Wings 3, Ducks 5
It’s almost 1am and it’s been a long day so this will be brief. I’ll post a more in depth recap tomorrow with quotes and other bloggers’ postgame reaction.
Dan Cleary scored twice. Big Bert got a goal and an assist (yay), but a costly turnover (boo).
JS Giguere had a good game. We couldn’t score on two 5-on-3 power play opportunities (and they weren’t short ones either). We turned over the puck creating some costly errors.
Ducks came out strong in the first and looked fantastic. Hasek had a rough start to the game and didn’t quite bounce back like he usually does. Wings played a decent second and had plenty of chances in the third, but just couldn’t get them past Giguere. Oh, goal five was an empty netter.
I’m happy that we were able to split in Anaheim, but after Tuesday’s game AND Pronger out of the lineup, I really thought we could’ve won tonight. Like the past two series, it’s now a three game series and the Wings have regained home advantage. I better hear a rockin’ Joe on Sunday afternoon! Go Wings!
P.S. The Detroit Pistons defeated the Chicago Bulls tonight and have moved on to their fifth straight Eastern Conference Finals. Matt @ Detroit Bad Boys has a game recap up on his blog.
While this series has largely been described as a battle of the backcourts, the Pistons never would have won this game were it not for outstanding play by their bigs: Tayshaun Prince had 17 and nine, coming through with bucket after bucket when it mattered most with eight points in the fourth. Chris Webber scored just five points but grabbed nine boards, including four offensive, in just 23 minutes. His counterpart Antonio McDyess added five points with 10 boards in 25 minutes.
But perhaps most impressive was the performance by Rasheed Wallace, who scored 16 with 13 boards and two blocks — not to mention two consecutive scores waved off (one for a loose ball foul, the other for traveling). But Rasheed more or less kept his cool, and Flip Saunders’ leap of faith of leaving Rasheed in the game despite foul trouble paid off on both ends of the court. He still spends a little too much time around the three-point arc for my tastes (he finished 2-8 from long distance), but he was completely locked in for all 39 minutes he played.
Natalie @ Need4Sheed:
The Pistons closed out The Bulls in Chicago to go to their fifth straight Eastern Conference Finals. It wasn’t easy for Detroit, who played this one like they really wanted it, beating The Bulls on their home court 95-85. The game was close in the first half, with The Bulls leading at halftime, but the Pistons came out strong in the third quarter and kept control of the game no matter what The Bulls seemed to throw at them.
Update: At the end of the game, I was totally bummed out. Hockeytown Cafe had grown quiet. But two sights cheered me up and gave me a reason to laugh amidst the Wings’ loss.
1) Octopus. Two guys game out to pick up an Octopus that had been tossed out on the ice. One guy looks like he goes to try and pick up the octopus. But he touches it and jerks back like its sliminess was too much. The other guy then uses a shovel to scoop it up. But the guy repulsively jerking back was hilarious. Especially after you see “ice girls” at JLA grab two of them with their hands. Be a man and just pick up the octopi!
2) Did anyone else catch the “Fire Millen” sign after the conclusion of the game on Versus?
Unfortunately, seeing a “Fire Millen” sign in Cali is crazy funny. That’s how much we hate Matt Millen (the GM for the Detroit Lions) in Detroit. And since we can’t bring those signs into Ford Field, it seems Lions’ fans bring them into other arenas across the country.
Deuce @ Duck’s Blog:
But you have to give Detroit credit, they made a game out of it. At 3-3 I was a little worried, not too much but just a little bit. You have to admire a team that comes back like they did, given the situation. Emotions were high, the Ducks HAD to win this game and Detroit knew it, to come back from two goals down is big in my book. They got two more power play goals tonight, which is too many, any power play goals is too many.
Anyway, this is a Ducks blog, so lets move on now shall we.
Dave @ Gorilla Crouch:
So the Red Wings simply have to play with better focus and effort than they did in the first period. So long as they do they should be competitive. They’ve split the games in Anaheim to regain home ice advantage. While losing a game where Chris Pronger was suspended is obviously a missed opportunity they have to realize that so long as their effort is where it needs to be they are still in good shape in the series.
Matt @ On the Wings:
The Wings came back to tie it at 1 and at 3 and outshot the Ducks 39-22, but I never really thought they were in this game. Credit goes to the Ducks for playing their hearts out in the absence of argubly their most important player, but had the Wings played like they had in Game 3, the result still might have been different than it was. It was a golden opportunity for the Wings to take a stranglehold on this series, and they blew it. And the Ducks have momentum, though it may not mean much in this series, if its history is any indication. It’s now best two-of-three, with the Wings having home ice advantage. It’s not all bleak, not by a long shot, but it’s going to be a heck of a battle. I know this team can do it, it’s just that games like last night’s aren’t exactly encouraging.
IwoCPO @ Abel to Yzerman:
Wasted Opportunity. And not just one of them. Several. Start with the absence of Sasquatch and a depleted blue line that couldn’t even pretend to put up any form of resistance from ten minutes onward in the third.
Then move to two 5-3’s that netted nothing.
And continue that thought when you consider what a 3-1 lead would have meant to the Wings, with 11 straight potential series clinching victories to their credit.
And we move to another pivotal Game 5 in Hockeytown. Good news? Yep.
Detroit has outscored their last two opponents (both “favorites”) 9-2 in Game 5’s.
Steph @ No Pun Intended:
Thanks to Pookie and Schnookie’s IBP game review of the last game in the series, and the number of times they mentioned it, I was paying a painful amount of attention to Dom’s waterbottle and where he put it (not where it belonged, 90% of the time). Unfortunately or me this led to also noting Giguere’s and all I have to say is: oh come on drink from your damn bottle like a normal person. Every time I saw him with that stupid looking STRAW I felt a new stream of unpleasantness slip from my tongue. I don’t even know why, it just IRKED me. Of course that was my general mood in Giguere’s direction for most of the evening. Give me Ilya!
Dan Wood @ the OC Register:
The extra-long break could work to the advantage of either team, as far as rest goes. Psychologically, I think it could help the Ducks, give them a day to come down from Thursday’s emotional victory that came without suspended defenseman Chris Pronger, and another day to prepare for the next one. Coaches Mike Babcock of Detroit and Randy Carlyle of the Ducks each like to talk about the “next game being the most important one of the season.†Boy, isn’t that the truth?
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One Response to “Wings 3, Ducks 5”
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May 18th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
The guys with the octopi cracked me up too - I about choked when he first pulled back in disgust and then tried to scoop it up and dropped it…man, you’d think they’d be more used to ocean life out there in Califonia. That fire Millen sign though, I didn’t notice that, and seeing it here just made my afternoon.