Injuries start to pile up
You can tell that it’s playoff hockey when the injuries start to pile up.
1) Tomas Holmstrom will miss game one for sure. After getting accidentally high sticked in the eye/face in the last game of the series against Calgary, Homer is out with blood in the eye. That certainly doesn’t sound pleasant.
2) Brett Lebda will also miss game one due to a sprained ankle and symptoms from a concussion he suffered as a result of a suckerpunch by Calgary’s Langkow in game five of that series.
3) Mikael Samuelsson is apparently playing with a broken hand (according to Toronto radio).
4) Kyle Calder is also playing with a broken hand (according to Toronto radio).
5) Henrik Zetterberg did not practice today or yesterday and was seen with a heat pad on his back. Head coach Mike Babcock says that with his age (he’s 26 by the way), he needs some rest. I bet he’ll still play, but that back is definitely still bothering him and that’s definitely not good.
6) Niklas Kronwall is out with a broken sacrum and missed the first round. He could potentially return if the Wings win this series, but I don’t see Babcock putting him in the lineup after Andreas Lilja has been playing so solid (which is such a weird thing to say). And as much as I love Kronner, he can be a turnover king so it probably wouldn’t be a fantastic idea to bring him back after he’s missed so much time.
Ansar Khan has the latest injury news at his blog on MLive.com:
Update from practice Wednesday: Coach Mike Babcock officially declared that Tomas Holmstrom (eye) and Brett Lebda (ankle) won’t play in Game 1 vs. San Jose Thursday, but he didn’t rule them out for Game 2. Henrik Zetterberg didn’t practice, apparently giving his sore back a rest, but Babcock said it’s not a concern and he’ll be ready to play in the opener. Babcock wouldn’t say who’ll replace Holmstrom on the top line with Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk, but indicated he’d like to keep the No. 2 line intact with Johan Franzen, Robert Lang and Todd Bertuzzi. Mikael Samuelsson seems the likely candidate. The Sharks, incidentally, have no injuries among their regulars.
I feel guilty…
Yep, I will not be watching the Red Wings game live Thursday evening. Which is shocking. Don’t worry, I will be recording the game. And my dad will be sending me text messages with updates during the game. But I won’t be watching it live (gasp).
Why? As you know, I’m an intern for the Plymouth Whalers (OHL). They are currently leading the Western Conference Finals 3-1. They lost to London Tuesday evening, 4-1. The next game in the series is Thursday evening. In London, Ontario.
Yep, I will be taking a road trip with three co-workers to cheer our Whalers on tomorrow night. Yep, I feel guilty. If the Whalers don’t win the series tomorrow evening, I will be mad that I missed the Wings game (live) to go to that game. Hopefully, the Whalers will win and the Wings will win.
So there won’t be a game recap immediately after the game or probably the following morning. I won’t get back to Michigan until 1am after the Whalers’ game. Depending on how exhausted I am, I may watch the Wings’ game after I sleep. But I may watch the game right when I get back. Either way, the recap won’t be until after I sleep and watch the game. Hopefully, I’ll be happy with the results.
Playoff Predictions Round 2
Well, I got almost all of my round one predictions right concerning the series winner (7/8). I was not so good at picking the number of games it would take (2/8). I was spot on for my Wings prediction all the way around so that’s always good to know.
So who shall I pick for the second round? Well, it’s a hard decision to make. Like last time, I won’t give any explanations because I haven’t seen enough of the teams (especially in the East) to make a really educated decision.
Eastern Conference
(1) Buffalo Sabres vs. (6) New York Rangers - Sabres in 6
(2) New Jersey Devils vs. (4) Ottawa Senators - Senators in 6
Western Conference
(1) Detroit Red Wings vs. (5) San Jose Sharks - Wings in 6 (please be true, please be true)
(2) Anaheim Ducks vs. (3) Vancouver Canucks - Ducks in 5
Wings’ round 2 schedule
The schedule for the second round has been made for all the series (Detroit vs. San Jose):
Series “K” Time (ET) #1 Detroit vs. San Jose Network
Thursday, April 26 7:30 p.m. San Jose at Detroit VERSUS
Saturday, April 28 3:00 p.m. San Jose at Detroit NBC
Monday, April 30 10:00 p.m. Detroit at San Jose VERSUS
Wednesday, May 2 10:00 p.m. Detroit at San Jose VERSUS
* Saturday, May 5 2:00 p.m. San Jose at Detroit NBC
* Monday, May 7 TBD Detroit at San Jose VERSUS
* Wednesday, May 9 TBD San Jose at Detroit VERSUS
I will be going to Game #2 on Saturday where I’ll be sitting in the second row (lower bowl) near center ice!
I’m also very excited that the NY Rangers vs. Buffalo Sabres matchup will be on NBC this upcoming Sunday at 2pm so I can finally watch Brendan Shanahan in the playoffs! Like I’ve said before, Go Wings! And go Rangers in the East!
Canucks beat Dallas in Game #7, 4-1
Crap. I wanted the Wings to take on the Stars because they are closer so games would be earlier and travel wouldn’t be quite so hard on our team. Oh well, hopefully the Wings will take their newfound confidence and take this tough second round series. I will be rooting for the Canucks to beat Anaheim. While I expect the Ducks to win, Roberto Luongo could seriously make the difference.
Wings 2, Flames 1 (2OT)
Last night was a killer. As the time slipped away in the third with the game tied at one, my stress level started to rise. I watched the game with my friend who I went to Saturday’s game with and she was pretty much laughing at me freaking out. During the entire OT scenario, she was sitting on the edge watching the game and I’m clutching my pillow with my eyes peeking over it and praying that we don’t do anything stupid. I live in a quiet dorm on campus and I’m pretty sure everyone on my floor heard my friend and I yell out in joy after Franzen’s goal. It was a beauty.
Since I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night (after the game, I had to stay up until 3am to finish a paper), I’m not going to say much in terms of postgame reaction, but I did compile what everyone else is saying. And I will not talk about the next series’ opponent (aside from saying go Dallas!) until it has been decided because I just want to savor this series win before the stress sets in once again.
But before I do, Robert Lang scored AND screened Kipper on Johan Franzen’s series winning goal? Langer redeemed himself in a big way last night. Plus, both of our trade deadline acquistions (Todd Bertuzzi and Kyle Calder) had assists last night. Oh and one other thing, in the intermission John Keating asked a player (Lidstrom?) where the Wings should try to shoot on Kipper. He didn’t have an answer. I yell out “above his glove - top right corner!” And where does Franzen score? Top right corner. Victory is sweet baby.
Source: JULIAN H. GONZALEZ / Detroit Free Press
Reactions via the media
Mike Babcock in the Detroit Free Press:
“I haven’t been in Detroit very long, but our fans, people at our rink, the media — I don’t know if they think we’ve got some sort of disease and they think we’re going to fail or whatever, but to me we carry that around,” Babcock said. “This team isn’t about’ ‘03 and it isn’t about ‘04 or ‘06. It’s about this year. We have a good team. We’ve been a determined group from the get-go. People said we weren’t going to be very good and we are good.”
Johan Franzen via the Detroit News:
“It’s unbelievable, what a great feeling,†Franzen said. “They were really tired and we tried to take advantage of it. I don’t think Kiprusoff saw me.
“Right now I can’t describe the feeling. It’s great to get this series over with. They were a little more tired than we were. We were playing in their end most of the overtime.â€
Kipper played great this series and definitely kept Calgary in the games (via Calgary Herald):
Johan Franzen potted the winner at 4:23 of the second extra session. The killing blow came on the Wings’ 55th shot of the evening directed at Miikka Kiprusoff, and their 255th of the series. Calgary’s corresponding numbers in that category were 21 and 129.
“He faced enough shots for probably three series,” said veteran Flames defenceman Rhett Warrener. “We didn’t do enough to support him. You can’t say enough about Miikka. I tell you what — I’m certainly glad he’s playing behind me.”
“He’s been our backbone the whole year,” said rookie right-winger David Moss, “and he kept us in it again tonight. I can’t say enough about him.”
Kiprusoff certainly did his part, and then some, to keep his cohorts in the series — despite the losing effort, the Finn had a spiffy .929 save percentage — but the Flames were overmatched in most other categories.
Nick Lidstrom and Kris Draper’s thoughts via the Detroit Free Press:
Nicklas Lidstrom, on conditioning: “The first round is always the toughest, to kind of get used to going from regular season to the playoffs. In a way, I think it helped that we faced some adversity. We won two games, went on the road and lost two…It was great to see the team come out and play so strong in Game 5 in Detroit. Coming out here, I thought we played our best game tonight.â€
Kris Draper, on avoiding a third straight loss to a team from Western Canada in the playoffs: “We weren’t really buying into the past failures. This is a much different team than the last couple years in the playoffs. We feel we’re bigger, stronger. In this series, the way we competed, the way we kept getting pucks in deep, finishing our checks, it was just a matter of time to wrap this thing up.â€
After Brett Lebda was injured on Saturday, Detroit called up Kyle Quincey who had just finished playing in a playoff game for the Grand Rapids Griffins (AHL) in Winnipeg. He hopped on a one hour flight to Calgary and played pretty well considering it was his first NHL playoff game and he didn’t have the luxury of playing with the team over the past month to develop chemistry. He didn’t make any stupid mistakes that I noticed and that’s all that matters (via Detroit News):
In six games with the Wings this season, Quincey had one goal and no assists while averaging 11 minutes of ice time.
Quincey was plus-1 and played 13:55 with two hits and two blocked shots.
“Those games helped me,†Quincey said. “I didn’t have time to be nervous (Sunday). This is unbelievable, being part of all this, being in this building. I was never part of anything like that (the excitement at the start of the game). Now with the victory, it’s unreal.â€
Alex Tanguay (via Calgary Sun):
“It stings right now,” said Calgary left-winger Alex Tanguay. “It’s definitely frustrating. We felt from day one of the season we had a good enough team to play against anybody.
“We have the goaltender to go as far as we’d have liked. Definitely stings right now.”
Michael Rosenberg, columnist for the Detroit Free Press:
And mostly, the Wings will get a big psychological boost — not just for winning a series for the first time in two years, but for winning a hard series.
With their season on the line, the Red Wings crushed Calgary at home — and maintained their poise when the Flames used the third period of Game 5 to practice for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. They then won an elimination game in Calgary, where the Flames won a league-high 30 home games this season.
If the Wings’ power play goes through another drought, the Wings will remember that it happened in this series, and they came through. They now have evidence that if they crash the net and play 60 minutes of relentless, intense hockey, they can beat any goalie, because Miikka Kiprusoff is as good as anybody.
Flames’ blogger reactions
I’d first like to thank all the Flames’ bloggers for sharing their opinions with the Wings’ fans and I really did enjoy reading all of your blogs. Thanks for the links and good luck with making changes to your team in the offseason. I hope you saw BTJ as a biased, but solid read and thanks for visiting!
Duncan at Flames Blog:
Mercifully, 2006-07 is over for the Calgary Flames. A lost opportunity with this roster, especially one enjoying the services of Miikka Kiprusoff in his prime, and hopefully we just witnessed the final condemnation of the Jim Playfair administration.
Outshot 55-21 on home ice in a must-win game? Ridiculous. Tonight was the final bit of evidence against coach Jimmy, and it was just a Kiprusoffian miracle that extended that to the second OT.
I just want to say that I really enjoyed reading Duncan’s blog over the series. He really said it how it was whether it was a positive or a negative about his team’s play. I’ll certainly be reading his blog throughout the next season as well and I wish I had found it earlier before this series.
Walkinvisible at Hit the Post:
and when all was said and done after detroit scored in 2OT, i received his text that said “are you OK ?” and i can honestly say i was. cause it’s the end of this excrutiating era.
playfair best be gone.
go flames 08, and go rangers 07.
Kyle at The Real Deal Hockey:
Well, I think first and foremost, you have to hand it to the Red Wings for their execution of their gameplan. I would say in every aspect of the game, they for the most part had their way with the Calgary Flames. 3 of the 4 lines were constant scoring threats and just general pains in the asses to play against. It’s a bit of a lark to call the Cleary - Draper - Maltby line a ‘3rd line’ because they were a true two-way force and arguably made the difference in the series. MVP for Detroit might have to go to Danny Cleary, I would say he was their best all around player in the series.
Wings bloggers reactions
Matt at On the Wings:
Congratulations to Calgary on a hard-fought series. And a special nod goes out to Miikka Kiprusoff for his otherwordly performances at key points in the series. While not quite as good as his 2004 show, Kipper was pretty much the sole reason the series was not shorter. You have a gem, Calgary.
My condolences to Flames fans. Believe me when I say that I know what it’s like to get your hopes up about a team only to have them dashed in a kind of betrayal of trust. And to the Flames bloggers, it was a pleasure reading you guys over the past couple weeks. For whatever reason, I’d not had exposure to the Calgary blogosphere before and it was good to learn about the high quality of it.
More reaction will be posted as I see them…Go Wings!
Wings win!!!!!!!
I am so elated right now that the Wings won the series. In Calgary. And they’re heading to the second round baby! It was a beautiful goal by Johan Franzen in 2OT to win the game and consequently the series!
Unfortunately, I have to stay up tonight to write a paper so no game recap until tomorrow after 5, but the Wings won!!!!
I have to say that Kipper played absolutely amazing. The Wings outshot the Flames, 55-21.
I also have to give Robert Lang props for scoring a big goal to tie the game up. Definitely did not expect him to get the goal. Plus Bertuzzi and Calder each got an assist, but on different goals.
View from your playoff seat
JP at Japers’ Rink has had a great feature going since the start of the playoffs. He has asked everyone to send in photos of them watching the game (whether at the rink or in your living room). You can view all the photos collected thus far at this link.
I sent my photos to JP this morning and you can see the view from my playoff seat at the Joe yesterday afternoon here. Go Wings!
McLennan suspended for 5 games
Calgary Flames backup goaltender Jamie McLennan has been suspended for five games by the NHL according to sources at TSN. McLennan had slashed Red Wings’ Johan Franzen a couple times in the leg and was consequently called for a penalty. During stoppage in play, McLennan proceeded to whack his goalie stick into Franzen’s stomach. Fortunately, Franzen just lost his breath and will play tonight.
As Franzen had said, it didn’t really matter how many games McLennan was going to be suspended for because he certainly wasn’t going to play anymore unless Kipper got injured. Had Franzen been injured by that slash, I bet the suspension would have been greater.
According to the NBC broadcast, Flames’ head coach Playfair has been given a $25,000 fine and the Flames organization has been fined $100,000. It’s not that $125,000 will make a difference financially to those involved, but at least it sends some sort of a message (even a weak one) that the play Calgary displayed late in the game yesterday was not acceptable and will not be tolerated by the NHL.
According to the same TSN article, Wings’ defenseman Brett Lebda will not be playing tonight.
Lebda will not play tonight for Detroit because of an injury. Lebda is said to be suffering “headaches.”
His “headaches” resulted from a suckerpunch from Langkow. I’m still hoping that the NHL suspends Langkow for one game especially since he wasn’t even given a penalty for that dirty play during the game. Say all you want about Lebda’s low hipcheck, punching someone in the face while he’s on the ice injured is not the appropriate way to retaliate. If he is not fined or suspended, I will be really disappointed by the league and I hope Big Bert (Bertuzzi) steps up for his teammate and challenges him to a fight (a fair fight - nothing dirty).
In the past 24 hours…
I’ve made quite a few posts over the last 24 hours and I’m going to link to all of them here so no one misses out on a topic they had hoped I talked about. The links are in order of most recent to a day ago.
The Posts
Proud of the Wings - A post about how pleased I was with the Wings’ play yesterday and that they stayed classy.
More on the dirty plays - I collected reactions from Wings and Flames bloggers as well as Detroit and Calgary media into one long post about the dirty plays by Calgary last night.
Lebda injured - As of right now, it seems like Wings’ defenseman Brett Lebda is out with a concussion and possibly a knee/ankle injury as well.
Wings 5, Flames 1 - My game recap and thoughts from actually being at the game.
Bernie makes the papers - An update on the “Bernie the Rally Bird” story as our efforts made it into the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.
Proud of the Wings
After the first two games of this series, I was happy and excited about how the Wings had played.
After games three and four, I was a bit discouraged to say the least and had definitely hopped aboard the stress train.
After game five? I’m proud of my team.
The Wings played with class. They scored on the power play. They scored shorthanded. Twice. Numerous players got in on the action (not just one line like in games three and four). Chelios. Zetterberg. Datsyuk. Cleary.
I saw Datsyuk and Cleary hit Dion Phaneuf. I saw Bertuzzi basically swing Dion down to the ice like he was a light toy after Dion tried to throw a few quick ones. The Calgary Herald described that moment like this:
At JLA on Saturday, with the upper hand in this suddenly-interesting series at stake, the Flames landed harder than rag-doll Dion Phaneuf after the Ol’ Canoli Truck, Todd Bertuzzi, body slammed him to the ice with such casual ferocity you could hear Eddie Whalen up there in the big wrasslin’ ring in the sky, squealing: “Now THAT was a ring-a-ding-dong-dandy!”
I’m not ashamed of how they played last night and I am very grateful that they didn’t start fights or any nonsense after some of the dirty plays that Calgary did.
I just hope and pray that the Wings show up tonight and cleanly win tonight’s game. I know they have to be pissed off at the stupidity by Calgary, but just get the job done and come home. We can’t afford anymore injuries (especially if Lebda ends up being out for the rest of the playoffs with a knee/ankle injury).
And as Rob Burgundy (from the movie Anchorman) would say, “Stay classy, Detroit. Stay classy.”
This clip from NBC has a recap of the game. If you go to 2:15, you’ll get to see Bertuzzi lay down the law. I’ve been quite pleased with his play over the last two games and we’re starting to see him be more physical and I like it.