Detroit Red Wings

Howard became first Red Wings goalie since 1987 to face 40 or more shots and allow only one goal in a playoff victory.

Red Wings News Pavel Datsyuk may not be naturally gifted, but he works hard, says Glenn Healy (Video) | Puck Daddy - Yahoo! SportsYeah, I totally agree. Datsyuk is soooo overrated. It's mostly luck if you ask me. Anyone can do the things he does, it's just that he happens to be in the right place at the right time. Gustav Nyquist Got Hit in the Nuts Then Scored An Awesome Goal | Pucking WingsHe's a man of steel!!! Ericsson helps fill big holes on Wings' defense | TSNHe's filling them pretty nicely. Detroit Red Wings' Jakub Kindl's patience pays off with playing time | Detroit Free Press Best defenseman outside of the top-two. Can the Red Wings Upset the Blackhawks? | The Hockey Writers This next game will be key. If we win, the series is ours. If we lose, then anything can happen. Either way, this season has been a success. Duff: Wings a work in progress | Windsor Star A work in progress that is clicking at the right time. Jimmy Howard in a groove for Red Wings | CBC Jimmy has been absolutely fantastic. *But he's overpaid* NO HE IS NOT. He's worth every penny we can pay him. HOCKEE NIGHT - The Malört of Hockey Blogs: Killed The Lord, Left For The New World If you want to win the cup you have to go through Detroit. It's as simple as that. NHL News Now Stephane Roy says he doesn’t know if the Avs will hire his brother | ProHockeyTalkStupid Roy's. Columbus Blue Jackets noticing upswing at box office after second-half hot streak on ice - The Hockey NewsThat is understandable. When you are winning, people (especially the casual fans) become more interested and chose to go to games. Caps owner Leonsis apologizes for team’s playoff failure | ProHockeyTalkTrade Ovechkin and build a team around Mike Ribiero. Canadiens sign Swedish prospects: defenceman Nygren, forward Collberg - The Hockey News Collberg's good. I don't know anything about the defenseman though. Report: Leafs’ Komarov in negotiations with KHL club | ProHockeyTalkIt's his old team, Dynamo Moscow. Unsung Hero: Rob Scuderi remains critical ‘piece’ for defending champ Kings | Puck Daddy - Yahoo! SportsHe's experienced and he is good defensively. That is stuff that is key during a cup run. Juuso Ikonen - The Next Ones - The Hockey Writers This guy is really good offensively. Size is an issue though. He's only 5'9''. Canadiens' Emelin out six months after ACL, MCL surgery | TSN Might miss the very beginning of the next season. Stanley Cup playoffs 2013: Joel Quenneville disagrees with disallowed goal call - SBNation.comIt was a no-goal. Stop crying Chicago and drink your medicine. You better be prepared for what's coming. Avalanche remain quiet as Roy speculation continues | TSN The thing that intrigues me is that the Av's haven't denied it yet. Because of that I think that it is a possibility that Roy may be hired as their next coach. Dallas to unveil new uniforms, make ‘significant announcement’ on June 4 | ProHockeyTalkNew logo maybe? I don't know. Still, it is kind of interesting. Oklahoma tornado hits close to home for AHL’s Barons | Puck Daddy - Yahoo! SportsHow devastating this is for the people of the affected communities... Preds hire Phil Housley as assistant coach | ProHockeyTalkMaybe he will help improve the Predators terrible defenseman. Especially that Weber guy, he sucks. Let's Go Red Wings!

Alternate title: Wherein I Learn Just How Small a Man Patrick Kane Can Be, Much to My Delight! Read on for the full explanation - and visuals. This is a follow-up to my previous post here. Not to be too self-indulgent about my experience last night on the glass at The Joe, but I wanted to create this follow-up post to share a few anecdotes, show a bit of what you couldn't (but Patrick Kane definitely DID) see, and thank you folks for the ideas that made an already extraordinary affair for me that much cooler. What I conceived as a short post became my personal memoir of the night. This all get less wordy and more picture booky as we go, so bear with me, or just skip the verbosity and see the fun stuff further down. Preface: The Prep After a night and morning well-spent, ready for the raising were Giant Jimmy Face on foamboard, Enlarged-and-in-Charged Mrs. Donna Kane on foamboard, unmounted backups of each (in the event the big boards were no-no'd at security) and the following five of "her" choicest quotations, along with five blank speech bubbles - just in case. Unfortunately, these weren't visible to the TV audience, but Patrick saw them...Oh did he see them. In the order in which they were shown "PATRICK THOMAS KANE! You missed your haircut AGAIN, young man!". Click to see "Why can't you be more like that Zetterberg?" Click to see "Dinner plans with Pavs. Don't wait up, Patrick. I hear he's MAGIC" Click to see "Patrick, honey.... YOU'RE ADOPTED" Click to see "Damn but Zetterberg's Royal Swedish balls are TASTY!".... RIP :n( Chapter I: Gaining Entry After several deep breaths and the chirp of the barcode scanner, I did my best to fly casual, but briskly, past the kindly folks who screen for killers, and profane signs apparently, among the visitors to The Joe. I was not successful. Something about the 4 ft poster of Jimmy tucked under my arm made me a bit conspicuous SOMEHOW. The first usher, name erased from memory by the beer consumed later, asked politely to preview "what I had there". Me: "Oh, sure. Well, that's Jimmy." Usher: "Yea, and who's this one?" Me - choosing the foolish valor of honesty: "Donna Kane". Usher: Me:"Patrick Kane's Mom". What followed, three seconds of stunned silence and a bewildered expression from this Usher felt like a minor eternity, then Usher:"You're serious?" Me: "Yup" Usher: "I don't... Jim, look at this." Jim, his supervisor, is a credit to Olympia Entertainment, Hockeytown, and humanity. He took a look at the sign, repeated the question about the mystery woman's identity, then tried VERY hard to stifle a chuckle, but failed, and gave me the OK - on condition that I not disrupt anyone's view of the play with Donna's proud smile and thoughtful contributions to her son's big night. Then it was time for the individual caption boards to pass review. Each got a pleasant little snorted laugh and the thumbs-up from Jim, except the 5th and final sign - the Zetterballs homage. In retrospect, that may owe to my highlighting the words "Zetterberg's, Royal, Swedish, Balls, and Tasty", but I was willing to concede that one for the greater trolling good. It would not be the only casualty on the night. Chapter II: Patrick the Lesser or What Happened to the Mounted Mrs. Kane? Before the game even started and long before friends would text me shots of Jimmy-sign on NBCSN, it was all worthwhile. With half a troll-boner (full disclosure: a full one), we charged our way over opposite our seats to the Blackhawks's end for warm-ups. And arrived way too early. So we waited. And waited.... And suddenly there they were. Bedecked in all their nauseating, uh, THEM-ness, Patrick and co took the ice - and Donna took to the glass to greet her son. Her first message concerned the length of his helmet-escaping curls of pettiness and a certain missed appointment that might have tended that ugly mop of his. It took several rotations around the rink for him to notice HIS OWN MOTHER, but he did, and the

DETROIT – The Wings continue to win most of the draws taken through three games of the series. After winning 52 percent of the faceoffs in Game 1, they increased it to 55 and then 56 over the next two games. “It’s definitely a factor,” Chicago coach Joel Quenneville said. “We’ve got to get better in that area. That’s definitely an area that’s a point of emphasis going forward. All zones. All critical ones, special teams, PK, offensive-zone faceoffs we’ve given up a couple goals the last two games.” Detroit’s first goal was directly associated with a lost draw in the Wings’ zone. “Well, you’ve got a tendency to look at the guy you’re against and what his tendencies are and getting an even puck drop is what we’re looking for, finding ways where … if you’re not going to win it, we’ve got a 50/50 chance along the line,” Quenneville said. “So, there’s more work we can do and not just counting our centermen coming up with the win and not just laying the onus on them.” Every Wing that took at least two faceoffs in Game 3 won at least 55 percent of the time. “Our power play, it starts with faceoffs,” Quenneville said.

DETROIT – If anything, the Detroit Red Wings have gotten the full attention of the Chicago Blackhawks. And at the end of the Wings’ 3-1 win Monday night in Game 3 of their best-of-seven Western Conference tempers began to boil over. The rough stuff began when Chicago defenseman Duncan Keith skated by and took a cheap shot at Damien Brunner to draw a minor for roughing with the Blackhawks trialing 3-1 with six minutes to play in the third period. “It’s always a fine line not to get penalties and play on the edge,” Chicago defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson said. “We’ve had really good penalty killing so far in these playoffs, but we know they have a lot of skilled players who can make a difference in a game if we give them too many power plays. It’s a fine line there, but you’ve got to play tough. It’s obviously a different level in the playoffs. If you could play a little bit harder on their top guys, that would be good I think.” With a minute to play, Blackhawks forward Bryan Bickell was assessed a cross checking penalty on Daniel Cleary, while the Wings forward was defenseless on the ice. “Just playing like that doesn’t give us the green light to take unnecessary or undisciplined penalties,” Chicago coach Joel Quenneville said. “There’s always a discipline that goes behind everything we talk about, whether it’s playing with a purpose … but the purpose of discipline is No. 1.” The final penalty was on Chicago forward Andrew Shaw, a 10-minute misconduct with 13 seconds left in regulation. “We need to be more on the edge, like we played last game,” Chicago forward Marian Hossa said. “We have great intensity and I felt like lots of energy. Also, you don’t want to go over the board and take bad penalties, because they’ve got really good players on the power play. You have to be smart about it.” Things were actually quite chippy in the first period. Just four minutes in, Andrew Shaw caught Brendan Smith with an elbow. Later, Brent Seabrook knocked Daniel Cleary off balance sending him crashing into the net and then into the end boards. Keith then motioned like he was going to push the net over top of Cleary while he was on the ice. Detroit’s only power play of the period came as a result of a scrum in the front of Howard between all the players on the at the time. Kyle Quincey and Bickell were both assessed two-minute unsportsmanlike penalties, while Shaw got the extra two for roughing. “I think at the end, you could definitely see some of the frustration coming out,” Jonathan Ericsson said. “After whistles, they were maybe paying too much attention to us. They were doing things after whistles. That’s a good thing for us, if we can get them frustrated. We want to do that all day to them.” Wings coach Mike Babcock isn’t ready to say that his squad has gotten under the Blackhawks’ skin. “It’s playoff hockey,” Babcock said. “So it’s going to be battles out there and you don’t want to lose any of those battles. It’s going to be tough to play and I think we’re just going to have to keep doing the same things.” Conversely, the Wings didn’t lose their temper in their 4-1 loss in Game 1. “I think it’s a little bit of anger about what we are doing right now,” Blackhawks defenseman Michal Rozsival said. “We (didn’t) want to get behind 2-1 against an opponent like this. I think everybody is kind of, not happy, with the way we’ve played and I think it’s a good thing. It can give us a boost of energy. Playing with a little bit of anger going forward, you know, it’s not a bad thing. I think it’s going to help us (going) into Game 4 and obviously we have to play better and step up our game.”

Detroit coach Mike Babcock cautioned that his club hasn't done anything yet. Chicago's Joel Quenneville realizes they're back to square one with a victory in Game 4 Thursday.

DETROIT – Wings coach Mike Babcock on whether or not there should have been a penalty on Chicago defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson after hitting Johan Franzan into the boards from behind early in the third period of Game 2. “It should have been a two-minute penalty,” Babcock said. “This is the way I look at it. Those referees are trying to get to the Stanley Cup final like the rest of us and it’s fast. When I watch the replay and see it, it’s a penalty. They don’t get to watch the replay.” With Franzen down in the corner, Duncan Keith lofted a pass out to Patrick Kane, who got behind the Wings’ defense and beat Jimmy Howard between the pads just 4:32 in.

DETROIT – Here’s Chicago forward Patrick Sharp’s response when asked does the fact winning percentages drop dramatically when you go down 3-1 make Game 4 anymore important? “Yeah, you throw around terms like ‘must-win’ and all that … I think every game in the playoffs is a ‘must win.’ You can spin it however you want. Every game is huge. You want to win every time you take the ice. Being down 2-1 in their building, obviously that game in Game 4 is really big.”

DETROIT – There’s getting caught out on a long shift and then there’s getting caught out on a long shift. Drew Miller and his fellow penalty killers experienced just that in Game 3 Monday night at Joe Louis Arena. Niklas Kronwall had a shift length of two minutes and 46 seconds and Patrick Eaves was out there for 2:15. But both of those shift lengths paled in comparison to the ones Miller and Jonathan Ericsson had to endure with Brendan Smith in the penalty box for holding. The stopwatch wasn’t clicked off on their shifts until it read 3:15. “Three minutes, that must have been some sort of record,” Ericsson smiled after the game. “I was kind of standing still there in front of the net for a little while so I was able to catch some big breaths. I wasn’t as tired after three minutes as I was after two I think.” Normal shift length for forwards is roughly 45 seconds and a bit longer for defensemen. Penalty kill shifts tend to be shorter, as teams try to get quick changes as soon as possible. “I’d like to forget that one,” Miller said. “It was a long one. When you get stuck on the penalty kill there it’s tough to get off. You try and stay tight, guys were blocking shots and Jimmy (Howard) made some big saves for us. The key is to just to survive it and get off the ice as fast as you can when you can. You have to fight through long shifts like that.” Not helping matters was the fact that Smith’s penalty occurred in the second period, which meant the Wings had to cross center ice to get a shift change. “We were pretty tired, we got caught out there and we couldn’t get the puck out,” Eaves said. “They had a lot of skill on the ice and had the puck. We just tried to keep them to the outside.” Miller was playing in just his second game back after breaking his right hand on April 20 in Vancouver. “That’s one of those shifts you don’t want to have but you try to get through it,” Miller said. “I felt like my legs were a lot better (Monday). You’re on the penalty kill trying to kill it off and you get stuck out there. From there it’s just desperation, you try and get through it and get the puck out.” Miller blocked three shots on the three-minute plus shift, finishing with four total to go along with three hits. “He does all the little things right, blocking shots, getting in on the forecheck, penalty kill and just working hard,” Howard said. “That (penalty kill) was huge. I think (Miller) blocked about five shots on the penalty kill. He’s such a key player for us. He does his job so well.” Once Smith was released from the box, he joined the play giving the Wings three defenseman on the ice and two forwards. It took another 1:15 until Detroit could finally get a clear long enough to get a change. “They had some good chances,” Henrik Zetterberg said. “(Chicago) held onto the puck for a long time there. We stayed composed and Howie was there when we needed him.” The Wings killed off all four of the Blackhawks’ power plays in Game 3. “The biggest improvement we’ve seen with him in the lineup is our penalty kill,” Carlo Colaiacovo said. “(That) shift there in the second period I think he blocked five shots in a row. It was huge for that line to get a goal as well. Millsie is a guy who skates real well, blocks shots, plays with that edge, finishes checks and he’s been really key to us since he’s been back.” The kill was huge and it may have been the spark the Wings’ offense needed as Gustav Nyquist scored just under four minutes later and it was followed up 31 seconds later by a goal from Miller. “And (Miller) got rewarded with a goal, it just shows you that hard work pays off,” Howard said. After scoring a goal on their first power-place chance in the series, Chicago has gone 0-for-8 with the man advantage. “We weathered the storm there and then Gus made that great move to score and fortunately our line got out there and caused a little havoc down low,” Eaves said. “We jammed one in. It was a huge second period. You always want to

Did you know there was a goal last night that shouldn't have counted for the team that scored it? Of course you did. However, if you're a Blackhawks fan who doesn't know the rules of hockey, then you have the wrong goal in mind. Let's get to the Twitter: @yahoopuckdaddy @cheertheanthem @laurencewholmes @marklazerusFranzen was CLEARLY offside on Datsyuks goal. twitter.com/HawkeyTown_USA… — HawkeyTown, USA (@HawkeyTown_USA) May 21, 2013 Hahahaha fantastic. Let's do what anybody who thought this was a bad goal should have done and consult the rulebook 83.1 Off-side - Players of the attacking team must not precede the puck into the attacking zone. The position of the player’s skates and not that of his stick shall be the determining factor in all instances in deciding an off-side. A player is off-side when both skates are completely over the leadingedge of the blue line involved in the play. A player is on-side when either of his skates are in contact with, or on his own side of the line, at the instant the puck completely crosses the leadingedge of the blueline regardless of the position of his stick. However, a player actually controlling the puck who shall cross the line ahead of the puck shall not be considered "off-side," provided he had possession and control of the puck prior to his skates crossing the blue line. Now, here is where Franzen gains possession of the puck: You'll notice that this takes place juuuuuuuust slightly before Franzen reaches the Chicago blue line. +1 for knowing the rules, geniuses. In fairness though, even Brian Hedger, who writes for NHL.com took up the mantle here before coming around to the right side. He already deleted the one where he called somebody else wrong for knowing the rule, but at least he owned up to it. Just to be clear ... always was under presumption puck had to cross first. You learn something new every day. Rule 83. — Brian Hedger (@BrianHedger) May 21, 2013 Yep. So the guy who writes for NHL.com is now better-aware of how the league's rules work. (To wrap up this learning experience, @HawkeyTown_USA has also since come to understand how wrong he was when he was spamming everybody who would listen with links to his picture "proving" Franzen should have been whistled. Still, it makes me laugh that stuff this rudimentary can gain so much traction.)