the sidelines and MSU was forced to settle for 3. 20-17 Spartans.

6:44 -- On the next Michigan drive, Walker drops another sure first down pass, prompting Musburger to use the word "Walker" after Marquise for the first time in at least two hours. That's how it works. If you're in that special zone as a college football player, Musburger says just your first name -- or even a ludicrous nickname instead -- but if you fall off a little bit, that last name is going right back up there. He was simply "Marquise" for the first three quarters, but now he's just plain old Marquise Walker.

6:05 -- Huge moment in the game occurs on the next MSU drive when Smoker fumbles the snap and U of M recovers in Spartan territory. The very next play, Michigan runs an end-around for 22 yards. Three plays later, Navarre finds Jeremy Gonzales in the endzone and U of M goes up 24-20. Huge momentum shift ..... typical MSU football when playing Michigan.

2:09 -- Both teams exchange possessions, and now it's MSU ball at the Michigan 44. Final drive of the game.

1:25 -- After yet another sack and two incomplete passes, it's now 4th and 17. (You know what might have prevented this. RUNNING THE DAMN BALL. Yes, this game happened 9 years ago and I know the outcome and I'm still complaining about play calling. That's the Bobby Williams era.) Hope is about as low as can be right here. Smoker can't seem to take any shots down field without a Michigan lineman jumping all over him, and Duckett can't save us when it's 4th and long.

1:18 -- But Michigan's boneheaded defense can. Cornerback Jeremy LeSueur makes one of the dumbest decisions I have ever seen in a football game, physically assaulting Charles Rogers at the line of scrimmage. Grabs his facemask and anything else he can get ahold of, then throws him out of bounds. Inexplicable. Your pass rush has been playing A+ football the entire game and MSU needs a prayer to keep the game alive -- and you do this on 4th and 17? That's how good Rogers was. They'd rather rape him right at the line than let him run downfield. First down State at the Michigan 35, and the crowd is really buzzing.

1:12 -- Oh lord, I had forgotten about this part. Rogers split the double coverage down the sideline and Smoker went for the win, delivering a gem of a pass right on the money ..... and Chuck dropped it. Again, even knowing the outcome, that one made me cringe.

1:01 -- Herb Fuckin' Haygood! On 3rd and 10, he snags his 4th catch of the game on a 15 yard pass. The Spartans are still alive as the clock ticks under 50 seconds.

0:36 -- Michigan's defense, at it again: 12 men on the field gives State a half the distance to the goal penalty. Crazy scene as the referee tries to stop the U of M defenders from escaping to safety on the sidelines as he's trying to double check his counting. Yes, there were indeed 12 Wolverines on the field. The ball is at the 11 yard line. God almighty this shit is intense.

0:27 -- (Interesting wrinkle to this game: On the '12 men' penalty, Smoker was sacked (naturally) and State burned their last timeout. But the penalty stops the clock, so they didn't really need to use it. Yet they were charged one anyway. Could they have used that last timeout a few plays later? Yeah, obviously. I'll use this as a ridiculous excuse to absolve the timekeeper from any criticism here in a few seconds.

0:23 -- After a couple of incomplete passes, it's 4th and 4. T.J. Duckett saves the game for now with a little 7 yard slant as Spartan Stadium pees it's collective pants in a sigh of relief. We now have 1st and Goal at the 3 yard line.

0:17 -- Smoker spikes the ball on 1st down to stop the clock. The camera cuts to Bobby Williams, who looks like he'd rather be hunched over a sink in a prison washroom than have any part of this game. I think you can actually see a red stain on his shirt where his heart has begun to bleed. He's a little stressed right now.

0:17 -- 2nd and Goal: Smoker takes the snap out of the shotgun and scrambles to his right. There's nothing there and he's tackled at the one yard line. He struggles to get up and get his teammates to the line to spike the ball one last time. Four seconds left as the clock ticks away ..... then three ..... then two ...... one ............. zero-point-five ............ zero-point-one ....... (looks down at watch) ........................................

0:00.0000000000000001 -- ......... and Smoker spikes the ball with one second left on the clock!

* Despite what Brent Musburger or anyone else was insisting at that moment, the ball was spiked in time. I've watched the video 10 million times. I've clapped my hands along with the ticking seconds of the replay to try and judge if that last second hung up there a little too long. It didn't. When you do watch it, you have to mute it because Musburger's counting is off. He's an ass.

* Furthermore, Michigan's radio announce team lost all of my respect after this game, largely because of Jim Brandstatter. Their embarrassing transcript of the final drive and postgame is here. They lose their minds over the '12 men' penalty -- which was legit by the way -- claiming that there were 11 guys on the field. There were 12. It's counting, it's not overly difficult. They go on to claim that the game was won by the officials because the clock should have run out. The play was so close that it's certainly debatable, but that's just it -- it was too close at the time to have any definite opinion on it without seeing replays. For them to treat this game like somebody shot their dog in front of them was complete trash and defined what the bad side of "homerism" is to me.

0:00 -- 4th down for the 3rd time on this drive...

... MSU is in the shotgun with five wide receivers. They need one more miracle. Jeff Smoker rolls to his right, and throws up what looks like a hopeless prayer.

".....akdfja;kdfj;akdjf;akjdsf;kajd;fkjadfjaksdfj;asdkfj;s;dkfjas;kjfd;dkjfaksjd;fkajsd
;adkfj;aklsjdf;lkajsd;fkjas;dfkjas;dflkjas;kdfjas;kdfjkj...."

Final: 26 - 24 Michigan State

Red Wings Blogger Roundtable

2010-08-30T06:11:00.000-04:00

It is our turn to host the blogger roundtable, which I am thrilled about because it provides another opportunity to post something that I didn't write at all. Hooray summer vacation.

My questions are in italics, and the answers aren't. Most of you can figure that out on your own, while the remainder of you are Jason Williams. That guy is really dumb.

________________________________

1) Malik had a tremendous piece at Puck Daddy with his Mt. Puckmore of Red Wings. My question is, if you were to go around back of this mountain -- you know, the side covered in bird shit and dead Communists -- what would the Bizarro Mt. Puckmore look like? I'm talking about the 4 Red Wing players of your lifetime who contributed so little that the very thought of a gigantic mountain with their faces on it makes you want to punch a pregnant dinosaur. Like right in the uterus, I'm talking a really angry blow. The only qualification is that these players had to play at least one season in Detroit (trade deadline busts acceptable), so leave out the quick call ups and scrubs we don't remember.

MATT SALER: Boyd "Devoid" Devereaux. The guy technically contributed on the original Two Kids and an Old Goat Line, but was there ever a heavier dead weight? Sure there are guys who contributed less, probably, but none of them stand out in my mind like good old Boyd.

GEORGE MALIK: In my lifetime? Sergei Bautin, Bob Essensa, Uwe Krupp and Jason Williams.

The Tim Cheveldae-and-Dallas Drake for Bautin/Essensa trade as the worst one during my tenure as a Wings fan; while Cheveldae didn't play particularly well or particularly poorly for the Jets, Drake had a very, very solid career and was repeatedly pursued by the Wings as a missing element that they never quite replaced until he returned (I feel the same way about Bob Rouse, whose Swiss Army Knife of defensemen versatility has only met its equal in Brad Stuart), while Essensa was just terrible in the net--when he wasn't hurt--and Sergei Bautin only played in one game for the Wings because he was hurt, too, and was a 6'3," 200-lb. pylon. The man smoked more cigarettes in a week than he played games in the NHL, and unlike Maxim Kuznetsov, he had no redeeming qualities as an international player. Kuznetsov may have stank for the Wings, but he actually played very well and won championships in Europe; Bautin went nowhere.

The fact that Essensa forced the Wings to go with Ozzie in the 94 playoffs against San Jose and was a "Wing killer" when he moved on to Edmonton, Phoenix and Vancouver--because he was peeved at the Wings for banishing him to the IHL for the 94-95 and 95-96 seasons--didn't help, either.

As for Krupp, everybody knows about that disaster. The Wings tossed millions and millions of dollars at a player that wrecked his back, possibly attempted to dogsled race while he rehabbed it, got into a nasty legal battle with the team and then skated out of Detroit with a Cup ring for his trouble and played as at least a marginally effective defenseman for the Thrashers for a couple of seasons...And I hate to say this, but he's a genuinely nice guy, so nobody won in the Krupp imbroglio. He didn't deserve to be followed around by private investigators and the Wings didn't deserve to have to deal with Krupp screwing around with them, either. I really hope that he took the Cup ring out of the situation and looked on the bright side because he's represented Germany with class and poise as their national team's coach at various levels, so...I mean, I feel guilty about giving the guy ill will. Nobody won. Everybody lost, Cup ring aside.

I don't mean to bag on Jason Williams as a person, either, but his second stint with Detroit was like watching somebody go back to their old flame only to realize why they broke up with each other in the first place. He waited a month to take the Wings' offer during the summer of 2009, openly admitting that he would have preferred to stay with Columbus or go to the KHL instead, and after a fantastic exhibition season alongside Ville Leino and Valtteri Filppula, he seemed to cop Leino's attitude when things went south, he got hurt, and when he came back, he was nothing more than a liability, especially in the playoffs. He didn't want to be here and it showed in his play, and I honestly think he's played himself out of an NHL job--the free agent "leftover class of 2010" remains very deep, the KHL's tapped out $-wise, and European leagues are underway, so it's entirely possible that he'll have to settle for either an AHL deal or latch on to a team in Europe as an injury replacement to simply skate for a living this season. To some extent his cap hit played a larger role in Leino's departure than Maltby or Lilja's did, and he just offered the Wings nothing in return.

MICHAEL PETRELLA: I fucking love this question. It's the most well-written and hilarious question I've ever had the honor answering. So I better not screw it up. Since I assume I can't select Todd Bertuzzi's head four times, I'll try to come up with four guys MORE useless than he is (good luck, right?). My lifetime stretches a little further back than some of the other bloggers, so I'll let them do the whole "LOL Jason Woolley / Yuri Butsayev" thing and go a tiny bit older:

Greg Stefan. This story is no bullshit: when I was about seven (and playing at Chuck E. Cheeses, I shit you not), someone's father told my mom the following: "Hey, did you hear Greg Stefan attempted suicide? Yeah... he jumped in front of a bus. But he missed." I may have been a second grader, but I laughed my ass of because even prepubescent me knew that he probably didn't belong in the league.

Robert Picard. It's kind of cheating, because he didn't play a full season in Detroit -- and it was at the end of a very solid NHL career, but when the Wings received Picard from the Quebec Nordiques (for Tony McKegney. Yup. THAT Tony McKegney), you'd think it was a huge deadline acquisition. He went on to score a grand total of zero goals in a Red Wings sweater and was largely invisible before retiring that summer.

Dave Lewis. The coach. And maybe the player. But definitely the coach. If that little shit couldn't win with the 2002-03 Detroit Red Wings, he officially couldn't beat his daughter at HORSE. Note: I have no idea if he has a daughter.

Dmitry Bykov. What was that about?

CASEY RICHEY: Brett Lebda, Jason Williams, Sean Avery and Uwe Krupp. I don't know if I need to do much explaining for Lebda or Avery but Williams was just so freaking plain and unnoticeable (I would keep forgetting him on the list of injured players last year). Krupp I don't exactly hate but he was just the ultimate waste of money.

KRIS FROM SNIPE DANGLE: Can Uwe Krupp take up three spots? I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and I can't come up with any situation in which I'd need to go dog sledding so badly that I'd do it while rehabbing a bad back barring a relocation to Alaska. Derian Hatcher and Ville Leino both earned spots for being gigantic disappointments. I'm going to put Stacey Roest up there in the final spot mostly for being named Stacey. His name did earn him a mention on Burn Notice last summer, though, so I guess that's something. I'm having a pretty good time imagining the Wings faithful flocking to the back of Mt. Puckmore to throw rocks and beer bottles at the faces carved there.

CHRIS HOLLIS: Krupp can go dog-sled his injured back off a cliff for all I care, Stefan never met a GAA over 3.50 that he didn't like, Leino's lacksadasical appraoch to hockey in Detroit only to get traded and blow up in the playoffs will drive me crazy forever and Lebda's inate ability to backhand the game winning goal around the boards and onto the other team's stick will live with me until the day I die. Danny Markov narrowly missed the cut.

Can Dave Lewis carve the mountain?

NOHS STAFF: I kind of already did a piece on something similar:

http://www.nightmareonhelmstreet.com/2010-articles/august/the-expendables.html

But if I had to pick my least favorite 4 from that list...it would go like this-

1. Marian Hossa - scored 40 goals in the 08-09 regular season...zero in seven games against his former team in the SCF. The jumped ship to Chicago. F**k you.

2. Uwe Krupp - came from the then hated Colorado Avalanche - you know, back when they were good. Signed a giant four year deal with Detroit and played in a total of 30 games of that contract. Sat out due to "back problems" and then was found in Alaska dog-sledding.

3. Wendel Clark - played most of his career with the Toronto Maple Leafs when that rivalry was at his peak. Acquired by Detroit at the '98-'99 trade deadline...never clicked and not re-signed in the off-season.

4. Bob Essensa - played in a total of 13 regular season games for Detroit going 4-7-2. For some reason, we let him play in the play-offs in two games...he lost both of them.

*****

2) Who's going to be the most positive surprise, and who's going to be the biggest disappointment? Last year's champions: Todd Bertuzzi and Ville Leino respectively. Bert narrowly edged Jimmy last season because, frankly, I was convinced that Todd was going to commandeer the team and relocate them from Detroit to his basement.

SALER: Franzen's the biggest surprise because knock on wood everybody he's healthy all season and tears it up for a full year for once. Modano's the biggest disappointment, just to stay consistent on that position. Though I hope I'm wrong on that. My alternate big disappointment is Jimmy. As high as he set the bar last year, I feel like there's going to be a come down in the 'base.

MALIK: I expect Jonathan Ericsson to regain his form and then some. I really do believe that he has the hockey chops to put his difficult season behind him and I think that he and Valtteri Filppula understand that their futures with Detroit depend on their respective performances this year, so I expect both to step it up, but especially given Ericsson's incredibly difficult 09-10 season, I think his resurgence will surprise people, whereas Filppula's simply going to fulfill expectations. I'm not going to try to guess about the disappointments. I would imagine that Kindl could bomb if the Wings rely on him too heavily too early but I also believe in Kindl's potential, big time, if he's broken in slowly and brought up to speed in terms of the NHL's pace of play and fitness levels.

PETRELLA: Most pleasant surprise candidate: Ruslan Salei. He may not be uber-flashy, but he should fill some gaps that people don't know he's able of filling.

Biggest disappointment candidate: Jimmy Howard, just because of where the expectations are right now.

RICHEY: Most positive surprise: Valtteri Filppula. I think this has been a long time coming as Red Wings fans have watched him mature and grow as a player. I think he's still off the radar for some folks so I think he could be a surprise by having a 60 or 70 point season. Biggest disapointment: I actually think this one could go to Mike Modano. He's had a lot of hype and talk regarding his coming to Detroit and although I'm not expecting his 80 point season of old he could just end up being a non-factor. I hope I'm wrong but I wouldn't be surprised, it's a new system for him and a big spotlight as he comes back home.

KRIS: I think the biggest positive surprise will be Ruslan Salei. Assuming he stays healthy, he should have a pretty good year down on the third pairing. He should bring a solid veteran presence to hopefully steady Jonathan Ericsson and I expect him to be a little more physical than Andreas Lilja was. for the biggest disappointment, I'm going to go out on a limb and say Mike Modano. I was in the Pro-dano camp from the beginning, but I feel like a lot of people (Mike Ilitch included) are looking at him as the final piece to the puzzle that's going to guarantee the Wings a Cup this season. I don't think he's going to have a bad year; I expect him to provide a steady presence on the third line and chip in some secondary scoring. I just envision a lot of these people disappointed at the end of the year when they realize the Wings didn't sign the 2000 edition of Mike Modano.

HOLLIS: I think Jimmy Howard will be the biggest surprise this season, because nobody knows if he can replicate his play from last year over an entire season. he's got alot to prove and I think he will. As for biggest disappointment, I'll go with Niklas Kronwall. I still don't think the man is completely healed from his injury last year and I get the feeling he may spend a bunch of time on the IR this season. I hope I'm wrong, but we'll see.

NOHS STAFF: Going off of my gut - I'm saying that Johnny Ericsson is the biggest surprise of the season. After a horrible (by our standards) first full season in Detroit, I'm hoping the kid gets his footing in the league and re-establishes himself as that "future NHL All-Star" as he was being touted in the 2009 Play-offs. Biggest dissapointment is a toss-up between Jiri Hudler and Mike Modano. I doubt Modano will be able to live up to a lot of people's hype unless he goes out and has 60 points next season while playing in all 82 games. But Hudler has a lot of expectations too. Babbles says he gets 70 points...I want nothing less than the 57 points he got before he jumped ship to make his tax free dollars in Russia.

*****

3) Simply put: Are the Detroit Red Wings the #1 team in the NHL right now?

SALER: Right now, yes. But only because they're healthy now. If they stay healthy, I see them as juggernauts again.

MALIK: No, because they didn't win the Cup. You only start the season as the best team in the league if you win the Cup, and after that, you've got to re-earn your reputation. I do think that the Wings are one of the best teams in the league, definitely among the best in the West alongside the Sharks, Hawks and Canucks, more than on par with the Pens, Caps and Bruins, and I do believe that the Wings will at least win the Central Division this year, but the Hawks, cap casualties and all, start the year as the league's best team because they finished first where it counts most.

PETRELLA: In my eyes, the Red Wings are ALWAYS the #1 team in the league, but without being over-confident I'd say that the Wings are certainly near the top of the food chain again heading into 10-11. But -- they don't play games on paper, and the very solid lineup will have to gel, stay healthy, and prove that they can improve upon the tumultuous season from a year ago.

Adding Hudler, Modano, Salei, and -- tangentially -- Kindl and losing only Jason Williams and Brett Lebda? Sold.

RICHEY: At first I wanted to answer this question as no but then I thought about it more. I think the Red Wings have gotten better by virtually staying the same. The amount the Blackhawks have lost is ridiculous, the Sharks lost a high-quality (regular season) goalie, the Pens lost Sergei Gonchar and Bill Guerin while playing in a very tough division and although Washington is loaded with talent, let's face it they play in the Southeast division, the Oilers would have a 100 point season in that division. I think the Wings have gotten better by adding Jiri Hudler and eliminating some problem areas (Williams, Lebda) and are returning an already incredible line-up. So, yes.

KRIS: That's a silly question. The Wings have been the #1 team in the NHL since 1926. In all seriousness, though, I can't think of another team that can roll four lines like the Wings can. I don't think they'll place first in the league this season--Washington is going to run away with the Least again because there's nobody to compete with them--but they should be challenging San Jose for first in the West. Chicago might give them a run for their money, but their roster has too many mountain-sized question marks to look horribly threatening at this point.

HOLLIS: Not until they win the Cup.

NOHS STAFF: Simply put - yes. Line up our first line with anyone's first line. How about our second line? Third line? Fourth? Goaltending? Yeah - I'd put these team in a seven game series with anyone when they're healthy.

Stick Tap

2010-08-28T04:20:00.000-04:00

Selfishly, (very, very selfishly), the both of us agreed that it sucked to hear that Kyle at Babcock's Death Stare was stepping away from the keyboard and moving on to the real world. If I was stranded on a desert island and for some reason I only had internet access to one Wings blog, I'd probably think to myself, "this would make for a very unrealistic hypothetical situation given the general lack of electricity found on desert islands." And then after a long struggle, I'd probably choose Babcock's Death Stare. Always loaded with content, subtly hilarious, and best of all (worst of all if you're a Pens fan), it makes you think. Every post on that site gives you something to think about in a way you didn't before you read it, and that's what I liked the most.

Of course, we are thrilled for Kyle and hope all the best for him. Why, I even said "This guy should be working for a hockey team" after the first time I read his old site. I was like an indie rock superfan after one read. To see that actually happen is very cool.

You hear that, Grand Rapids Griffins? I DISCOVERED HIM FIRST. Treat him well or I swear I will cut a bitch. I will do it.

Kudos to you Kyle on the mark you've left on the blogging community, and good luck with all that other jazz. Farewell, sir.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Baroque's Top Ten Dinosaurs

2010-08-24T18:13:00.000-04:00

(Photo credit to @Lolabythebay. Pictured: Manny Legasaurus Rex.)

You may have heard whispers about this post surfacing over the last few weeks. If so, you're likely on the Twittertubes. If you're not, you really should stop calling it gay and hop aboard. Aside from getting wide ranging hockey news at lightning speed, it's a good way to promote your website. Did I say your website? I meant my website, The Triple Deke. Tell your mom about it. And while you're at it, remind her that the back seat of my car isn't her laundry basket. (Perhaps you're wondering, "is he really that pig-headed? Does he realize how old 'mom' jokes are? And the answer of course is "42".)

How great is this Twitter? It allowed Brent to play video games with NFL Pro-Bowler Chad Ocho Cinco. Swear to God, this happened. Ocho Cinco, apparently bored as hell, challenged random people to play him in FIFA World Cup on Xbox, then ended up losing a 1-0 game to Brent, and -- my favorite part -- played a preseason football game only a few hours later. Reportedly, Chad yelled wildly throughout the soccer game over the most mundane of accomplishments, all while playing responsible defense and having a surprisingly good grasp of soccer fundamentals. Because of Twitter this shit happened. Honestly.

And now that we're completely off the track, I introduce to you the ten greatest dinosaurs of prehistoric time. Writing it is our resident dino expert, Baroque, who we've all wondered at one point or another 'why doesn't she have her own site'? We're providing the halfway house for wherever her eventual writing home is, as she unleashes this mammoth of a post. Now that cereals and dinosaurs have made their appearance on TTD, I can officially pull the plug. Good night everyone! Baroque has the floor.

******

DINOSAURS

Dinosaurs are fascinating animals. The challenging aspect of paleontology is not just that the animals being studied are all dead, and the scientists have to depend on fossil bones to try to figure out their anatomy, physiology, and behavior – but also that there are in many cases so few fossils of any one species.

Imagine if you had never seen any kind of cat before, and found five mostly complete lion skeletons, three domestic cat skulls, and a partial skeleton and a handful of teeth from a lynx. From JUST THAT, along with the knowledge of the environment in which the bones were found, you try to figure out how many different animals you have, what they looked like when they were alive, what they might have eaten, how they hunted, if they lived in groups or not, how they raised their young, how long they lived, what kind of environment they lived in, how many there were, etc. etc. etc. Not an easy task – and yet this is what paleontologists have to do. I would find it maddening, as it’s quite hard enough to figure out how the hell LIVE animals work – ones that haven’t existed for millions of years? – I’ll content myself with movies, thank you very much.

Like so many kids, I went through a paleontology phase, and although I never wanted to devote my career to studying prehistoric animals, my interest in them has never vanished. Hence, it isn’t all that difficult for me to put together a list of my Top Ten Dinosaurs (except for choosing the order).

Disclaimers:

(By dinosaurs, I am speaking specifically of the non-avian dinosaurs, as birds are actually the only surviving dinosaurs after the vast majority were wiped out 65 million years ago. I didn’t include any non-dinosaur animals from the same period, such as mosasaurs (swimming reptiles), crocodiles, or pterosaurs (flying reptiles). Maybe no one else would notice, but I would. I also stuck with species that are pretty recognizable to anyone who went through a dinosaur phase, even though they might not remember the names of the animals. And I used genus names only, even though there may be several known species, which isn’t correct, but is sufficient for the purpose of this list.) J

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10. Ankylosaurus

The name of this dinosaur means “fused lizard” or “stiffened lizard” and is given from the fact that its bones in the skull and other parts of its body are fused together for strength. It had a wide, squat body, small head, walked on all fours, and was a plant-eater (although with such a tiny little brain, it would have eaten crayons too, if they existed at the time). The most obvious characteristic of this dinosaur is the armor made of knobs and plates of bone embedded in the skin called osteoderms or scutes, as well as the club-shaped tail. This dinosaur was about 20 to 30 feet long, 5 feet wide and 5.5 feet high at the hip.

illustrations: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Ankylosaurus_dinosaur.png
http://www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/BIOL/classes/bio302/pages/ankylosaurus.jpg

Why it makes my list:
It reminds me of a turtle, despite the fact dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago and turtles still survive to the present, and they don’t have a very close relative recently. Ankylosaurus is the quintessential armored dinosaur and this tank-like animal lasted right until the end of the Cretaceous Period and the final dinosaur extinction (except for birds).

For some reason Ankylosaurus reminds me of Vesa Toskala, probably because both are chubby, round, and well protected. I think the dinosaur might have better lateral movement, although Toskala has a better glove hand (if only because the dinosaur has no thumbs).

9. Pachycephalosaurus

This dinosaur walked on its hind legs (was bipedal), and had large eyes, a small brain, and a very thick skull with funny lumpy knobs around the edge of the dome. The bone on top of its skull was up to 10 inches thick, which got this dinosaur the name “thick headed lizard.” It reached an adult size of about 15 feet long, and these plant-eaters likely lived in herds.

illustrations: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Sketch_pachycephalosaurus.jpg
http://www.search4dinosaurs.com/ms_pachycephalosaurus.jpg

Why it makes my list:
This animal shows the importance of looking at the actual anatomy of the beast before making assumptions about lifestyle. For a long time it was thought that they acted like bighorn sheep, and the males rammed each other head-to-head in competition for females; now paleontologists know that the bone on top of the domed skull, although thick, was too porous and fragile to withstand such an impact, so they tried to impress females by squealing their tires drinking lots of beer driving fancy cars hitting each other on the flanks with their heads instead. No accounting for tastes, I suppose. Considering the extinction and whatnot, in retrospect maybe they should have chosen another option because the females weren’t really that impressed after all, and wandered off bored while the punch-drunk males tried to mate with nearby shrubbery.

Pachycephalosaurus reminds of new Toronto Maple Leaf captain Dion Phaneuf, probably for its obvious leadership abilities. Not for the thick lumpy skull covered with blunt boney bumps to protect its tiny brain from impact. Honest.

8. Styracosaurus

This is one of the ceratopsians, or “horn-headed” dinosaurs, characterized by various skull adornments such as neck frills, spikes, and nose horns. Styracosaurus had some of everything and thus is very distinctive, and often depicted in popular culture. It was about 18 feet long, 6 feet high and the horn on its beak-like snout was about two feet long. This dinosaur was herbivorous (plant eating) and quadrupedal (walked on all four legs). It may have been a herding animal. The name Styracosaurus means “spiked lizard.” Clearly no paleontologists stayed up late coming up with a name for this fossil.

illustrations:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Styracosaurus_dinosaur.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Styracosaurus_BW.jpg

Why it makes my list:
The ceratopsians have always been my favorite group of dinosaurs, so I had to include at least one of them. I find it interesting that there is so much debate over what the heck the horns and spikes and frills were actually for. Ideas have included a place for muscle attachment for chewing tough plants, increasing surface area for thermoregulation, using the horns and spikes as defensive weapons against dangerous predators, using them against each other in combat for status or mates, or using them as display in rituals of herd dominance or courtship and mating.

This species reminds me of anyone with a distinctive and odd-looking hairstyle. Although while the horns and frill of the dinosaur might have been used for sexual display, it’s hard to see Mike Commodore or Steve Hartnell getting the same attractive power out of their chosen head adornments. Maybe they are good conversationalists? It is a puzzle indeed.

7. Iguanodon

This creature was a plant-eating dinosaur with a horny beak and tightly-packed cheek teeth for grinding vegetation and was about 30 feet long and nine feet high at the hips. The back legs were longer than the forelimbs, but it probably was mostly bipedal at high speeds and dropped to all fours when walking and foraging on plants lower to the ground. These animals had their “thumbs” replaced with odd spikes, from two to six inches long. At first it was thought that the spikes were on the snouts of the living animals, which seems laughable now because we know so much more about them than when they were first discovered in 1822 and described in 1825 by Gideon Mantell. His wife Mary had found its teeth and a few bones, and the resemblance of the teeth to the modern iguana led him to name it Iguanodon, or “iguana tooth.”

illustrations:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Goodrich_Iguanodon.jpg (first attempt, now known to be incorrect)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Iguanodon_feeding.jpg (later attempt, now also known to be incorrect)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Iguanodon_BW.jpg (based on most current information)
http://www.search4dinosaurs.com/rm_iguanodon.jpg

Why it makes my list:
Although not especially large, and a fairly widespread and common dinosaur at the time, or distinctive in any way except for its odd thumb spikes, this dinosaur deserves a spot because it was one of the first of these extinct creatures to be discovered by human beings. Dinosaurs, despite 65 million years of absence, are so much a part of popular culture purely through the power of human imagination that it seems very strange to me to imagine a world where there was no idea, in anyone’s mind, that such animals had ever lived. The incredible richness and biodiversity of an entire planet was completely unknown before Iguanodon and a couple of other dinosaurs were unearthed. Because it has been known for so long, it is also interesting to follow its artistic representation as a gauge for how dinosaurs were seen at the time, from enormous slow-moving (and presumably also slow-witted) lizards, to bipedal but still slow and ponderous animals that clearly became extinct because they were too primitive to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions, to the more agile and dynamic current construct as a lively and well-adapted animal.

As the changing reconstructions of Iguanodon reflect growing scientific knowledge as much as cultural ideas of what a dinosaur is, the hockey equivalent is more nebulous than a single particular player. This creature reminds me of the hockey player who first engages a fan’s interest and wins them over to the sport for good. It might be the first player they saw live, the first one they heard on the radio while listening late at night, the first one a parent told them about, or one they read about from an earlier era. Each fan has a different hook into the game of hockey, and as the representation of Iguanodon has evolved, each fan’s perception of the game evolves as they become more aware of the sport.

6. Tyrannosaurus

If you don’t recognize this dinosaur by name, know that the name means “tyrant lizard,” and can picture it in your mind’s eye, you must have been spending your life in a cave. On Mars. With your fingers in your ears. Maybe you were also in a coma. THIS is the lawyer-munching true star of “Jurassic Park,” one of the largest carnivores ever to live on earth, and possibly the top predator in North America at the time, as well as a scavenger. It had an enormous head counterbalanced by a massive tail, walked on its powerful hind limbs only as it had tiny forelimbs, and the largest complete skeleton found was 42 feet long and 13 feet high at the hip. Fortunately for paleontologists more than 30 specimens of this animal have been found, many of them nearly complete skeletons, so it enables both more information on the possible ecology and biomechanics, but also a lot more debate over issues such as how fast it could have run and if it was a predator or scavenger. Without debates there are fewer papers and conferences and it makes looking for fossils much less enticing.

illustrations:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Tyrannosaurus_BW.jpg
http://www.raul-martin.net/raulmartin/cuatrogaleria/Tyrannosaurus.jpg

Why it makes my list:
One of the largest land predators in history HAS to be on the list. Despite the fact that some researchers think it might be primarily a scavenger, like an enormous buzzard, in popular culture it is usually portrayed as a deadly and extremely dangerous predator. What is indisputable is that it had a skull that could be five feet long, many huge teeth, and enough bite strength to slice a person in half. A modern human with a high-powered rifle would stand about as much chance against Tyrannosaurus as one of our ancestors with a stone-tipped spear against a sabre-toothed cat. Possibly even less. (And contrary to “Jurassic Park,” they likely had excellent smell and eyesight judging by the shape of the brain cavity. Paleontologist and kids would have been goners and the movie would have been much shorter and more boring.)

The hockey equivalent of a T. rex doesn’t exist yet. We’ll know it has emerged when a hockey player lunges at Gary Bettman from behind a potted plant in the vestibule of the NHL offices and with a loud roar of potent rage tears him bloody limb from dismembered limb, because Tyrannosaurs and lawyers are natural enemies. That part of the movie was 100% correct.

5. Velociraptor

First, forget “Jurassic Park” on this one, even more than the other dinosaurs portrayed. I love the movie, but this is probably the dinosaur that was subject to the most artistic license, particularly in terms of exaggerating the size a lot. (Oddly enough, raptors have been found since the movie came out that are comparable in size, so this may be a case of art imitating life, but the discovery of the life not preceding the art.) The name is accurate; the sharp hind claw is accurate, but otherwise…

The name Velociraptor means “swift seizer” and was very appropriate for this animal. It was about six feet long from upturned snout to the end of its long tail, about a foot and a half high at the hip, and had a jaw full of sharp teeth. It was bipedal and a very swift runner, moderately intelligent for a dinosaur, a meat-eater, and had feathers. There is some thought that they may have hunted in packs, but this is poorly supported by most fossil evidence. Smaller animals are less likely to fossilize than larger animals because their bones are generally much more delicate and likely to be destroyed, but since these creatures lived in a dry dune-filled environment they actually have left a pretty good fossil record, with over a dozen well-preserved individuals known.

illustrations:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Velociraptor_BW.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Fightingdinosamnh2.jpg (fossil of a Velociraptor in combat with a Protoceratops, likely buried by a collapsing sand dune. The raptor is on its back with a hindlimb claw in the neck of the presumed prey, and the beak of the Protoceratops is clamped on a raptor forelimb.)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Velociraptor_dinoguy2.jpg

Why it makes my list:
This little guy was a quite fearsome predator, despite its small size for a dinosaur. It was quick, intelligent, and had well developed hands with sharp claws. The confirmation of feathers in the fossils also really clinched the connection between dinosaurs and birds, which as a science nerd I find incredibly exciting. Dinosaurs are these exotic, extinct creatures and birds are common everyday animals … yet if both groups were around today, we would think that birds were just the group of dinosaur species that were smaller than average and had feathers. Or perhaps that dinosaurs were just large, funny looking birds. Yet this small creature is a major reason why humans would never have evolved if the dinosaurs weren’t wiped out. Our small mammalian relatives were prey species, and the only way they managed to live in the shadows of comparative giants was to shift their lifestyle and their habits (think about how many mammals are nocturnal, and consider the roots of the behavior may have been avoiding predation by dinosaurs such as Velociraptor and it makes sense that their hold on our imagination is so strong).

Velociraptor was small, quick, maneuverable, good hands, intelligent, and dangerous. Put feathers on Martin St. Louis and they could be brothers (well, at least extremely distant cousins).

4. Allosaurus

The name Allosaurus means “different lizard” which referred to the structure of the vertebrae, different from other dinosaurs. Allosaurus was a large carnivore with a large skull, short and strong S-shaped neck, long tail, and strong rear legs. The forelimbs were much shorter than the hind limbs, but were still quite strong with sharp claws and capable of holding prey. It had small bony projections over the eyes that may have been for shading its eyes from the sun, protection from damage, or for display. Also, although it could not unhinge its jaw in the same way a snake can, there was enough flexibility to bow its jaws out and increase the gape size to take even more meat in one bite. From nose to tail the most common species was approximately 30 feet long, and it stood about nine feet high at the hip. It wasn’t the largest carnivorous dinosaur or even largest theropod that existed, but it was the largest predator in its environment at the time and at the top of the food chain. There is debate over whether or not it was a solitary hunter and showed aggression toward other members of its species, or if it hunted in packs. If it was a pack hunter it would have likely been able to successfully take down even large sauropods or other predators of the time. This is a well known dinosaur in both paleontology and popular culture because of the large number of excellent fossil finds, from all ages of individuals.

illustrations:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Allosaurus_BW.jpg
http://home.online.no/~sastrom/Ungdomsskolen/8_kap8/Dino_images/allosaurus.jpg

Why it makes my list:
Large, fairly quick, and more intelligent than most dinosaurs, this was the most common predator in a large tract of what is now Western North America and probably the adults had very little to fear from other dinosaurs. Illness and injury would have been issues, as is true even with large modern predators, but once the young Allosaurus had reached a larger size they would be unconcerned with predators. Unlike Tyrannosaurus there isn’t any debate over whether this dinosaur was a predator or a scavenger. It was a predator, and the most dangerous one of its time, and my favorite carnivorous dinosaur. Since it is a species found in North America, when I was young I imagined finding Allosaurus bones while I was on vacation, because it seemed a lot more likely I would be vacationing in Montana or Colorado than in Mongolia.

Consider Alexander Ovechkin. Definitely different, and definitely possessing a certain speed and ferocity in the way he plays hockey that very few other players have. Not having hair Allosaurus was spared the unfrozen caveman look of the Russian skater, for which the species should have been extremely thankful, as Ovechkin is many things, but physically attractive is not really one of them.

3. Brachiosaurus

I am not generally a big fan of the sauropods (the long-necked, long-tailed, four-legged plant-eaters) but I do like Brachiosaurus a lot. The sauropods most closely resemble giraffes in the modern mammalian-dominated world, with long necks, long legs, and long tails to counterbalance the weight of the neck. These animals were most likely browsers on the tops of tall trees, instead of (as depicted in so many of the earliest drawings) living in the water to support their huge bulk. They lived on the prairies and moved through forests of giant conifers, which they likely ate. The name Brachiosaurus means “arm lizard” which was given to these animals because their forelimbs (arms) were longer than their hindlimbs. These animals were mind-staggeringly large, reaching an estimated length of around 80 feet and a head that was about 40 feet above the ground. For comparison, the largest giraffe on record was about 19 feet tall – only half the height and far, FAR lighter. This is one of the largest land animals ever known, and a widely recognized animal both in paleontology and popular culture.

Oddball fact: There is a mounted skeleton of a Brachiosaurus in O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.

illustrations:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Brachiosaurus_DB.jpg
http://www.search4dinosaurs.com/ms_brachiosaurus.jpg

Why it makes my list:
Are you kidding? It’s HUGE. The very idea of an animal that is that enormous and is not a whale boggles the mind. And these things likely lived in groups, so just imagine the way the ground must have shuddered as a herd of these creatures moved majestically across the plain. It would have been like the buffalo stampede in “Dances With Wolves” but even more so. And without Kevin Costner anywhere around. Or if he was around, he would have been squooshed into a small mammalian smear under one of their gigantic feet.

If Brachiosaurus was a hockey player, with the long arms and huge size it reminds me of skaters like Zdeno Chara and Tyler Myers. But even TALLER. Every team would need to have an outdoor rink for those special occasions of hosting such an incredibly tall visiting player. Retractable domes on hockey rinks? Perhaps.

2. Parasaurolophus

Parasaurolophus was one of the hadrosaurs, or “duck-billed dinosaurs” so called because of the shape of their skulls, with a flat wide duck-bill-like snout. The name of this dinosaur means “near crested lizard” because it was thought to be related to Saurolophus or “crested lizard.” This is one of the rarest of the duckbills, known only from a few fossil remains. As best can be judged, this animal was about 30 feet long, with a skull five to six and a half feet long, including the prominent crest. This animal probably foraged for plants to eat while on all fours but rose up only on its hind limbs when it wanted to move quickly. The mouth had banks of teeth that it could move in a grinding motion to chew vegetation, useful as fossilized stomach contents have included pine needles, leaves, and twigs. The most prominent feature was the long cranial crest which has had many potential functions ascribed to it over the years as more research has been done. Currently the functions include display, thermoregulation to keep the animal’s brain cool, and use as a resonating chamber for sound production.

illustrations:
http://www.lakepowell.net/sciencecenter/Parasaurolophus.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Parasaurolophuspic_steveoc.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Sketch_parasaurolophus.jpg

Why it makes my list:
The cranial crest. This one feature has been such an object of speculation it’s amazing how many ideas scientists have come up with. When it was thought that hadrosaurs were aquatic, it was supposed to be a snorkel or the attachment for an elephant-like proboscis for breathing, then maybe it was for salt glands, or for increasing its sense of smell so it could know when predators were approaching, or it was for combat between males for females, or it was used to bull its way through the brush. All of these functions have been discredited. Now it is believed that the crest was used for display (it may even have been brightly colored or had a skin-flap “flag” attached to increase the signal), thermoregulation, and as a resonating chamber for calling to other animals. This function interests me the most because modern day depictions of dinosaurs have a lot of roaring and hissing, and the idea of a creature with a call like a foghorn is something I find appealing.

Characterized perhaps by both a louder and more unusual voice than other dinosaurs, this might be the well-spoken, accessible player on every team who is so often interviewed by reporters. Or the loud obnoxious guy on the team with the booming voice that everyone else hates. I guess it depends on if you believe the calls were used more frequently for courtship behavior to attract mates, or some type of territorial signal to warn off other males from his territory, females, or his beer fridge.

1. Triceratops

Triceratops is my favorite dinosaur, ever since I was a kid. If I could have had any dinosaur as a pet, this was the one I always wanted. I adore the large predators, but I knew they would just eat neighborhood cats and I would get in trouble. An herbivore would be easier to control, easier to feed because I could just take him out in the woods, and since he walked on four legs I could ride him to school. I even had the name "Darwin" all picked out. Triceratops means "three-horned face" and is given to this animal for the three large horns on its skull (a skull that may have been longer than swven feet), one on the top of the beaked snout similar to a rhinoceros, and the other two above the eyes. Triceratops also had a large neck frill, a bulky body with four sturdy legs, and a short tail. This dinosaur was likely a browser on low vegetation such as cycads and brush, and was perhaps a solitary animal for the most part, with no real fossil evidence of herding behavior. This is the best known of the ceratopsians (horn-headed dinosaurs), with skeletal remains from many individuals and many life stages recovered. It was about 30 feet long and 10 feet high at adult size...or at least what we always THOUGHT was adult size, until just a few years ago.

A contemporary, similar sized, closely related dinosaur found in the same area is Torosaurus. It was very similar to Triceratops, roughly the same size, also a four-legged herbivore, with the most obvious difference being a neck frill that was much longer and had two large holes to lighten the weight. As more and more work was done, it was clear that as Triceratops aged, their neck frills became larger, and there was thinning in the same areas of bone that in Torosaurus were gone completely and the only stuff remaining was skin and associated connective tissue in those areas. It now appears that there is no such thing as Torosaurus at all, but it was just a name given to the fully adult form of Triceratops! (Fortunately for all of us who love Triceratops, that was the species that was discovered and named first, it is better researched and better known, so its name takes precedence.)

It is clear that Triceratops was preyed upon by Tyrannosaurus, although there is a lot of doubt about if there were ever the titanic battles that have been portrayed in television or film or books. Paleontologists aren’t even sure if the animal could have actually used its horns as weapons for charging an attacker, or if they were used in combat with other Triceratops. Likely they were used for display, more as moose show off their large antlers to each other when posturing, or rhinoceros beetles. The neck frill might have been used to protect the neck from injury from an attacking predator, or it too might have been used for display. Whatever the actual purpose, these were very impressive animals.

illustrations:
http://www.therugbyblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/triceratops.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Triceratops_BW.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Torosaurus_BW.jpg

Torosaurus, now thought to be the mature form of Triceratops
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Torosaurus_BW.jpg

Why it makes my list:
This has always been my favorite dinosaur, and it fascinates me that despite the clear similarities to a modern animal in the rhinoceros, and despite a fairly extensive fossil record in comparison to other dinosaurs, there is not only so much debate over how it lived and how it functioned as a living, breathing animal within its environment, but science keeps figuring out ways to get more information out of the fossils and the surrounding rocks and computer simulations to get a better idea of how Triceratops lived. The work that goes into figuring out this stuff gives me a lot of respect for the patience and the creativity of paleontologists.

If Triceratops were a hockey player, it would be the big lug who wasn’t especially fast, wasn’t especially nimble, wasn’t especially aggressive, but would stick up for himself and teammates against all threats. Not aggressive and goonish, but willing to fight if no one else would (even if he wasn’t very good at it).

Despite being gone for 65 million years, through human research and imagination dinosaurs as a group are as much dynamic living creatures now as they ever were, and that is the root of the fascination with dinosaurs that so many people have. Via our own efforts, we have brought them back to life almost as fully as a real-world “Jurassic Park” ever could, at the same time avoiding the risk of getting ourselves eaten. (But I still want a pet Triceratops to ride to work.) With each new fossil discovery our understanding of the world they lived in grows and evolves and becomes more vivid and richly detailed, and that is the fun of biology right there – figuring out how the heck all these crazy organisms actually WORK because some creatures are just plain strange.

Well, that’s more than enough rambling on my part. Thanks to Tyler for letting me throw so many multi-syllabic words around and talk about some of my favorite extinct animals.

Acknowledging Justin Abdelkader

2010-08-23T21:30:00.000-04:00

(left to right: Justin Abdelkader, Chris Osgood)

A measly $787,000 is going to keep Abdelkader in Detroit for at least two more years.

I wish I could have Ken Holland on retainer to negotiate and barter for me in real life. For instance, I just spend $4.20 on a small chocolate coffee thing at one of those trendy cafe places where you're required to be carrying a New York Times and at least five pounds in hemp-related clothing. It can't truly be worth more than $1.50. It tastes good, even if drinking it makes me feel like I should be eating a tofu bar and wearing a wool cap while I pretend like it's not 85 degrees out. I'm really no better than Brian Burke. The value of what I just paid for is obviously not $4.20, yet I paid it anyway. In a dream world, Holland would just stand behind me and shake his head 'no' whenever I turned around to ask for his approval on something.

Just as he does 99 percent of the time, Holland inks up another great contract. Now we get to do this, which is always fun:

Datsyuk - Zetterberg - Holmstrom
#44 - Filppula - Franzen
Hudler - Modano - Cleary
Abdelkader - Helm - Draper/Eaves/Miller/Ritola

Lidstrom - Rafalski
Kronwall - Stuart
Salei - Ericsson

Yes I know about Ruslan Salei signing with the Wings, I just hadn't acknowledged him. I do like the signing though. I was merely having an experiment with the site, which was to see if my prolonged absence would prompt a death threat. I succeeded, as you can see in the comments of the Modano post. It was all the better that it was an anonymous comment too. That wasn't startling at all. Nope.

My apologies that the posts haven't been very frequent this summer. To those that have emailed to gently nudge me awake to write more, I am mostly flattered and somewhat frightened at how much you care. If I didn't answer your email, it's because I'm awkward and didn't know how to respond, not because I'm ignoring you. I cherish your readership like Patrick Kane cherishes a Jell-o shot between a bartender's boobs.

Stay tuned later this week for the next round of the Red Wings Blogger Roundtable, which stops by TTD next.

Acknowledging Mike Modano

2010-08-05T03:15:00.001-04:00

You may have noticed that the words "Mike Modano" haven't made their way to this blog yet this summer. In fact I know that you've noticed because I have received multiple emails asking if I'm exclusively writing out of a time machine now. That is not entirely true. I do have a time machine that I typically spend the month of August in because I'm a nostalgic old sap who would rather re-live the 90's than read about Brett Favre's dick or give myself an ulcer arguing over old 3rd liners ("But what about all of your Bertuzzi hate from last year?" Easily justified: it's acceptable to be a hypocrite if I am the one being hypocritical. It's only a negative characteristic when others are hypocritical by nature. This self-profiting sense of one's own hypocrisy is hypocritical unto itself, thus canceling out the hypocrisy and forming an opinion that is exemplary of genuine logic because it's done intentionally in the name of irony. The only downside is that nobody takes me seriously and I just fucked my own brain into the 5th dimension.)

But I can't avoid this forever. Modano has become such a divisive force that Chris Hollis retired, "Prodano / Nodano" has enough groundswell to form its own T-shirt line, and some of our favorite writers are re-enacting the Civil War -- except now Hollis won't be there to resolve it. He usually plays Abe Lincoln when we bloggers get together and put on history musicals for Michigan youths. I usually play Dauber from the TV show Coach.

I'm getting sidetracked here, and I need to make up for lost time. I haven't taken one stance on Mike Modano the Red Wing since news first broke that he might be coming home, so let's lay them all out at once. The following issues are all fairly black and white; 99.9% of you not only feel strongly about them one way or the other, but odds are you have a lunchbox or a bumper sticker to show your approval or disdain either way.

MODANO IS WASHED UP

No he isn't. "Washed up" is entirely useless. Just now I ran a quick Sega projection of what his 2010-11 season will look like, and it's telling me 62 points and at least 20 TTD jokes relating him to Napoleon Dynamite. Translated to real life equates to roughly 45 points and 130 TTD jokes relating him to Napoleon Dynamite. Good gravy, look at that picture. You might be thinking that that's sort of the same production as #44 put up last season, but I don't pay you to think. I pay you to read what I write and show your co-workers because I'm more egocentric than you think Mike Modano is. By a LOT. Plus, he doesn't smell like 3-week-old tuna casserole fart like Bertuzzi does, and he's at least five times smarter. Then again, so is a tuna casserole.

MODANO AS A ROAD BLOCK TO THE RE-SIGNING OF YOUNG PLAYERS

Well, Darren Helm has now been booked for two years and will be a restricted free agent after that, so there goes his end of the argument. Abdelkader will re-sign for a similar amount, and then the five guys at the bottom of the lineup of forwards can claw at each other's necks for 82+ games. It'll be great.

Are you bummed out that they won't get long term deals? Okay funny guy .... why, exactly? I love Justin Abdelkader. I l-o-v-e him. In a totally, mentally disturbing and frighteningly gay way. When he and I were at Michigan State, I would follow him to classes that I wasn't enrolled in and sit behind him in hopes that I would catch a whiff of Pert Plus off of his curly golden locks. Are you still reading this? Why in the fuck are you reading this? I've probably been arrested since you opened this page. But, uh .... yeah, I'm not dying for him to sign a 13 year deal yet. He's not ready for it, and neither is Darren Helm. Yeah I said it, Herm.

MODANO AS A ROAD BLOCK IN YOUNG PLAYER DEVELOPMENT

You may have a point. Mike Modano playing 3rd line center is going to give Abdelkader and Helm less space to move up. If everyone stays healthy for the whole year, those two aren't going to see as much ice as they would have without this signing. But the only way that everyone stays healthy for the whole year is if you do more PCP than Scott Hartnell's mom and see it in a wild dream while you're passed out under the porch swing. Todd Bertuzzi is going to tear something in the first month of the season, I'm calling it right now. I will not shut any whore mouths because he's a fragile, older power forward who miraculously - MIRACULOUSLY - made it through 2009-10 relatively unscathed. Maybe Modano himself will get injured again, who knows. Dude looks half asleep anyway, he might miss ten games from excessive napping alone.

MODANO AS A PRIMA DONNA

He's got a hot wife who does Hollywood things, so naturally, he's full of himself. He's got it made and you don't. That dick.

I'm giving this an honest thought: I might just be oblivious to this. Maybe he just loves people looking at him and hanging out with Mark Cuban a whole lot and I haven't taken note. I just don't recall hearing negative things about him. He's never said anything or done anything that has really rubbed me the wrong way. He wants a few weeks to decide his future? That's fine. I take 20 minutes to decide on what to eat for breakfast, who am I to judge.

"MODANO, OR A 3RD PAIRING DEFENSEMAN"

We won a Stanley Cup in 2008, pretty convincingly I might add, with the same core defenders, only now Brett Lebda is swimming in money in Toronto like Donald Duck. I think a relatively healthy year cures all of that nonsense. But if I'm wrong and there's a quandary of defensive issues even with a healthy squad, my money is on the whole "team needs to be shaken up a bit" thing, which wouldn't be fixed with a 5th d-man anyhow. Only time and the expiration of no-trade clauses would fix that if you know what I'm getting at.

WILLA FORD OR Z'S WIFE

Honestly, I've just always wanted to have a picture on here where Bombay's head was used to censor nipples.

MODANO AS A LIAR

As in, "He said he'd make up his mind soon..... that's, like, a total lie." This one is my absolute favorite. I could not possibly, conceivably, imaginably give less of a fuck about this. He said the words "It's Detroit or retirement", and then proceeded to be linked with 3 or 4 other teams. Didn't care, and can't see why others did so much. Maybe he said that and a few other teams came calling. I can't remember the order of events, nor do I care to double check them. He said, "The sooner, the better," and then took a couple of weeks. Didn't care, and couldn't see why others did in the slightest.

Some of my dearest of fake friends, many of whom went off in this thread, decided they had enough...... as of July 20th. I have heard people and read people who have said that he's not worth the trouble if he's going to act like this. So he could be a valuable member to the team, could bolster that whiskey dick power play and could provide some forward depth to a team that really needed it last year, but it wouldn't be worth it because he was a little off in some newspaper quotes in fucking July. Yeah I can see that.

This is a good move for the Wings, and that scares me because I am almost always wrong. Luckily for us, Kenny is almost always right. We shall see.

March 26, 1997 -- The Liveblog

2010-07-29T05:16:00.002-04:00

This is the third installment of an indeterminable amount of Classic Liveblog posts here at TTD. The other two can be found by clicking the "Liveblog" lable at the bottom of this post.

*****

I'm watching this game thanks to the 4-disc Red Wings DVD set that I'm sure 98% of you own. This DVD box has pulled me through some tough times. When I can't sleep, I pop in the Igor/Triple OT game. When I want to laugh, I watch Patrick Roy getting pulled in Game 7. When I want to cry, I watch the Wings win the '97 Stanley Cup. When I want to jump over a three story house and piss gold onto a leprechaun's face, I watch Steve Yzerman's overtime winner. And when it's been two months since I've written about hockey and I can't think of anything else to write and revert back to a played-out gimmick, I put in the March 26th game.

It doesn't need an introduction. Mickey Redmond informs us that this was the #1 game voted on by Red Wing fans, over multiple Stanley Cups and thrilling playoff victories. It was Darren McCarty's fondest memory as a player. Books were written because of this game. Dogs and cats were named "Shanny" and "Marty" and "Mike Fucking Vernon". It ended wars on far away continents. Babies were conceived. By 2:00 AM on March 27th, Brent had sprouted a full beard at age 10. It affected people that much.

And it took place in the regular season.

1ST PERIOD

20:00 -- Steve Yzerman starts the game on a line with Tomas Sandstrom and Marty Lapointe. Sandstrom, for me personally, is by far the most forgettable Red Wing of the last 20 years. He actually had a decent regular season after being traded from Pittsburgh (9G, 9A in 34 games), but then went 0G, 4A in 20 playoffs games, and after that he was drugged and buried under Mike Ilitch's mansion alongside Manny Legace's corpse. I just don't have any recollection of the guy doing anything in 1997.

19:30 -- This game took place during that weird time period when Scotty Bowman would try playing Sergei Fedorov as a defenseman. Other notes for this game: Tomas Holmstrom wearing #15; play-by-play being called by That One Guy who did Wings TV games the year between Dave Strader and Ken Daniels; Mike Knuble's first NHL game; Bob Rouse AND Doug Brown were both healthy scratches (resisting urge to just turn the game off.)

16:31 -- The Avs take a 1-0 lead on a Valeri Kamensky one timer directly off a faceoff. The goal happened so quickly that the cameras had not yet turned back to the broadcast at the time it occurred, missing the goal entirely. Future NBC television crews could be heard in the production truck feverishly taking notes.

15:15 -- The game's first fight takes place between Jamie Pushor and Brent Severyn. The two combined for 32 PIMs. 20 of those PIMs were Severyn's, who led everyone by night's end. He followed up this performance by changing his name from "Brent" to "Dan the Beast" and growing a despicably incredible mustache.

15:15 -- If you got the previous joke, we would've made great friends in the '90s.

12:00 -- The most underrated part of this rivalry was Marc Crawford's hair. It's a complete travesty that I can't find one good picture of it during the peak of it's douchiness, slicked over to one side with his bangs nearly dangling over his left eye. Definitely "Backstreet Boys"-inspired. It looks like it was combed with Mike Keane's penis.

8:25 -- Larry Murphy and Keith Jones get tangled up in a minor scrap involving 10 to 12 players. With my astute lip reading skills I determined that Jones was complaining over Murph's breath, saying that it smelled like boiled ham and Brandy. Offended, Murph retorted by telling Jones that he's so dumb, he could make Brian Engblom look smart by comparison. Jones then said "That's not true", to which Murph said "Prove it." 13 years later, Larry Murphy won the fight.

1:38 -- Igor Larionov, who hadn't so much as frowned at another human being before in his life, nearly gets into a fight with Peter Forsberg as the two tumble to the ice. This led to some other stuff ....

.... Claude Lemieux, destroyed by Darren McCarty's fists and knees, was already
taken off the ice and headed to the locker room by the time Vernon took
Roy down. I had always been so caught up in the fight itself that I never
realized how quickly Lemieux was wasted. As far as images and memories go,
that one is unquestionably #1 for many Red Wings fans. This 15 second moment
in time temporarily put Mac above every famous athlete in
the lexicon of Detroit sports history. Hell he's probably still up there for a good number
of you.

1:38 -- Vernon's left hook put a gash over Roy's right eye. While his blood, along with Forsberg's and Lemieux's, was being cleaned up, we see a shot of Crawford yelling at somebody on the ice, "YOU HAVE NO FUCKING BALLS. NO -- FUCKING -- BALLS", while motioning his hands around his scrotal region. He then yells, plain as day: "....YOU FUCKING FAGGOT" ...... Yeeeesh. He completed the tirade by flipping his bangs out of his eyes.

2ND PERIOD

19:56 -- Immediately, Brendan Shanahan and Adam Foote engage in one of their 68 career fights against one another, and second of the night. The refs step in before Foote's nose can do any serious damage to Shanahan's fist.

19:25 -- Sergei gets the puck and flies down the right wing to set up a 2-on-1. Tomas Sandstrom is used as the decoy and Sergei's wrister ties the game at 1-1.

18:48 -- Another Valeri Kamensky slapper puts the Avs up less than a minute later to make it 2-1. I remember Kamensky for two things: scoring some big goals, and looking like he hadn't slept since 1991.

16:52 -- The third goal in less than three minutes comes from Marty Lapointe, on another 2-on-1, with a great feed from Slava Kozlov. 2-2 game.

16:40 -- Aaron Ward takes on Severyn as the latter's sweater and pads come off completely. Tomas Holmstrom then made fun of Mike Keane for blushing and those two squared off. Less than 24 minutes of game time have been played and both teams have combined for 27 penalties and 110 penalty minutes. Sadly this still doesn't beat out Todd Bertuzzi's per-game average from last season.

13:40 -- Rene Corbet scores on a breakaway to make it 3-2 Avalanche. (At this point, the DVD froze for like 20 straight seconds and I thought all of this typing was for nothing, and that one of my most prized possessions was now worthless. If you happened to be woken up at 4:15 this morning by what sounded like a train full of people being stabbed to death as they collided with an erupting volcano, that was me getting a little angry.)

12:36 -- McCarty fights with Adam Deadmaarahakdfadf oh how I hate typing that fucking name. Adam D., that's who it was. God I hated that guy.

6:26 -- A weird mishandle by Vernon leads to Colorado's 4th goal. 4-2 Avs now as the 2nd period winds down.

0:20 -- Maybe the biggest (actual hockey) moment of this game: the Wings were still down two with under a minute to go when Nick Lidstrom scored on the power play, making the score 4-3 Avalanche heading into the 3rd. They would need it.

3RD PERIOD

18:49 -- Kamensky finishes off the hat trick early in the 3rd period to once again put the Avs up by two goals, 5-3. As awesome as the first two periods had been, the Wings were still down two goals in the 3rd to their arch nemesis, and in danger of being swept in the season series, 4-0.

14:00 -- If Kirk Maltby is best known for being an agitator (I'm leaving room in case you want to bring up the '50 goals in Junior' thing. I know you want to), then this game might have been his masterpiece. By the end of this game, I didn't like the guy. I mean I did, and do of course, but holy Moses ..... what an annoying shit. I wish he never lost that edge.

11:33 -- Lapointe nets his second goal one second after a power play expired to make it 5-4 Colorado. One of 80 clutch goals from Marty during the '97 season.

10:57 -- Moments later, Shanahan turns the game on its head with a back-handed bank shot off of Roy's left pad to tie the game. The place erupts. If the bad blood and fisticuffs weren't enough, this had actually turned into a game thanks to a relentless Wings squad. It's 5-5 and the momentum is fully in Detroit's favor -- finally -- as they were badly, badly out-shooting Colorado by this point. (Weird fact: Mike Vernon got his 300th career victory in this game, busted open Patrick Roy and endeared himself to millions of Wings fans .... all while stopping 14 of 19 shots.)

4:00 -- Not relevant, but still: I'm writing this from my parents' house, where my grandmother also lives. From her room I can hear faint snoring and a Girls Gone Wild infomercial. One of the weirdest moments of my life. Finishing up...

OVERTIME

It only took 39 seconds. The Professor to Shanny to Mac for a slam dunk of a one-timer. Igor deked around two guys like it was nothing, and Shanahan (who aside from tackling Roy at center ice and dueling with Adam Foote played a PHENOMENAL game) put a bullet pass right where it had to be. McCarty finished off an inconceivable night that began with Lemieux's blood on his knuckles and ended with him as the #1 star.

18 fighting majors. 144 penalty minutes. 1 turtle.

TTD Minute - Tyler's Gone

2010-07-17T00:32:00.002-04:00

TTD Minute -- The Brett Lebda Investigation

2010-07-10T17:04:00.002-04:00

TTD Minute - Glen Sather Orders a Pizza

2010-07-03T02:48:00.001-04:00

TTD Minute - Episode III

2010-06-21T03:42:00.002-04:00

In this week's episode, Brent delivers our thorough recap of the 2010 Stanley Cup Playoffs.