Should Jimmy start tomorrow against LA?  I say:

"B-B-B-BRING IT ON B*TCHES!"

Last night was a tale of two Millers.  Our own, Drew Miller, scored the third Detroit goal in regulation and clinched the extra point with his shootout winner.  Buffalo's Ryan Miller, goaltender for the Buffalo Sabres and big brother to Drew, fell to the Los Angeles Kings in a game that would garuntee Detroit a spot in the top eight this morning.

But wait...what's this?

We still passed up the slumping Calgary Flames to crack the top eight thanks to our little brothers from the Windy City.  It's not a good time for hockey in the province of Alberta right now.

Five points out of 4th place and only 3 points behind the Predators for 2nd in the Division.  We'll see how Bubba fares against the Avalanche tonight.  Either way, Detroit is right in the thick of things now.

Think tomorrow's game against LA is big?

I think so too.

So these kinds of posts have been too far and too few between.  For those of you who don't remember or perhaps are new to NOHS, I like to browse our opponents' blogs and cherry-pick what I find to be entertaining comments after a Red Wings victory.  What better place to pull these from than from our old friends at Hockey Wilderness?

Let's start off by seeing what they thought about Bert's goal:

Bertuzzi, really? Are you f***ing serious…

Posted by redheadzeb on Jan 21, 2010 7:21 PM CST

God I hate Bertuzzi

Posted by TonyO on Jan 21, 2010 7:25 PM CST

And more than a half hour later...Minnesota fans are STILL hating them some Bertuzzi:

Khan(!) provides us with what we pretty much already knew yesterday...

Zetterberg-Datsyuk-Bertuzzi
Cleary-Filppula-Miller
Draper-Helm-Eaves
Leino-Abdelkader-Maltby
May (scratched)

Lidstrom-Rafalski
Meech-Stuart
Lebda-Ericsson

Howard (starting)
Osgood

Apparently Draper smacked The Namesake in the face with shaving cream as a birthday prank.  Helm, who was screened by trainer Piet Van Zant, didn't know who the culprit was at the time Khan(!) posted the roster.

“When I find out, I’m going to get my justice.  It’ll definitely be worse than what the crime was.’’--Darren Helm

Oh Helmster, if only you knew of this blog's existence.

Title pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

The Namesake turns 23 today.  We could arguably see 15 more years of "Helm on Earth" in Hockeytown...if he has the longevity of Kris Draper.

You asked for it, here it is.  The injury report for the Wings as told by CBSSports.com...

These appear to be updated today...some of them anyway.  We know that Val already guaranteed us that he was playing tonight.  Kronwall participated in a full practice today, which is awesome.  J-Willz is still a little "iffy", but he'll be back soon enough and we can finally do away with Derek Meech on the 2nd PP.

Happy, Lauren?

Tonight we play the Minnesota Wild.  And what better way to preface such a game, than to take you down a link-driven trip down memory lane?

Remember Pinky?  Do You?  Here's the little piece from Hockey Wilderness that started it all...

Anyone Else a Little Bored?

That brought on 221 hate-filled comments between many of The 19 from Abel to Yzerman and self-proclaimed "Buddha" hereto known as "Pinky".  Better yet, this guy...

Well, true to form, the Chief wasn't exactly going to take an attack lying down.  He brought us the glorious little rebuttal here...

Awww....SBN Gave Me A Birthday Present

Go ahead and chew on his words for a while.  He may not have credentials, access, or a journalism degree, but the CPO has a PHD in handing hostile bloggers with nothing better to do.

So I put my own little post together summarizing the (then?) on-going feud while adding some of my own thoughts.  This post has become one of the most read NOHS posts to this day...

Bored? Go Poke a Dog with a Stick

Pinky, not willing to admit defeat, tried to salvage his already damaged ego by posting yet another attack on the Chief and his readers here...

In Defense of the Caveman

Well 80+ comments later and Pinky gets very upset when a couple Red Wings fans catch wind of one of his personal pages and take the fight up a notch...guerrilla style.

Pinky went so far, or so he said, to contact the local Police Department.  Here's a comment that he left on A2Y:

The comments left by this person have been forwarded to the local PD, and they are aware of the situation. Keep my personal life, and my family out of this.

And at last...the white flag was raised:

Apologies

That isn't quite the end of the story.  Nathan, who runs "Hockey Wilderness" finally decided to respond to an e-mail that I sent him when I linked the site from the "Other NHL Blogs" drop-down menu below.  I don't think he was aware that I was an active participant in the discussion with Pinky, but he asked what my take on it was.

Nathan,
 
Last week was interesting to say the least.  I must say that things definitely got a bit out of hand.  For me personally, when your writer started taking shots not at the commenters, but at the city of Detroit and the economic plight that we are facing right now, is when I tuned out The Hockey Wilderness and even decided to find a new Minnesota Wild blog to link to my site.
 
I understand that your "Buddha" was provoked and personally attacked, but I cannot help what other people say to your writer, and yet I, and every other reader who came across such disgusting remarks, were affected when "Buddha" took pot shots at our home.
 
I found it strangely ironic that only days after writing about professionalism amongst bloggers that he would actually post (not in the comment section, but an actual article) making fun people in this state that are suffering.  I found it extremely distasteful.  So has it changed my opinion of the site in general?  Yes it has.  Though I have read his apology and can appreciate it, it's obviously hard for me, as a Red Wings fan and native of the state of Michigan to recommend what readers I have over to a site that has showed such a level of animosity towards them.
 
-Drew

I probably could have just e-mailed him a picture of a raised middle finger.  But hey, I try and be cordial...sometimes, anyway.

If I know the Chief, this fight is far from over.  Stay tuned.  But in the meantime, if you have time, please feel free to go back and revisit some of what went on back in December.

Do that, and tell me there isn't a little part of you that want the Wings to win tonight even more.

...but he should be ok.  At least, we hope he is.  Here's a snicker inducing, cherry picked quote from the Free Press:

“I felt my groin a little yesterday in the third period."--Valterri Filppula

Hey, so did I while I was watching TV...what guy doesn't?  Actually, truth be told, I was brewing beer with brother in law, a little Christmas present from my sister was a beer brewing kit.

But fear not, ladies... Val said that he is absolutely playing tomorrow.  As Pav would say, "for sure".

Kronwall should be good to go in about two weeks tops, which is outstanding news.

Here are the lines for tomorrow against Pinky's Wild:

Bertuzzi-Datsyuk-Zetterberg
Cleary-Filppula-Miller
Draper-Helm-Eaves
Leino-Abdelkader-Maltby

Lidstrom-Rafalski
Meech-Stuart
Lebda-Ericsson

Howard (starting)
Osgood (whining)

Sorry, Ozzie...but you're pissing us all off.

NHL.com has a few good quotes from Babcock and a few players which help paint the picture of what the attitude is like for those not disgruntled Chris Osgood...

"Don't get me wrong, we're in the winning business and we need points, but I like the way our team has played.  We know we're a work in progress and we think we're getting better all the time. I think if you ask their team how our team played I think they will be fairly respectful to say the least. They got the points here (in D.C.) and that's what it is all about, winning, but they know who had the puck."--Mike Babcock

Who could argue with that?  The Wings have indeed been playing a better game as of late.  If you forget about the fact we only got two past Alex Auld in Dallas, the games against Chicago and last night against Washington were pretty sound games.  If you add Kronwall, Franzen, and Williams in the past 3 games, we might have managed to win all three.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who doesn't like watching the out of town scores...

"It's different.  When you're scoreboard-watching to see how other teams are doing, it's different. But, it makes games like (Tuesday's) real important as opposed to previous years when we'd come in and not necessarily know it was a given, but we would know we had a real good chance of winning if we played our game."--Dan Cleary

Well...honestly, Dan, you should still feel that way.  I don't know where the lack of confidence is coming from.  Perhaps the whole injury situation is starting to wear on the players as well.  Maybe they feel like the teams they're playing have gotten that much better.  It could be a combination of the two.  Either way, this team even with Franzen and Kronwall is still a top eight team in the West (or should be, as the case may be).

"We've had a few games like this where we should have pulled away or we should have gotten a second goal earlier in the second period but we didn't and teams find a way to beat us.  That's a little bit of what we have seen so far, but I do think we have been getting better at playing as a team again by keeping goals against down and keeping scoring chances down. We haven't been able to score as many goals, and that's been one of our problems."--Nick Lidstrom

Bingo.  Trash Ozzie all you want, but we should have scored more than two goals last night.  Osgood obviously didn't need to steal this game.  And he certainly didn't save it.  But the fact of the matter is scoring two goals in this NHL is simply not good enough on most occasions.  We had multiple chances that we didn't convert.  Soft goaltending plus failing to execute on golden scoring chances (yes, you, Bert...) almost always yields zero points in the standings.

Usually when a player start feuding with the head coach, one of them is sent packing.  So is Chris Osgood and Mike Babcock's relationship damaged?  It certainly seems like when you see what Ozzie was telling the Detroit News...

"I haven't played in a month.  I think if I had played a little more -- I mean those were good goals -- but I still think I could have stopped them if I was in more of a groove. You take what you can get, I guess."

Babcock has already decided to start Howard on Thursday.  He said that it was because the team needed points.  That didn't sit too well with Mr. Osgood:

"I've gotten him a lot of points, you can write that.  I got him to the Stanley Cup Finals the last two years, you can write that, too."

This is getting heavy...so far as to say that it appears Ozzie was quasi-accusing Babcock of setting him up for failure last night against the Caps.  When asked about getting his first start in a while against the highest scoring team in the league, Ozzie quipped:

"Yeah, that's quite a coincidence.  Or maybe not."

I have a feeling that this is not going to end well.  Like I said, when a player feuds with the coach, one of them has to go.  When it's a star on the team, usually the coach gets the axe.  But when the disgruntled player is Chris Osgood, and the trade deadline is approaching....finish that sentence.