From the Detroit News...

"He's OK and he's going to play.  He had some tests and they came out fine." --Kenny Holland talking about Brad Stuart

Of course, we don't know what kinds of tests were done, because we don't even know what was hurt on Brad in the first place.

Lebda and Meech will be used as the extra forwards...which should make things interesting.  Datsyuk and Zetterberg better be prepared to log a lot of ice time this evening.  Hopefully, Eaves and Cleary will be good to go by Wednesday when the St. Louis Blues roll into town.

At the VERY latest, they better both be back on Friday.  We wouldn't want Herm coming all the way up here from Brazil to see anything but an ENTIRE team giving it their ENTIRE effort, now would we?

Movie poster is coming soon, and it's one of a kind.

From Khan(!)...

Franzen-Datsyuk-Holmstrom
Bertuzzi-Zetterberg-Filppula
Miller-Helm-Williams
Draper-Meech

Lidstrom-Rafalski
Kronwall-Stuart (Questionable)
Lebda-Ericsson

Howard (starting)
Osgood

Actually, that's what I deduced from rather vague descriptions from Ansar today.  The only thing that is set is the top two lines and Howard in net.  No Eaves and no Cleary.  But we do get to see Derek Meech again...

"My upper back is pretty tight, muscle-wise; my neck muscles are tight."--Patrick Eaves 

"It was real bad on Saturday, it's gotten a lot better, so I'm hoping it gets that much better."--Dan Cleary (talking about his injured groin) 

Whatever happened to Stuart to list him as questionable was unkown to Babcock until today.  Apparently, he's getting checked out but we don't know if he's playing or not tonight.

Deja vu?  The injury bug seems to be biting again.

From faceoff.com...

They return tonight to a familiar place where they’ve often felt abandoned, betrayed, unloved.

A home, after all, is reputed to be a man’s castle. Home is supposed to be where the heart, not the heartbreak, is.

On more occasions than they care to recall of late, the Calgary Flames have trudged off the ice at the end of a deflating evening with the sound of catcalls clanging like incessant church bells, in Dolby stereo, between their ear lobes.

Poor Calgary.  But if you noticed in the game against Detroit, the fans didn't wait until the end of the game to bring out the "boo birds".  Here's what Eric Nystrom had to say about the Calgary faithful...

“We don’t feel great — we’re in a tie game and our fans our booing the power play"

There's more, and keep in mind this quote was from a few days ago:

"It’s not like we’re 20 points out. There’s 13 games left. We’re three points out. If that’s out, I don’t know — geez — what these people expect.’’

Nystrom sounds a little combative, doesn't he?  Probably not a good idea to say things like to the press with player-turnover being what it is in Calgary these days, but then again...

Anyway, the coach took  had this to say about the team's abysmal home record...

“We started out OK, but it’s become a real issue most of the season. As coach, I’ll take the responsibility. But the last few games here, we’ve been more assertive at home, harder to play against, and that’s been encouraging. Detroit the other night was a 1-1 game right until the end against another desperate team and I thought for the most part we competed hard."--Brent Sutter

When asked about the booing, he had a much more diplomatic response:

“I don’t really give it much thought, to be honest. I’m concentrating on what’s going on in the game. I do understand how passionate our fans are. They breathe and bleed red. They care. And you want ’em to care. I know they’re frustrated. Hey, we’re frustrated, too."

The Red Wings can have that effect on teams and they're fans.  Good thing the Flames didn't lose to Pinky's Wild on home ice yesterday, they might not have made it out of the building.

The Red Wings haven't really been experiencing this despite being only 3 points clear of Calgary.  And I find that a little interesting.

On one side you have the Detroit fans, spoiled for years getting less than what they expected.  On the other side, you have the Calgary crowd, growing more and more frustrated after years of early round exits since making the Stanley Cup Finals.

Now I know this has been mostly a frustrating season for the Wings, but I can't recall a time when Joe Louis Arena was actually booing the Wings.  I suppose the crowd at JLA may have been unhappy with a performance or two from time to time, but do you think we've ever made the players feel like Eric Nystrom?

Is it a matter of class?  Is it faith in the organ-i-zation?  Is it pure unadulterated passion for their team?  My easy cop-out answer would be a gray mixture of all three plus other factors.

What do you think?

...It's a long walk from Pittsburgh to Detroit for Rosby and the gang (they're flightless birds, you know).  It's the first time the Pens have entered the hallowed halls of Joe Louis Arena in nine months, but CBC is claiming that the stakes are still high, even though this isn't game 7.

This season, only one of these perennial powers is a lock to return to the playoffs.

The Red Wings look to further solidify their post-season hopes with a third consecutive home victory Monday night when the Penguins return to Joe Louis Arena (7 p.m. ET).

Just making the playoffs, let alone a potential third straight Stanley Cup finals meeting with Pittsburgh (42-24-6), will be on the minds of the Detroit players in this contest.

Pittsburgh is in a dog fight with New Jersey for the Atlantic Division crown, but this game means a whole lot more to the Detroit Red Wings.  Battling for the right to play beyond mid-April should be a little more motivating than wondering if you're going to be the #2 or the #4 seed in the Leastern Conference.

There are 19 guys on Detroit's roster who were at least part of the organ-i-zation last year in June watching Cindy dance around with the Cup.  How many fans that were at that game 7 will be in attendance tonight?  You think they want a little retribution?

Detroit has not played well returning from West Coast trips.  I'm guessing that most teams that cross over 2 different time zones to play an inter-conference game would have some trouble the first game back as well...Eastern Conference teams don't have that problem...we do.  Oh well.

If playing the Pittsburgh Penguins can't shake off the "travel legs", especially facing them at home, then we might as well pack it in right now.  The Penguins will be hungry, the Red Wings need to be hungrier.

Retribution...take it.

Sorry about the mix-up with the titles.  Here's the post again.

We're inside of three more weeks of regular season score watching.  Thank the lord.  Yesterday went a little something like this...

Whoops.  Calgary started Vesa Toskala yesterday against the Wild.  The Flames needed that win to keep pace with us...they lost.

I've just given up on the notion that we might get ANY help with Nashville.  It's just not going to happen.  Trotz has his boys rolling right now.  I think it was last week when I started saying that we should set our sites on some other team. 

Look at those Phoenix Puppy Dogs go.  Just wait until you see the standings. 

I thought San Jose would at least wait until the play-offs before falling apart, but they lost their lead in the Pacific Division for the first time in a long, long time.  Maybe they're thinking that if they start playing like crap now, the shock of their early play-off exit will be lessened somewhat.

Now that we've established that Nashville will probably win every game from here on out (just to spite Detroit), we can start looking at Colorado as the team to catch.  But with the jostling going on in the top three spots, who knows what seed would be best for Detroit.

And the standings are...

It's looking like the young teams in Denver and LA are finally starting to come back down to Earth.  I thought this was going to happen a long time ago, but as the more veteran-based teams like Detroit and Nashville are picking up their game, they may also start picking off the play-off seeds (Nashville already has).

This is going to be an interesting last few weeks.

Well good morning, gang.  Interesting few days, no?  How is everyone's cardiovascular health?  Any heart attacks after Friday and Saturday's thrilling finish?

Two goals scored with less than half a second to play on back-to-back nights.  One to steal a point, the other to steal the win.  The Red Wings were definitely playing the role of "cardiac kids"...kind of like watching Fernando Rodney try and close out a Tigers game.  He'd get the save, but not before loading the bases with nobody out.

The reason that Chris and I weren't around this weekend was because we were playing in a hockey tournament in Brighton, MI.  It was the first time that I had ever played the role of GM in organizing the team, collecting money, getting jerseys made, taking care of lodging for some, the whole nine yards.  Needless to say, we were able to watch the entire Edmonton game at the local pub, and watched the end of the Vancouver game at the bar just about the rink.  I received an excited call from my sister informing me that for some stupid reason, FSN had actually mentioned this blog during the telecast while doing a profile on The Namesake, Darren Helm.

I haven't seen the footage yet.  I didn't even know that Ken Daniels talked about it until I got into the office this morning and read your comments and of course, I can't go to youtube for at least another 8 hours so I will just have to wait.  But I thank you all for the kinds words and for posting the link as well.  As of this morning, the game was still not available on my FS Red Wings menu via Comcast.

Thanks to "dummy" for supplying the screen shot

-End of Red Wings talk in this post (just a warning)-

For any of you even remotely curious of how mine and Chris's tournament went, we blew out the first team we played (officially) 13-0 on Friday night, went out and partied until after 1 AM despite the fact that we had a game around 11:15 the next morning.  We then got womped by the tune of 6-1 in that morning game.  We rebounded nicely Saturday night and took that contest to finish as the #2 seed in our pool.  Sunday morning had us pitted against the #1 seed in opposing pool.  We pulled off the 5-4 upset and earned a berth in the finals We earned another shot at the team that kicked our cans on Saturday morning.

The Sunday afternoon championship game started out nicely with one guy scoring two quick goals.  He was then ejected from the game after yapping at the ref following a marginal slashing call.  We had already lost one player who drove back to Grand Rapids so he could be at the banquet of the high school team that he coaches...so now we're down two guys.  After we went up 3-0 heading late into the second frame, all hell broke loose behind our net as Chris was repeatedly charged into by the punks that we were playing.  One of our guys ended up with an opposing player on top of him wailing away at the top of his head while the official just stood there watching.  When we asked the ref why he didn't step in to stop a helpless player from being pummeled, he said, "I wasn't going to step in by myself".  There were two officials on the ice, neither did anything to break up any of the three skirmishes that happened.

We ended up winning 4-1, received charming championship beer mugs, and yes, my co-author was even voted MVP of the game by the opposing team. 

So all-in-all, this was a great weekend for me.  The Red Wings took three of four possible points and ended up 2-0-1 on their final trip out West, and I came away with my first tournament championship as General Manager/Player.

I'd like to take a second to thank everyone for their support of this site.  Without you guys, none of this would have been possible.  Red Wings fans (especially NOHS readers) are without a doubt, the greatest fans in all of sports.  We'll keep doing our best to NOT let you guys down.

The Edmonton Oilers and now the Vancouver Canucks have proved the most difficult teams to create the pre-game movie posters for...

Yesterday, we turned to the obsolete documentary, today we go with a title that just rolls off the tongue...

March 20th: Detroit Red Wings @ Vancouver Canucks

I was going to put Emma on Eva Mendes, but really, wouldn't that be an insult to Emma?

Let's end this Western Canada trip with a bang...the good kind.

Western Canada teams have some pretty bad names in terms of finding movies that have something to do with their logo.  For this must-win game, we have to dip into the world of documentary to provide you with today's pre-game movie poster.  If Edmonton thinks they're going to play spoiler tonight, here's what I think...

March 19th: Detroit Red Wings @ Edmonton Oilers

IMDB user review: A good production of a potentially catastrophic topic.

Nothing else need be said.

Check this out from detroitredwings.com...

Two Red Wings' draft picks have been selected as finalists for the 2010 Hobey Baker Award honoring college hockey’s top player.

Maine forward Gustav Nyquist and Wisconsin defenseman Brendan Smith are among 10 student-athletes that are finalists for the award.  

Nyquist, a sophomore, is on the dean's list majoring in finance, and Smith, a junior, topped the WCHA in goals and assists by a defensemen.  Not bad, boys.

The "Hobey Hat Trick" of three finalists will be announced on March 31, and the Hobey Baker Award winner will be announced April 9 from Detroit's Ford Field, during the Frozen Four.

Rhyming titles make me twitch.  Anyways, here's a snippet from cbc.ca in regards to tonight's big game:

"The way I look at it, Detroit's in a dogfight for the eighth spot.  They come in here and play the 30th-place team and lose, imagine how good we'd feel. You take little victories like that as a sign you want to be here, you want to be playing. This is our chance to be in a playoff game. I think you have to look at it like that."--Ryan Whitney

Earlier in the season, the Red Wings played slump-buster with almost pride-like proficiency.  Well, they're going to get a chance to do so again tonight...

Detroit is likely to face Edmonton rookie goalie Devan Dubnyk, who fell to 0-8-2 with a loss to Minnesota this week.

Upsetting the Wings would be quite a first win for the 23-year-old netminder.

Oh, you had to go there, didn't you CBC?  This already had the making of a "oh god, don't you lose this one" game.  But you know what?  Dubnyk will be third different goalie Detroit has seen against the Oilers, and both Khabibulan and Deslauriers have beaten the Wings.  That's right...Detroit is 0-1-1 against the last place team in the league this year.  You want to bust a slump, Detroit?  Bust that one.

You've all said that you're taking this game seriously.  You've all said that you need to play with play-off like desperation.  Now go out there and do it.