On the All Star Game Draft

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That right there is why I wish Datsyuk could have been an assistant to either Chara or Alfredsson. Him that close to a mic for the Draft would have made it so much more entertaining.

But in that case, we wouldn’t have been able to get the little insight into what his peers think of him: first overall pick in a pretty stacked group. Chara did joke he would have gone with Lidstrom first if he’d been there, but still, it’s pretty cool for Pavel. And it did look like Alfredsson was disappointed Chara got Datsyuk, even though he was apparently obligated to select Senators first.

But poor Jimmy—selected last among the goalies. I get him being picked behind Thomas and maybe behind Quick. I might even grant Elliot, given the season he’s having. But his going after Carey Price hurt to watch. Not sure if you can read a peer statement into that the same way you can read into the first overall choice, but it’s interesting. Sorry, “Jim.”

But at least they’re on the same team, so we can pull for Team Chara, eh?

Today in Totally Useless But Awesome Factoids

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Okay, “totally useless” may be overstating it. We’ll see.

On Kindl

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Last night:

Update (1:14 PM): Followup this afternoon:

Wings 2, Canadiens 7

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I’m going to go Babcock’s route and throw this one out without my typical recap format.

In any given season, there are plenty of losses where we can say it was a throwaway game. Sometimes, the loss circles back around to being worthy of getting angry about or whatever, but much of the time, bad losses are outliers with this team. I have to think this is one of those games.

The biggest reason is this:

The second point in there is mildy disturbing (obviously, the ideal is that the Wings would be focused all the time, but that’s unreasonable), but still valid. Apart from Jimmy and Pavel, these guys are finally going to get a chance to be with their families without feeling rushed. Their human as much as they are professional so if they got caught looking ahead, so be it.

The other factor is the absence of Nick Lidstrom. Not in the “oh crap what are we going to do when he retires?” way, but in the “oh crap he’s sick on short notice and we have no one better to plug in than Mike Commodore I hope we can cover that gap” way. Lidstrom being out of the lineup on such short notice was going to have an effect that rippled down the lineup. And so it did.

And no, it’s not a preview of things to come. When Nick retires, the team will have the bulk of an offseason to prepare in ways ranging from gunning for free agent defensemen to re-scheming the way they play. No doubt there will be a drop off, but if they can win the Suter sweepstakes this year (for sake of argument), it won’t be to 7-2 losses in Montreal levels. Even if they don’t get a Suter, it shouldn’t be.

Anyway. If the Wings pick up in Calgary on Tuesday where they left off in Montreal last night, then I’ll be concerned. This one gets tossed out otherwise.

Babcock Post-Game

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Via Dave Stubbs (@habsinsideout1). Some real Babcockian gems in there. My favorites:

An Overblown Crisis

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Brian Finkel says the League has an identity crisis. I guess by the standard of MLB, the NBA or the NFL, sure. But those are sports that have long been about individual stars from a marketing perspective. Maybe hockey’s different. Granted, the League and NBC/Versus have put the spotlight on guys like Sydney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin over the years, but I think the strength of hockey marketing is teams. More teams than ever are playing at a high level in a game that’s faster and more skilled than ever. That’s what accounts for the growth Finkel’s sort of surprised about.

Fehr’s Union

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Nick Cotsonika has the morning’s read, on how Donald Fehr has the union prepared for the coming labor battle. Definitely sounds like the players will be positioned well for that, though that doesn’t automatically mean good things for us fans or people like the kind of support staff we glimpsed last night on NHL 36.

That’s not Fehr’s job, I know. But I hope both sides are as committed to being reasonable this time around as they’re saying they’ll be.