Wow... A Whole Lot Of Red Wings News!

A whole lot has happened in the first few weeks of the NHL season. A whole host of injuries, a .500 record and one point squeezed from one of our losses. A few call ups and one signing, and lastly, some expectations have not been met.

Injuries:

Injuries have sort of become a story of this season. Before game one, there was already a line to the infirmary. Bertuzzi had mono, except that he didn't. Helm strained his back lifting weights, had an MRI (nothing showed), played 1 game and the team looked good, except that he had a setback and hasn't played since. Gustavsson, like a whole lot of other Wings, has a groin injury. Colaiacovo has a shoulder injury, a product of his glass bones and such. White was cut by Jimmy Howard's skate blade and has a "laceration." Ericsson was gone for a few games because he stepped on a puck in practice. I could go on and on about the injuries. Awesome news today... Smith is out 3-4 weeks with a shoulder sprain.
Injuries can decimate a roster, and to some extent, they have done that to our beloved Wings. The crazy thing for me is that, on another team, this could make the team not function. I am not hitting the panic button just yet, I could be insane for that but it doesn't seem like the right time to do so.

Part of the reason that I'm not hitting that button is...

Call Ups and Signings

With injuries come call ups from the AHL. We called up Brian Lashoff, an undrafted prospect who was never really supposed to be good. Surprising all of us, he performed well and was becoming a very dependable defenseman, until Jakub Kindl came back from injury and took his spot. Kindl's time in Detroit is now in the "put up or shut up" phase. If he doesn't pan out this year, it could be his last in Detroit. On a day when we had five, yes FIVE, healthy defensemen, we signed Kent Huskins. Huskins is becoming a very reliable D-man. We had a scare when David Backes hit him hard in our 5-3 win over St Louis on Friday. Luckily, he's okay and it was more a scare than a legitimate threat.

This is me... I'm so excited, I just can't hide it -- Feel free to finish
that line in your head.

Just yesterday, Sunday, the Wings recalled Tomas Tatar and Petr Mrazek. I AM HAVING A HARD TIME CONTAINING MY EXCITEMENT ABOUT THIS!!!! (<--- don't know if you could tell...) Tatar has made some noise with his dislike of how much time he has spent in the American Hockey League. Mrazek has rocketed from the OHL to the NHL in a matter of four months. He's coming up to Detroit having just had is first AHL shutout. Tatar is arriving in Detroit, despite the fact that Gustav Nyquist is leading the Griffins in points. Tatar, I believe, was called up to be inserted on the 3rd or 4th line. Nyquist would not suit that role, which is the reason that he was not called upon.

Those Who Need To Step Up

Kronwall, Quincey, Cleary, and the third/fourth line.

Kronwall: I think he's trying too hard to be Lidstrom, and frankly, it's not working for him. He has at least one minor penalty in every game so far, so that needs to end and he needs to get back to this...

KRONWALL'D

Quincey: It's all bad. He's had one, or two, good games but.... 

Moving on:

Cleary: He's just been bad in all areas of the ice. It's not that Buckets is not doing well, it's just that he's not been the same since he injured his knees last year. I have a very distinct feeling that it's either he gets better really soon, and he stays, or he keeps going this way, and is gone relatively soon. 

OVERALL:

I think that the team will be fine. If injuries to a big chunk of the roster only gives us a .500 record, I don't think that it is panic time. I believe that the call ups we have and Kent Huskins, the signing we made, will prove to be a good thing for the team going forward. I have to believe that the team will step up and stop being so bi-polar or else I will go insane. I'm keeping the faith in my team.

Until next time...

LET'S GO RED WINGS!

Wings Fall to 1-2-0 With Loss To The Stars

Not much to analyze, the Wings were (once again) out worked for most of the game. If that's what the second night of a back-to-back, and the third game in four nights, is going to look like... I don't even know what else to say.

Here's What I Liked:

• JAMES TIBERIUS HOWARD: No other explanation needed. It is a shame that his great performance wasn't echoed by the rest of the team.
• Damien Brunner: He was really hungry for a goal and has been since day one. He played well and once again, was all over the ice. It saddens me to think that his first NHL goal, EVER, came in a loss and with 3 seconds left.
• Henrik Zetterberg: Really tried to put the team on his back and win.

Here's What I Didn't Like:

• The Defense (Lashoff and, sometimes, Smith excluded): The D corps needs to get themselves together and help Howie out. If I were Howard, I would be going Hulk on the defense. Seems to me Jimmy had about a 5%-10% shot at a save on the first goal and no shot at all on the second. That falls on the D and the rest of the team.
• The Offense: Dallas is not that great of a team. We could not score for 59 Minutes and 57 seconds... in a 60 minute game. Just think about that. Was Lehtonen really that good? Maybe. I'm thinking it was partially because the Wings have forgotten how to score. Where is our offense? I would have thought all 3 players on the top line playing during the lockout would help, apparently I'm wrong.
• Special Teams: 
• Our PP is 0-15... 'nuff said
• Our PK is barely 50%, if even 50%... 
• Tom Renney needs to work on this

Overall, not an awful game... Saturday's game, wait there was a game Saturday? Anyways, what may, or may not, have happened Saturday was awful. This was only marginally awful. There was a little effort sprinkled into the tired-ness and lack of playing well.

I don't know about you but, I'm keeping the faith. A team with this much talent cannot be consistently bad for much longer.

Until Next Time...

Let's Go Red Wings!

December 7th... Griffins Win 3-0 and I Get Two Hockey Sticks

Going to a game at the Allstate Arena in Chicago means that you will most likely be one of a handful of Griffins fans, surrounded by Chicago fans. Let me tell you, it's always a great time at games in Chicago, especially if you aren't a fan of the home team.

Here's the rundown, along with some things that are fun:

The Wolves had a kinda cool pyrotechnics show for their players to skate out to. Of course, lots of cheering and lots of booing when the Griffins skated out.

First Period: McCollum made some great saves and I was pretty impressed with his goaltending, maybe Mrazek is keeping him motivated to improve. I must admit though, when I found out it wasn't Mrazek, I was a little disappointed. It was much the same disappointment as when I found out Conklin would be in goal on my birthday last year, we won that one too. The Wolves' one and only power play of the game came when Mini Chicken Parm, Ferraro, got booted for interference. The PK went to work and shut it down. Grand Rapids really carried the play the first period and I was sitting by their bench, so not much was down by me. I took that as a great thing because down by me was Tom McCollum and the place where I wanted no hockey puck to end up, the back of the Griffins net. There was an ALMOST goal late in the first, would have made it 1-0 good guys, Joakim Andersson appeared to have scored but, turned out he kick it in and you can't do that if you want the goal to count. GR also had a PP in the first, nothing came of it and at that point it really seemed that goalie Matt Climie was keeping Chicago in the game. By the end of the first, GR had outshot the Wolves 15-5.
End 1st period: Nothing but a couple of goose eggs :)

Second Period: 50 seconds into the second frame, Chicago took a penalty and ten seconds later they paid for it. Nathan Paetsch fed Adam Almquist and Almquist took it from there, one timed it past the goalie and in after deflecting off a Chicago defender. Same story here, Griffins carried the play this period and Chicago didn't get a shot on goal for 10 minutes.
End Period: Good Guys 1 - Chicago 0

Third Period: The Griffins had a shot advantage of 26-9 going into the final frame and they were not going to let that stop them from adding to their lead. Four minutes and some change into the period, Andersson found Ferraro who shot the puck right into the goalie, Andersson went in for the rebound though and it paid off for him. 2-0 Griffins. Brendan Smith got checked in the corner, broke his stick and was disgusted with the fact that it happened. He got a new one and all went on from there. A mere two minutes after the Griffins drew blood the second time, they got a third on a beautiful play by Nyquist and Tatar (The Souse - Thanks Kevin). Sousequist made it 3-0 Good Guys, and I got to gloat to the not so nice women beside us.
End Game: Griffins 3 - Chicago 0

Lets talk about my favorite players:
Nyquist: Great all night, looked like a true NHL player. Darn lockout!
Tatar: Man, am I impressed with him. That guy is a serious difference maker out there! All night I was looking at my dad every time there was a great play and then I realized that most times Tatar was right in the middle of it!
Mrazek: He was charting face-offs all night... :(
Smith: He played very well. Made good defensive choices and didn't try to stretch himself too far. He was really disgusted with his broken stick.

Here's all my not so good pictures... I tried

Fun Stories:

• Near the end of the second period, the GR equipment manager said after the game he'd give me a stick and started pointing out sticks. I must have nodded extra vigorously when he pointed to Smith because he decided on that one. The thing is though, it broke in the third period. He looked at me all sad and mouthed "it's broken, still want it?" and of course I said yes. He taped the two pieces together and tossed them over the glass. Broken B. Smith stick now in my possession? YEAH!!! 
• The woman sitting next to us said she wouldn't want the Brendan Smith stick as her kids were so jealous. My dad goes, that's a Brendan Smith stick, without the lockout, he'd be an NHLer. She goes "pfft, I still don't want it." My thought: Your loss, and you're dumb!
• B.Smith and Nyquist both smiled at me... No pictures of either one but, it happened I swear :)
• The equipment manager obviously felt bad about the fact that the stick he promised me was broken because the next thing I knew, Souse's stick is coming over the glass to me. I could not stop smiling and the kids next to us were jealous again. Ferraro had thrown them a puck but, a puck is not the same as two, TWO(!), game used sticks! My mom looked at them and, being her adorable self, said "You don't want that, your mom said so..."
• After the game, Chicago fan told me to go back to Grand Rapids... The thing is though is that I'm not from Grand Rapids, I live here. Whoops! I guess I just know who the better team is.