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.

So apparently all we need to do to get production out of our depth players is threaten them with a possible move...

February 11th...the rumor mill was churning out that Jason Williams was probable trade bait as a swarm of scouts ascended on Joe Louis.  J-Willz scores his prettiest goal all season to tie the game in the 3rd period.

February 13th...the rumor mill said that the Wings planned on putting Kirk Maltby on LTIR to fix his shoulder that was in need of surgical repair.  Maltby scores his 4th goal of the season less than half-way into the first period against the Ottawa Senators.

So who's next to take a tour through the rumor mill?  Wait, let's wait until after the Olympics so we don't waste some good juju on getting some foreign country the gold medal in Vancouver.

11:15 AM Per Bob McKenzie's twitter:

"Det expected to waive Brad May today and put a player on LTI to make room for Lilja."

Umm...who's going on LTI?  Kronwall?  Eaves?  What is going on?

12:15 PM Per Bob McKenzie's twitter:

"Cheechoo (Ott), Lundmark (Cgy) and May (Det) on waivers. Brashear clears. "

1:30 PM Per my insider's text:

"Early word is that May left with all his stuff.  I walked past Kenny eating lunch with the PR guy.  Whatever else it is, he must be done because he isn't working the phones anymore."

2:30 PM Per me:

We're only a half hour away from this song and dance to be over with and the only move has been the waiving of Brad May.  He'll be eligible to clear waivers on Saturday at which point he'll be sent to Grand Rapids.  That still doesn't leave enough room for Lilja.  There has to be another move made.

So we're Pavel Datsyuk's number of days into the contest and with Chris Osgood's number of days to go, we have Justin Abdelkader's number (with the big club) of entries from...uh...the number that EA Sports thought that Brad Stuart wore for like two years on the Wings (ok...it's 6) people.

Confused?  I hope not.

I just wanted to remind you and to let you know that there are people actually doing this.  From Herm in Brazil, to Jilly Bean in Australia.  Someone please beat Jill, the shipping charges to Australia are going to be killer (no offense).

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

Keep 'em coming.

From Khan(!) ...

"..my focus right now has to be coming back to play for the Red Wings.  We have a couple of huge games before the break, we want to do everything we can to win those games.”--Niklas Kronwall

Well, he obviously said that before last night's game when we still had a couple games before the break.  Kronwall didn't play for the 4th straight time and Babcock has absolutely no idea what the hell is going on with Kronner's knee:

“We brought him back from injury (sprained MCL) way longer after we expected. We thought he was out for four weeks and then he was out for forever.  We thought he was as healthy as can be. He kind of got hit from behind in the leg (in San Jose on Feb. 2) and then he was fine, no problem. He practiced the other day, was fine. He got on the plane, he couldn’t move.”

I'm not going to pretend that I know what's going on with that situation.

In other news, since the Franzen/Zetterberg/Datsyuk line played so well last night, our boy, Babbles is splitting them up:

“That line was very dominant.  Now, we’ll split those guys up, Pav and Z, and we’ll get four lines and can really come at teams and make sure each line has a net presence on it. We didn’t do it today because we hadn’t practiced with it. But that’s been our plan here for a while, and we’ll spread that out.”

I say you keep Mule with Pav, since Datsyuk will feed him the puck.  And you put Z with Bert, because Bert will feed him the puck.  That would give us the following lineup (today's move pending)...

Holmstrom-Datsyuk-Franzen
Bertuzzi-Zetterberg-Cleary
Williams-Filppula-Miller
Draper-Helm-Eaves

Lidstrom-Rafalski
Meech-Stuart
Lebda-Ericsson

Howard
Osgood

Throw Lilja in that defensive corps, and you got yourself a peach of a lineup.

Someone who was on the team when they woke up this morning is not going to be on the team when they go to bed tonight.

And now we'll all just have to sit around and wait to see who it is.  Exciting, no?  What are you up to, Kenny?  What is that genius brain pondering?  Who goes where and for what?

Lebda for a prospect/draft pick?

Wave May?

Williams for prospect/draft pick/exclusive video rights to that goal from last night?

Datsyuk for Luongo?  Oh wait, we had that opportunity before.  We'll pass, thank you.

After yet another shoot out loss last night, we now sit precariously in 10th place after Dallas beat Calgary last night (in regulation, thank Jeebus).  The good news is we're only one away from 8th place Calgary.  The bad news is we're only one point clear of 11th place Anaheim.

Oh baby, no matter what happens, it's going to be a March to remember.

But anyway, back to the original theme...who is headed out of hockey town?  Two things that I've been thinking about and my fellow internet buddies aka "fake friends" have been talking about...

1. With Janik and Kindl in Grand Rapids, why would we still hold on to Meech and Lebda, especially with Lilja coming back aboard.  If Lils is back to playing like he was last season (we try and forget all seasons prior when he sucked), then we'd have an awesome top 6 with two decent "Black Aces" in case someone goes down.  Lebda, seeing as he's 3 years older than Meech and a UFA at the end of the season, should hit the bricks.  We'll take what we can for him.
2. If Lebda goes, waive Brad May and we got ourselves Andreas Lilja back with no problem.
3. Trading Jason Williams for a draft pick and a prospect is also a quick fix, a one transaction deal as opposed to the Lebda-May route which is two.  But I don't think this move would be made to save busy work, that's what Kenny and his staff get paid for.  We could probably get more for Williams than for Lebda, but neither are all that attractive as a rental.

So we'll just sit back and wait to see what transpires today.  The best part about it?  The fact that the league will be involved so we won't have to wait for the diggers to provide us the news when it happens.