So our friend Michael Petrella and the boys over at The Production Line caught wind that The Namesake and Brett Lebda decided to spend part of their Olympic Break in Las Vegas.  Here's a tidbit from Rob's version of what The Namesake's diary might look like...

It's a funny thing....oh diary...when you save a plane full of people from imminent death. They just get attached. On the flight out here from Detroit Metro, all I wanted was a quiet seat with an exit row. I'm didn't even bother hoping for the hot stewardess, the free bag of pretzels or the usual rub/tug I get on Red Wings One. I'm a simple man and I like simple things, like the sound of my refrigerator door opening and the the smile I get from the construction guys on Telegraph when their backhoe breaks down and they need me to bust up a mile of concrete with my bare fists.

There's a lot more to the story, so click the ink if that snippet caught your interest.  Needless to say I'll be keeping an eye on it...

Now, let me preface this by saying that I'm not low enough to enter my own contest that will in all likelihood, be judged by me.  But since I'm not revealing other contestant's entries at this time, I thought I'd share with you a pic that I snapped on Sunday evening.

This will give you an idea of what I'm looking for...

Snapped this one from my cell phone as I sat at a light in downtown Grand Rapids.  Yeah, even I'm impressed with the quality of the image my little LG Voyager captures.  What's great about this mile-marker is that it has both A.) "The Future Mrs. Nightmare on Helm Street"'s Red Wing (Valterri Filppula #51) and The Namesake (#43) in one sitting.

What's not great about this number is that I've put that many miles on my 2008 Chevy Malibu 2LT in just 20 months of ownership (plus the 500 miles I've put on it since Sunday).

Anyway, only Darren McCarty's number of days to get me your entries as we get closer and closer to H2H Day.

Again, send all entries to with the subject "I See 43".  No limit on entries per person. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Just like in the summer time, when Red Wings news gets slow, we have to dig into the obscure.  I found this little ditty about the new football coach at Central Michigan University at Central Michigan Life:

The interview was conducted by sports editor, Andrew Stover...

Stover: You grew up in Dearborn, right outside of Detroit. What was your favorite sports team, now, growing up? You said you were a Wings fan.

Enos: I like all of them, but my brother (Gary) and I, huge Red Wings fans. My wife (says) constantly, “Are you talking about the Red Wings again?”

He texted me this morning, “Wings tonight.” So we always know when they’re on. We watch them, so (we’re) avid there.

Well, there you have it.  Dearborn natives are a...unique bunch.  But hey, they brought us the likes of Brian Rafalski and John Vigilante.

It's always nice to find Wings fans in unusual places, isn't it?

Some of you may remember back in December, I made myself a little Exel file that I called the "DRW Point Prognostication Generator" to see where each player's point total would be continuing at the pace they currently were on.

You can compare the numbers I came up with today to those I did back in December, if you so choose.

Here is a guide to what the headings mean:

• # = Player number
• GP = Games played
• G = Goals
• A = Assists
• Pts = Points
• GPG = Goals per game
• APG = Assists per game
• GL = Games left to be played
• PG = Projected goals (in the games left to be played)
• PA = Projected assists (in the games left to be played)
• PPts = Projected points (in the games left to be played)
• Total Points = sum of PPts + Pts

Injuries obviously have played a factor in both what players will actually get, what they were predicted to get, and what they are now predicted to get.  But the fact of the matter is that if our top scorer has a total of less than 70 points, that, my friends, is sad.

One thing of note when comparing the two predictions from December to now, Datsyuk's predicted point total has changed by one stinking point...creepy.

I apologize for my complete lack of posting yesterday.  No, I'm not taking the Olympics off.  There's still plenty of stuff I can come up with to keep you mooks (relatively) entertained until the Wings play again in March.

Yesterday was a long day.

It started out great.  I left the house at about 6:15 AM as per usual, but instead of heading up US23 North, I hopped on I-96 East and headed to downtown Detroit.  I drove right up to the Gordie Howe entrance and pulled into the player parking lot at Joe Louis Arena.  There, my insider buddy was waiting for me.  I was a little late because people were driving like idiots the whole way down.  But nevertheless, we hit the ice and skated from 7:00 to about 9:00.  I usually do this on a couple Friday mornings a month, but the Friday skates have been to crowded so I decided to head in on Tuesday.

Upon leaving JLA, I received a text from "The Future Mrs. Nightmare on Helm Street", telling me that she is extremely ill and is heading into the doctors for some tests (for the second time in just a few days).  The last time she went to the doctors, things got dicey and she was stranded there waiting for a friend to come pick her up (she lives just outside of Grand Rapids).  So, being the good fiance that I am, I drove all the way from Detroit to Grand Rapids to be with her when she went in to see the doctors.

We sat around and waited (as people tend to do at medical centers).  The TV was apparently "stuck" on CNN with no way to change the channel.  Turns out that what I wanted to watch (the USA hockey game) wasn't on any available channel anyway, so I simply sat and kept pushing the refresh button on my phone to get the scoring updates.

A bunch of needle pokes, filled blood vials, and various other tests later, they finally let me drive the poor thing home...with no answers to the questions we went in there for.  Seeing as I had to take yesterday off of work, I couldn't stay in Grand Rapids and had to drive all the way back home last night where I promptly collapsed into bed.

Total miles driven yesterday...approximately 350 total.  Here's the google map:

There's a 'D' marker behind the 'A' signifying where my journey finally ended, more than 16 hours after it had began.  You can see I got to see many of the beautiful sights along I-96 more than once as I did a lot of backtracking to and fro.

Anyway,  I am sitting here waiting for the blood sugar, anemia, thyroid, and other test results to come in.  I'm hoping that it just turns out to be stress and bad genes (she has a very sickly family).

Just thought you'd like to know, that the lack of posts was not deliberate.  Sometimes, you just have to put family first.  Well the morning skate at the Joe was all about me, I'll admit that.  But the rest of it was for her.

Name: Ole-Kristian Tollefsen

Age: 25

Country: Norway

Previous Olympics:

None

Okay, so he hasn't suited up for the Wings just yet.  But seeing as we're represented by Norway in blogging world, I thought it only fair to include the newest member of the organ-i-zation.  Oh and Andy, we're all hoping along with you that "O.K." Tollefsen scores a hat-trick against the Canadians...well all us Americans are, anyway.

And yes I had to do some paint magic to put him in that Norway jersey, so don't bother pointing that out.

Hey gang,

Ever since I joined the Red Wing blogging community in July of 2009, I can only say good things about the way I've been treated by my fellow Red Wing bloggers.  I now extend the olive branch of friendship to a new arrival on the Red Wings blogosphere: Eight Legged Freaks.

That banner beats the hell out of the first one that we came up with (no offense, Chris).  As far as I can tell, this might be the first Red Wings blog being launched in 2010.  We're going to need all the help we can get to get us through the Olympic lull so please check them out by clicking here or from follow them from now on by clicking the newly added link in the Red Wings Blogroll on the left hand side.

Just promise you'll come back here once in a while.

Name: Brian Rafalski

Age: 36

Country: USA

Previous Olympics:

2002: 6 GP  1 G 2 A 3 PTS (Silver Medal)

-UPDATED 3:00 PM-

2006: 5 GP 0 G 2 A 2 PTS (No Medal)

Lost out of Jamie Langenbrunner for the rights to the "C", but he's still Detroit's 'Captain America'.  The only American from the Red Wings making the Team USA squad (get bent, Jon Quick).  Raf is one of few aged veterans to make Brian Burke's squad.  After USA floundered in Torino back in 2006, they vowed to go younger, stronger, faster.  Apparently, Burkie's Red Wing envy prevailed for getting Rafalski on the team.

If anyone can find a link to previous Olympics stats, please leave a link in the comment section or e-mail them to me.  I had no idea it would be so hard for me to find them.

Here are the official results of the poll : "What are you looking forward to most?"

Since all options aside from "Next Season" have now come to pass, the poll is officially closed with 180 total votes.

As expected, the overwhelming majority of you were super excited to see the return of Johan Franzen prior to the Olympic Break.  And why not?  Look at what he's done in the short time that he's been on the ice: 5 points in only 6 games played.

The 16 votes for Valterri Filppula were probably predominantly the female portion of the readership, but not unfounded whatsoever.  With the return of Filppula, we now have 4 quality centers.  Despite playing in only 34 games, Val sits 8th on the team with 22 points.

Just behind the return of Flippula's golden locks (and dark brown eyebrows) was the people looking forward to the Olympic Break.  I can only assume they were looking forward to this because this was supposed to signify the end of Franzen's injury (why not just vote for Franzen then?).  Also, this break gives most of the team a chance to get their heads on straight and prepare for the epic run that is to come.  Or maybe 15 of you simply like watching the international games...

And 13 of you simply have given up on this season and can't wait for the 2010-2011 campaign to start...shame on you.

The new poll is up and running so please vote away.

No more Red Wings hockey until March...sad.  What's even more sad is the fact that this is how the Western Conference Standings will look for the rest of February:

We took three out of the possible four points in those pivotal two games that I harped about last week.  That was good, but had we solved Nabokov on Thursday, we'd be sitting in 8th place right since Calgary has played an extra game.

Like I said before, it's going to be a wild and crazy March.  But for now, we get to sit back, relax and pray like hell that no one gets hurt in Vancouver.  Oh...did I say relax?  Nevermind.