Garret Craig

Coming soon…

Shocked? Devastated? Call it anything you want. The Red Wings and their fans left the JLA after 12:30am this morning, tired and wounded.

Back to the third period; The Red Wings clinging to a 3-2 lead, the Joe Louis Arena loud as ever, singing chants of “We Want Cup!”. Michel Therrien calls Fleury to the bench with a little over a minute left in a last stitch effort to keep their season alive. With the Stanley Cup in the building, the Detroit Red Wings were seconds away from winning it all. Then….. BAM! 30 seconds on the clock, and Maxime Talbot stuffs in a rebound and the Red Wings and Penguins are back to square one. The crowd was silenced, and the Penguins had squashed the phenomenal momentum of the Wings.

It was off to Overtime #1. Detroit out-shot the Pens 13-2, but Fleury was incredible, keeping the game even. In the 5th frame, the Penguins once again were out-shot, and out-hit, but the Red Wings once again failed to score. The game dragged on into the third Overtime period, where Jiri Hudler was sent to the box for 4 minutes for accidentally clipping a Pen in the face. Though the Penguins had already failed to convert two OT powerplays, it didn’t take very long for Peter Sykora to send everybody home.

I sat in my living room as thousands of others did: Shocked. Devastated.

Now I’m not going to be pessimistic about this thing. I think Detroit will come out with lot’s of energy on Wednesday night, and the Penguins won’t have enough of whatever it was they had last night. So as much as I would have liked to see the Wings win a series at home, I’ll settle for Detroit in 6.

The Detroit Red Wings are aiming for their 4th Stanley Cup in 11 seasons. The Pittsburgh Penguins are trying for their 3rd in franchise history. The Pens go in with just 3 players who have previously lifted the cup. Detroit has 10, 2 of which being their starting and back-up goalies, Chris Osgood and Dominik Hasek respectively.

The Penguins will be led by 20-year-old captain Sidney Crosby, while Detroit will ride the experience of 38-year-old captain Niklas Lidstrom, who has one the cup with the Detroit Red Wings 3 times in 97, 98, and 02.

The average age of the Detroit Red Wings is a still-young 32.3. While the average age of the Pittsburgh Penguins is a much lower 27.9.

I believe this will be the biggest factor as the Red Wings win the cup in 5 games.

The Dallas Stars avoided being swept by the Detroit Red Wings Wednesday night as they beat the Wings 3-1 thanks to some biased “new era” NHL refereeing (Yes, I’m still trying to get over it). But an unbiased read into the statistics says that the Wings will finish up the Stars on Saturday at the Joe.

I’ll start with something that seems to be on everybody’s list already; Marty Turco. His career numbers against the Red Wings are far less than good, 3-13-5. To make things worse, the majority of his problems have been at Joe Louis Arena, where he is 0-9-2 with a goals against average well over 3.

Then comes Playoff history. The Dallas Stars have gone 0-3 in their franchises’ attempts to come back from a 3-0 playoff deficit, however, after game four, they are 3-1 in their attempts to avoid being swept, which they did Wednesday night.

When leading a playoff series 3-1, the Detroit Red Wings have a 14-2 series record and an 8-8 Game 5 record. The Stars, when trailing a series 3-1, are 0-8 in their comeback attempts and 4-4 Game 5 record.

The Stars and Wings may both be .500 in this situation going into the game Saturday, but if you factor in Turco’s struggles, it’s going to be tough for the Stars to even keep this close.

I’ll take the Red Wings, in game 5, 3-2 in OT.

The Red Wings kept up their momentum from Colorado last Thursday into the Joe tonight, as they handled the Dallas Stars with ease winning 4-1 and taking a 1-0 series lead.

Penalties killed the Stars in Game 1, as Detroit went 3 for 7 with the advantage (stats were skewed by two Dallas penalties in the final minute). Dallas was 0 for 4 with the man advantage.

Johan Franzen remains hot, recording the game winning goal at 15:34 of the first period which gave the Red Wings a 2-0 lead.

Chris Osgood refused to slow down, stopping 20 of the 21 shots he faced–plenty of which were quality scoring chances. Meanwhile, Marty Turco stopped 27 of 31 shots as he continues his win-less drought at the Joe Louis Arena.

The Red Wings win streak continues to 7, while Chris Osgood remains unbeaten in his 7 starts. Detroit also has not dropped a contest at home in 6 games. They will try to continue all of these streaks Saturday night as they try to extend their lead to 2-0 at the JLA.

So much for a “rivalry sparking playoff duel”. The Wings tossed the Avs to the side Thursday night, winning 8-2, and finishing off a four game sweep of Colorado.

Johan Franzen was sensational, scoring a hat trick by the end of the second period. Franzen has now scored 26 goals in his last 26 games going back to the regular season on Sun Mar 2 @ Buffalo when he recorded a goal and an assist while filling in for the injured Thomas Holmstrom. The “Mule” now leads all playoff scoring with 11 goals. Daniel Briere of the Flyers is a long-shot second with 8 goals.

Mikael Samuelsson and Henrik Zetterberg each recorded two goals of their own in the rout.

Detroit will now go to the Western Conference Finals for the second straight year. They will face either Dallas or San Jose. Tired Wings fans would prefer Dallas, who currently leads the Sharks 3-1 in their series which continues Friday night @ San Jose.

We’ve seen it in the last two games especially, the Colorado Avalanche are taking stupid penalties, and the Red Wings aren’t letting them get away with it. But it isn’t just the PIM’s that have handed the Avalanche a 3-0 deficit in Round 2, they may actually be trying too hard. I noticed this especially in last nights 4-3 Wings win, the Av’s are overplaying the body, sending two or even three men to hit a Red Wing player, leaving goal scorers like Johan Franzen, Pavel Datsyuk, and Henrik Zetterberg wide open in front of the Av’s goal.

Jose Theodore isn’t doing much to help them out either. Last night’s game was the first against the Red Wings when he played the whole 60 minutes, and he still gave up four goals in the loss.

The Wings will go into game four Thursday night confident and aiming for the sweep. The Wings come in with a 4.3 Goals Per Game Average in this series alone.

Saturday was great day for the city of Detroit. The Red Wings squared off with the Avs in Game 2 of the 2nd Round, and dominated from the first whistle to the final horn, winning handily by a score of 5-1. Johan Franzen scored his first career hat trick, and Chris Osgood was spectacular once again, leading the way for the Wings to a 2-0 series lead going into Denver Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, 1.34 miles away, the Tigers and Armando Galarraga took a no-hitter to the 6th inning, only to have it erased by a triple with two outs. Galarraga finished going 6 2/3, with 2 earned runs on just a single hit. After a Los Angeles comeback late, the Tigers got back on top and finished the game 6-4, leaving Tigers fans happy and eager to find the Wings’ score.

It couldn’t all be good though, as all this happened, the Detroit Lions made barely a ripple in the NFL draft with the 17th pick (why did they have to win so much last year?). They selected Gosder Cherilus
. Has anybody heard of him before? All I can say is, at least it wasn’t a wide receiver.

Below is a video I made Wednesday in response to the NHL’s new rule concerning a $10,000 fine for Octapi swinging.

It was recently featured in a Yahoo sports article which is awesome! It already has over 20,000 (Apr. 26) views.

I have been all over advertising this petition in an effort along with avid Wings fan and season ticket holder Ryan Morin to reverse this illogical NHL ruling.