Can Wings Maintain Consistency Against Flames?

The Wings have finally snapped what amounted to a 4-game winless streak by handing a 2-1 defeat to the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night.  They did so by finally getting back to playing their system: strong, relentless pressure to seize and control the puck throughout the game, limiting chances against and maximizing chances for.  Now that they've done so, the question is whether or not they will maintain that style of play this evening as the Red Wings invade Calgary for a date with the Flames.

Detroit's match against Calgary is another instance where the result should be clear. On paper, it is: Calgary is hovering near the bottom of their division, while a win tonight would put the Wings just 2 points back of East-leading Toronto (Excuse me a moment, I need to recover from having just wrote that).  Without that requisite work ethic and signature style of play running at full speed though, the task will be made all the more difficult.  Calgary also now has 2 players who know the Red Wings' system very well in goalie Joey MacDonald and forward Jiri Hudler.  I've always noticed a trend of teams having our number somewhat after acquiring our old faces (San Jose over the last few years, anyone...?)

As long as Detroit sticks to the plan Mike Babcock has laid out for this team and commit 100% for a full 60 minutes, the chances of victory are high, and that's good because the Wings cannot afford to slip too far from the top early in a very new and unfamiliar setting in the Eastern Conference.

Enjoy the game, Wingnuts!

Depleted Detroit D Earns Valuable Point VS Sharks

I'll admit it: I came into this game with low expectations.  I mean, come on, our top defensive pair had Kyle Quincey on it.

With Niklas Kronwall still out (playing it safe after a mild concussion), and Jonathan Ericsson returning to his wife's side as she delivered a baby girl last night, the Red Wings found themselves with a notably younger D-Corps than they would have liked against the sizzling San Jose Sharks on Monday evening.  Averaging over 4 goals and over 40 shots a game, it seemed like the match-up from hell for a Wings team that has been lax with the puck and giving up nearly as many shots on average per game.

The first period began, and things seemed to play out as you'd expect: We were hanging on but getting out-chanced, but 20 minutes came and went, and the game was still scoreless.  Then came the second period...and then the third, and all throughout, San Jose kept pressing, waiting for the big defensive gaffe that would give them a great chance to take the lead.

But it never came.

This young and still-developing group of defensemen, including prospect Xavier Ouellette who was making his NHL debut, held the line and did not relent in the face of one of the highest-powered offenses in the league--and while the defense kept things steady in our zone, the Detroit offense went to work applying pressure in San Jose's zone.  We didn't get as many chances as the Sharks, but we kept it close and soon we saw regulation time end, still with no score.

Overtime would come and go, with still no deciding goal.  The defense having done its job, it was up to a chosen three and Jimmy Howard to get it done in the shootout.  Datsyuk made the move to beat Antti Niemi, but fired his shot just wide.  Alfredsson's attempt was gobbled up easily by the Sharks netminder, which came from pretty much straight on.  Directly after Alfie's shot, Logan Couture beat Howard to give the Sharks the advantage and match point unless we converted in the 3rd round.  Todd Bertuzzi, however, got Niemi down and out the best.  Pump-faking a slapshot, then making a quick deke from backhand to forehand and trying to outwait Niemi, Todd stared at a gaping top half of the San Jose goal.  Bertuzzi got a little lift on his shot, but Niemi, showing an admittedly remarkable feat of athleticism, managed to kick his right pad up from on his stomach and just got his toe on the puck, kicking it away for the save and the win.

The effort was good, the determination was good, and the discipline was...well, pretty good. I won't say it was great because we again saw a penalty parade that started half a minute into the game, and gave San Jose way too many PP chances.  Our PK was perfect, sure, but we shouldn't be taking that risk.  All in all, a valuable point moving forward is better than nothing, as Detroit is currently in sole possession of 2nd in the East at 13 points, behind only Pittsburgh with 14.

The Red Wings will play next on Wednesday, and Daniel Alfredsson faces his old team for the first time, when Detroit takes on the Ottawa Senators at the JLA.

And the Academy Award Goes to...

To be perfectly honest, I had a day that sort of forewarned me to not get too excited about the game today.  It was one of those days where everything just seems......off.  Sure enough, that carried directly into my viewing of this evening's match between the Detroit Red Wings and the Phoenix Coyotes.

The Wings made all the right moves to begin the game, coming out to an early 2-0 lead with goals from Pavel Datsyuk and Todd Bertuzzi.  The game looked like what you would expect: the rested Wings were taking advantage of a weary Phoenix team that went to a shootout the night before.  It was all going swimmingly.

Then: Mike Smith.

I'm still having trouble with this part, so I apologize if I'm forced to get brutally honest and some virgin ears suffer for it, but damned if I can figure out just how the hell things went the way they did.  To summarize, Datsyuk let fly a wrister toward the Coyotes net, which Mike Smith turned away with his arm...and then keeled over like he'd been poached through the chest with a goddamned harpoon (UPDATE: Upon closer examination, it looks like the puck didn't even make contact with Smith's body, it went off his stick, making this whole thing even more ridiculous...).  The refs did NOT blow the whistle, nor did they show any intent to, yet when Brian Lashoff fired the loose puck into a gaping Phoenix net, the ruling was no goal.  In the end, it was ruled that, because the goalie was "injured", the goal did not count......yet, after only a couple minutes, Mike Smith miraculously came back from the dead and kept playing.

HMM...doesn't sound like he was injured, now does it? So if he wasn't INJURED, and the ruling was no goal due to INJURY, the goal should count.  But oh no, that simply cannot be! As such, the game continued, but the atmosphere completely shifted.  The biggest problem with how the Mike Smith incident was handled wasn't so much the goal being disallowed as much as it was the boost of morale it gave the Coyotes, who would have otherwise been deflated by what would've been a crippling goal.

Instead, we got to witness the wheels come right off the big red machine on all 4 corners.  5 unanswered goals lifted the Coyotes over the Wings for a 5-2 victory, the biggest insult coming by way of the great actor Smith himself, who managed to launch the puck down into the empty Detroit net with 0.1 second left in the game.

As a follower on Twitter said: Not bad...for a dead guy.

Wings Post 'Monstrous' Win over Bluejackets

Although the score may not have been imposing, the Monster between the Detroit pipes certainly was.  Jonas Gustafsson played a remarkable game this evening as the Red Wings defeated the Columbus Bluejackets 2-1.  Jonas faced 37 shots on goal and turned away all but one, while Daniel Alfredsson finally found the twine for his first goal as a Detroit Red Wing.  Todd Bertuzzi rounded out the scoring to give the Wings the lead once again after Columbus had tied the game at 1 apiece.

Overall, a pretty good effort from the entire team, though I am still very concerned about our constant parade to the penalty box.  The refs can only be blamed so often before one has to stop and really consider the possibility that Detroit is being lax on discipline with regards to not making infractions.  Thankfully, of the 3 PP chances we gave the BJ's, they only converted one.

Next on the docket is a date with the Avs, and a chance to humiliate Patrick Roy once again now that he is a coach out in Colorado.  I eagerly look forward to the opportunity.