12/11 - Quick Links
Apparently, Versus believes the Wings are taking on the St. Louis Blue Jackets in our annual New Year’s Eve game. Thanks to Abel to Yzerman for the heads up.
Former Detroit Red Wings player Igor Larionov was in town promoting his wine collection and also attended Sunday’s game.
Red Wings legend Ted Lindsay believes that Gary Bettman is to be blamed for the attendance problems in Detroit. While I do agree that the NHL uses the Wings’ success to help strengthen other weaker teams (in terms of popularity), I can’t say that it’s a good reason for the attendance issues.
“We had it for a couple of years there with Colorado and Detroit, but Bettman has taken advantage of Detroit because of it being a great hockey city and it being a well managed hockey team,” Lindsay said. “These people, they don’t want to see Columbus. I understand what he’s trying to do, he’s trying to use the strength of Detroit to carry on some of these weaker teams.”
Lindsay says the hockey purists in Detroit who have followed the team since the days the Red Wings played at the Olympia want to see traditional rivals like the Canadiens and Maple Leafs more often.
“We have wonderful hockey fans that have been season ticket holders for 40 or 45 years,” Lindsay said. “Now they’re talking about how (the Red Wings) aren’t sold out, but they’re not sold out because these people aren’t renewing their season tickets. It’s not that the interest in hockey isn’t there, it’s that these people hate to be thought of as being taken advantage of.”
Game recaps from the other viewpoint from Sunday’s 5-2 victory over Carolina…
Getting back to the topic of “dumbâ€, it wasn’t Carolina’s most cerebral game of the year. They had 2 “delay of game†penalties for shooting the puck directly out of the rink. They also had a bench minor for abuse of the officials. These types of penalties are avoidable and not only does it put extra pressure on the lowest rated penalty killers in the league, it also takes away from any offensive continuity when they repeatedly spend so much time in the box. Chad LaRose apparently was trying too hard to impress on his home turf as he took 4 minutes of penalties himself, one for a hook and one for a needless shove to the back of a Wing during a line change that was called interference. Again, in my opinion that’s just not smart hockey. That’s also 10 minutes of minor penalties for LaRose in just the last 2 games.
After playing a very solid sixty minutes in Montréal on Saturday night, Carolina had very little time to rest and prepare for the best team in the NHL. Against Detroit on Sunday, they looked good. “Good” wouldn’t be enough, though. Detroit won 5-2, which looks like a blowout. It was, however, very much in question until the final moments. Although they were badly outshot, Carolina held in there and they should be happy with the amount of effort.
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