Sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but there's been some chatter going around about The Namesake's facebook page...or what we thought was his facebook page.  Some of you have already seen this e-mail sent out by a true personal friend of Helm's (not me, never met the guy).  Here's the real story...

As a friend of Darren Helm I want to clarify that any "Darren Helm" that has added you on Facebook IS NOT the Detroit Red Wings Player.

Take note of this by questioning the legitimacy of “Darren Helm” on their wall---your comments will swiftly be deleted by the impostor(s).
The person(s) responsible for the account are being asked to close the page permanently; Facebook moderators have also been notified.
Darren genuinely appreciates any support of the Detroit Red Wings organization and thoroughly enjoys interacting with fans. While he prefers to keep his personal life separate from his professional one, Darren looks forward to meeting all of you at Red Wings fan events and games.
Thanks for your time.

The friend also said that he's seen NOHS, though he doesn't follow it, and he's pleased that I didn't include the famous "that's the sound of me being awesome" pic with him and his now ex-girlfriend.

I think I speak for everyone here when I say to that girl, you're cute, but you're stupid for not staying with the guy.

Hey gang.

So I've decided to start my own little contest here at NOHS.  Since Darren Helm is awesome enough for me to name the blog after him, and his number is so unusual, I thought it would be fun to see if any of you can find it on places other than The Namesake's back.  The person who does, will get a free prize from me at Herm to Hockeytown (or I'll mail it if you are unable to attend).

Here's an example of where I see 43:

That's part of a purchase order number from one of my customers.

See if you can't find the #43 in strange places.  If you can, snap a pic and send it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. under the subject: "I see 43".

The contest will end 43 days from now.  Happy hunting.

We'll get by with a little help from our friends.

Not that the Flyers are our "friends" per say, but they do hate Pittsburgh and they are playing Calgary tonight.  A regulation win for Philadelphia this evening and we're back in the top eight, still tied in points with the Flames, but having a game in-hand.

Back to things that we can control.  The Mule will be back a week from tomorrow against the Bitter Brittle Blues.  Getting him back will be a relief, but all of you watching Kronwall's knee twist in the collision with Staal yesterday might just be re-thinking your need to rush him back into the lineup.

And how about Jimmy Howard? He's currently 4th in the league with a .928 save percentage and seventh (just ahead of Roberto Luongo) with a 2.25 GAA.  Here's what Babcock told the Free Press...

"It's great, isn't it? It's called goaltending.  There's lots of guys who weren't $7-million goaltenders, but what they do is they do like that, and they get used to it and the team gets used to them playing like that and they don't even blink. Then one day they earn that kind of money. So let's not say $7 million because of the cap world, but let's hope he keeps playing good and he makes a little more than the league minimum than what he's getting now."

Um...yeah, thanks anyway, Babbles.

Three out of four points on the weekend.

Not too bad, I guess.  Again I say, "would it have been different if we were completely healthy?"  Not sure about today's game...Jimmy saved our bacon plenty of times.  Filppula missed a wide open net...wide-freaking-open.  That's twice now in about a week that we've had golden opportunities to change games and haven't been able to do capitalize.

Eaves has a wide open net while trailing 3-2 to Minnesota...post.

Filppula has a wide open net trialling 1-0 to Pittsburgh...nothing but air.

Bad puck luck?  Wrong players getting the opportunities?  Whatever it is, it sucks.  And it's costing us points.  Patience, I say...patience.

Well as I write this, NJ is doing it's job against LA (score watching sucks).  And hopefully, Philadelphia will give us some help tomorrow against Calgary.  Because the road ahead is tough before the Olympic break...

Sharks, Ducks, Kings, Blues, Sharks.

Five games in nine days.  Ten points up for grabs.  We play the Seafood and the Poultry on back to back nights on the Left Coast...that's usually good for frustratingly long nights.

Along this recent slide that we've been on (3-3-4 in our last ten), we've managed to let Los Angeles and Phoenix slip away to four and five points ahead of us in the standings.  We're setting ourselves up for a very stressful end of the season.

Remember, now, that Pittsburgh was 10th in the East at this point last year.  We're only one better than that right now.  So by Valentine's Day, we're either headed for Vancouver with a good feeling about the run we have going, or we're all going to be investing in Pepto for the big play-off push.

Miss St. James from the Free Press provides a little insight, and a little mystery about who is playing tonight.

Coach Mike Babcock said Jimmy Howard is starting in goal, but he hadn’t decided who was out among the forwards (either Brad May or Ville Leino) and defensemen (either Derek Meech or Brett Lebda).

The top two lines will be Pavel Datsyuk with Henrik Zetterberg and Dan Cleary, and Valtteri Filppula with Williams and Todd Bertuzzi.

Alright, well here's the combos that I think will see the puck drop tonight...

Datsyuk-"Overpaid"-Cleary
Bertuzzi-Filppula-Williams
Draper-Helm-Eaves
May-Miller-Maltby

Lidstrom-Rafalski
Kronwall-Stuart
Ericsson-Lebda

Howard
Osgood

I'm putting May in there just for the hope that he has a chance to introduce his fist to Marty Erat's big, fat yapper.  And here's hoping that the 4th line doesn't ice the puck.  Other than that...they should NEVER be on the ice to take a face-off.  And just because I feel like throwing this in here again...

"B-B-B-B-Bring it on, Bubba!"

Just received a text from my buddy on the inside:

"Insider": Who is a foreign player on Nashville with blonde hair?

Me: Marty Erat?

"Insider": Could be.  He told one of my colleagues that Zetterberg isn't that good and we overpaid (for him)

Me: Ass.

"Insider": Yep

Ahem...overpaid for Zetterberg?  How dare he talk about our next captain that way.  We'll have to have a picture lineup later with my buddy so we can find out the true identity of the verbal assailant.

Z, if you're out there...shut 'em up...hard.

***UPDATED 2:00 PM EST***

The culprit has been positively identified as Marty Erat.

***UPDATED AGAIN 2:30 PM EST***

I found a more fitting pic of Mr. Erat.

Breaking stuff from the Detroit News...

The Red Wings sent forward Justin Abdelkader to Grand Rapids on Friday in anticipation of two player moves this weekend.

Forward Jason Williams (broken leg) will play Friday night against the Predators at Joe Louis Arena, and forward Tomas Holmstrom is expected to be back in the lineup Sunday when Detroit travels to Pittsburgh.

With those players returning, the Red Wings were over the 23-man roster limit by one, thus the decision to send Abdelkader to Grand Rapids.

Well, we all kind of new this move was coming...I did, anyway.  I've wanted Abdelkader in GR all season long.  It's nothing personal, I love the kid.  But I just didn't feel like he was ready for full-time prime-time.  He'll log a ton of minutes in GR which will certainly aid in his development.  Since Leino and May weren't options to send down, he was the obvious choice.

It's not personal kid, it's simply business.

Thanks again to CBSsports.com for providing us with the bad news...

The little "IR" next to Williams is looking more and more likely to disappear for tonight's game.  Khan(!) provides the juice from yesterday...

"He tells us he's ready to go.  We'll make the final decision at the morning skate. But it appears he's ready to go.''--Kenny Holland

Don't hold your breath waiting for news from that morning skate.

I'm not so naive that I think Detroit is the only team going through injury problems...but I will say that they pretty much have it worse than any other team (aside from Edmonton).

But as we head into tonight's game, it's not without a little relief to inform you that Nashville has its own set of injury woes.  I got this from the Tennessean.com try and use the "good ol' boy" accent in your head when reading the italicized text:

Predators Coach Barry Trotz said center Marcel Goc (upper body) won't play against the Red Wings and forward Joel Ward (groin) will make the trip but is unlikely to play.

He described forward Wade Belak (foot) as "really questionable."

"He's a day or two away," Trotz said.

Goc is a pretty solid player...he used to play for the Sharks for those of you that remember.  He's also probably the only German Olympian that I can think of off the top of my head.  Joel Ward is like Bubba's version of Dan Cleary, so I'm not going to be heart-broken if he doesn't play.  I don't know much about Wade Belak...but yeah, screw him too.

We have another opportunity tonight.  We can pull even in points with Nashville, though they'll remain ahead of us in points.  We can also take the 8th spot away from Calgary again, who managed to squeaze another point out of the Puppy Dogs down in the desert.

The teams ahead of us keep winning (aside from Calgary), we need to follow suit.

Here's an addendum to the "Much Ado About Franzen" piece.  Only this time, it's not Twig, or Eats, or even Baroque chiming in...it's Kenny Holland himself talking to the Detroit News:

"If he is healthy and playing well, it would be kind of hard for me to tell him not to play.  I had a brief talk with him (Wednesday) and I just told him, 'We have to be smart about this.  We have to see how you feel.' The only way to be smart is to get more information, and the only way to do that is through time. We just have to wait.  If he's cleared to play, if he gets in shape and is playing great, if there are no complications with the knee and if he's invited to play, then it's his call.  But that's a lot of ifs."

Well there you have it, kiddies. We're just going to have to wait and see.

In Franzen we trust?