…how good Henrik Zetterberg is playing this year? I know most of the country doesn’t care about hockey, and most of Detroit doesn’t care about hockey until the playoffs, but this guy is unreal. Let me get all Detroit homer-ific for a minute.
So far this season the Red Wings have played 14 games.  In those 14 games, Hank has 12 goals and 12 assists for a total of 24 points which is the best in the league for points and goals. If you add up the points for Detroit’s first line (Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, and Tomas Holmstrom) they have a combined 54 points in 14 games. The Red Wings are the best team in hockey again this season and I think it’s becoming clear that Hank Zetterberg is the best player in the league.
I am a fan of the young stars of hockey like Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, and Patrick Kane but no one playing right now can match Zetterberg as an all around player. He is a great scorer, a great passer, a great puck handler (Datsyuk is still better in that department), a great defensive forward, and a strong leader. If the Wings are smart they will sign this guy to a 10 year contract and keep him here for his career.
Yesterday’s game between the Detroit Red Wings and Anaheim Ducks was a very tough one. The Wings dominated the game and were in a good position to win the game with only a couple of minutes left in the game. Then came a bad penalty call with a little over 1:40 left in the third period that gave the Ducks a 6-4 advantage with their goalie pulled.
As every Red Wing fan held their breath, the Ducks scored on a fluke goal off of Nicklas Lidstrom’s stick. The Ducks went on to win the game in overtime.
The Wings have owned the last two games and had a wealth of opportunities to win both games but they came up short each time. Now they are in a do-or-die situation where they have to win the next two games to advance. I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t win the next two because of the way they have played recently, but the breaks seem to be going for Anaheim. The next game is Tuesday night, we’ll see what happens.
I am very tired this morning because I stayed up last night to watch the Red Wings knock the Calgary Flames out of the playoffs in double overtime. When the game went to overtime, my first thought was “they’d better win this game because I’m not staying up late to watch them lose.” Luckily for me, and all Red Wings fans, they won and advanced to the second round.
I honestly think that the NHL hates the Wings for some unknown reason. They scheduled the Wings to play 3 games in a little over 72 hours including two trips between Calgary and Detroit. Why they have the Wings in the Western Conference is still a mystery to me since Michigan is in the Eastern time zone. Unfortunately, they don’t consult me about these things, so there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.
We’ll find out tonight if the Wings will play Dallas or San Jose in the second round.
For those that don’t know the history, let me explain it briefly. In the 1996 Western Conference Finals Claude Lemieux of the Avalanche almost killed Kris Draper of the Red Wings with a dirty hit to the back of the head while he was on one knee and defenseless. Draper’s face went into the boards and he broke several bones in his face. Draper needed reconstructive surgery and he missed much of the following season because of his injuries.
On March 26th, tensions boiled over and chaos ensued. Darren McCarty, who was (and is) good friends with Draper, went after Lemieux during a scuffle between two other players. McCarty beat the snot out of Lemieux while several other fights broke out on the ice. The Red Wings went on to win that game and the Stanley Cup. Ironically, McCarty scored the winning goal in that game during overtime. The game became known as ‘Bloody Wednesday’ and is legendary around here.
To this day my blood boils when I think about those days. The cheap shot on Draper was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen and to this day I think I would spit on Claude Lemieux if I ever saw him on the street. I’m still proud of the Wings for standing up for their teammate and handling things on the ice.
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