Tonight is the second of six games between these two teams this season. The Wings won the first 4-1 on October 22nd. The Wings are 6-0-1 in their last seven meetings with the Jackets and are riding a four-game unbeaten streak (3-0-1-0). Columbus has a league-worst 0-7-1-0 road record and is winless in their last four games (0-2-2-0). The Wings are 3-3 against Central Division opponents so far this year.

Dominik Hasek is out with a recurring groin injury and will not play at least until Saturday. Manny Legace is to get the start tonight and Joseph will start in tomorrow’s game at Columbus. Darren McCarty will not be back and will not skate again until the Wings’ next home practice (Sunday). Boyd Devereaux did not practice yesterday because of a sore groin but is expected to play tonight. If he ends up not being ready, the Wings might recall a player from the Griffins. Mike Mowers, perhaps. I’ve also heard that Ray Whitney will be out with a groin injury, according to WXYZ. Wonderful.

The Jackets will be minus their captain, Luke Richardson, who is out six weeks with a broken finger.

Steve Thomas will make his power play debut on a line with Pavel Datsyuk and Brett Hull.

I see this as a good opportunity for the Wings to extend their unbeaten streak to five games. However, the Jackets have caused the Wings problems in the past and I don’t expect it to be an easy win for Detroit.

Guy Lafleur, the Montreal Canadians’ legend and Hall of Famer, says this weekend’s Heritage Classic game, which pre-ceeds the big outdoor regular season game between the Oilers and Habs, will be a snapshot of what the league was like in the past. He says today’s league is no fun to watch and hopes the league will soon return to its offensive form and become as it was in the 70s and 80s.

Lafleur’s solution to today’s overwhelmingly boring league is unusual.

“To me they should cut down to 24 teams, meaning more All-Star type players on each team. Eventually, what (the NHL) should do is to have a European division and they play for the Stanley Cup at the end of the season.

“The European hockey players would play in their country and here they would have more players that people would easily identify with. That would make a big difference.”

I completely agree with the contraction half of Guy’s idea. The league is at least six teams too big. There is not currently even enough medium level talent in the world to fill a 30 team NHL, let alone that of the highest level. Too much of the NHL is low level talent, if it can even be called “talent”. As it is, for there be any kind of parity, the game has to be dumbed up and slowed down. In order for these lower level players and the teams stocked with them to keep up with the more talented players and teams, strategies such as the trap and all that comes with it have to be implemented. Though this brings parity to the league, it creates high levels of boredom that keep away prospective fans and eventually drive away all but the most hardcore fans (like me). Cut the league down by a few teams, and talent will be more evenly distributed instead of being locked to a small number of top teams (like the Wings and Colorado). Give the best teams of the league the new talent coming in and those kids won’t have to be rushed into a game they aren’t ready for because their new clubs will have enough depth to get slowly acclimated.

It’s the other half of Lafleur’s plan I don’t like. European division?! Huh? How will that create an exciting league? Some of the most amazing players to watch are European and locking them away across the ocean, with at least a 5 hour time difference from hockey fanship strongholds in North America won’t do anything to create excitement. Who would broadcast the games? Satellite TV? That’s great, force people to pay to watch their favorite players at 1:00 in the morning.

Let the Europeans keep their own pro leagues. They don’t want the NHL to interfere even more with their sphere of influence. If these European players are going to go to Europe, they might as well play for their old European league teams. That’s what they really care about anyway.

If this were to happen, what size rinks would the European players play on? International or NHL? If international, the North American side of the league would have to re-size their own rinks to prepare for the Stanley Cup round. Or vice versa for the European teams. It wouldn’t work. There is too much money to be lost in a larger ice area and smaller seating areas and Europe isn’t going to change for the NHL.

Besides, the Stanley Cup is strictly a North American trophy and the NHL has had a hard enough time generating interest in it with European players on this side of the Atlantic, let alone on their own side.

I’m just glad that won’t happen, at least not officially. We’ll see plenty of NHLers over in Europe during the upcoming strike (yes, it’s coming) but at least most of them will be back in the States eventually.

The league may get contraction whether it wants it or not. A prolonged work stoppage next year will likely push many teams out of business, leaving only those with enough money to hold out.

Wayne Gretzky made similar comments to Lafleur’s league boredom remarks during a news conference promoting his new autobiographical DVD. However, he doesn’t have an active solution to the league’s problems.

“The game is going to always have cycles. The game in the ’70s was pretty defensive and along came (Guy) Lafleur and Montreal and then (Mike) Bossy and the Islanders and that opened things up.

“Along came the Oilers (in the ’80s) and everybody said: `That’s how you win’ so that opened things up, too.”

He says the league is just in a defensive cycle and that it will open up again someday. I can buy that. It makes sense but I just wonder if the league will survive this cycle. Also, if the league is on the brink of another offensive era, it sounds like the Avs may have made the right long term decision in stocking up on the forwards. That scares me because the last thing I want is an Oilers-like Avalanche team rolling over the league. An Oilers-like Red Wings, I’d like, even if it’s not very possible.

The fact is, something needs to be done, whether it’s contraction or the outright ban on the trap. Neither is very likely at all, not with the league’s current management. The NHL isn’t getting very many new customers and is losing the fans it does have. I don’t expect Bettman to do anything about it, though. Not the right thing, at least.

Don’t expect Darren McCarty back this week. He is still recovering from an injury he suffered in the November 8 game against Nashville when he went feet first into the end boards. He has “a couple bulging disks” in his back and though he wants to play this week, he’s decided not to rush it. While skating and shooting weren’t much of a problem, Mac’s primary concern is contact and instead of coming back quickly and risk injuring it again, he’s going to heal fully. He skated for the first time since the injury yesterday before practice for about 20 minutes and Lewis said he would try to skate with the team today. He says he’s still got a ways to go, however, and I guess that’s good news for Darryl Bootland, if not for the team in general.

Nick Lidstrom and Pascal Dupuis chase the puck along the boards during last night’s game

The Wings almost completed a comeback of their own last night but fell short of the win in the end and had to settle for the 1-1 tie with the Wild. The game was mainly a defensive and goaltending match between the two clubs, with not very much offensive excitement, at least until overtime, when things finally heated up and both teams came very close to winning the game.

Dominik once again kept the Wings in the game when they were lacking defensively. I’ve been fairly impressed with his play so far this season. Even though it has not been to the same level as it was two years ago, he has played well enough to keep the Wings in games that maybe they should not have been in. I don’t necessarily think he has done a better job than CuJo did up to this point of last year’s season but I don’t think he’s done worse. The difference between the two goalies will be more apparent during the playoffs, when it matters most.

Once again Steve Yzerman showed why he is the best leader in hockey and one of the sport’s best players. His team-leading 9th goal got the Wings their point and kept them from being shut out. It isn’t to the rest of the Wings players’ credit that a man practically playing on one leg is leading the team in scoring but it certainly is to Yzerman’s. He has set a great example thus far and hopefully, the rest of the team will soon follow and play like we know they can. One more thing about Yzerman, check out this PDF file of the giant mural of The Captain in downtown Detroit. It’s pretty cool.

Steve Thomas looked good in his 3rd game with the Wings, logging 13 minutes of ice time, making a few big hits on some Wild players and finishing a plus-1 on the night with 2 PIMs. He moved up a line or two and played with Steve Yzerman and Shanahan in the third, creating chances and having at least a small role in The Captain’s goal.

Jacque Lemaire is the best coach in the NHL. Even though I absolutely hate the system he preaches (the trap), I have to admit that what Lemaire has done with the Wild is pretty amazing. Brian Burke’s comment about the Wild made during last year’s playoffs is completely true: “This is not a hockey team, it’s a cult. They’ve got a total buy-in on their system………” The Wild should be a team of nobodies going nowhere but instead, they’re a team of nobodies going wherever they want to go. It’s impressive though it’s too bad they have to use the trap to do it.

The Wings got five of six possible points on that three-game road trip so I’d say it was pretty successful. The Wings return home for a game on Wednesday with the Blue Jackets and will look to extend their four game unbeaten (instead of winning) streak to five games. They are now 9-7-2-0 and have won four of their last six games. They are improving slowly but surely.

Next up: vs. Columbus, Wednesday, 7:30

News | ESPN | Box Score

Lines-
Maltby-Draper-Holmstrom
Thomas-Williams-Bootland
Whitney-Draper-Holmstrom
Shanahan-Yzerman-Devereaux
Whitney-Datsyuk-Hull
Shanahan-Yzerman-Thomas
Devereaux-Williams-Bootland

Lidstrom-Chelios
Fischer-Schneider
Woolley-Dandenault
Fischer-Schneider
Schneider-Chelios

4 on 4-
Datsyuk-Holmstrom
Shanahan-Yzerman
Datsyuk-Hull
Draper-Whitney

Lidstrom-Woolley
Fischer-Schneider
Lidstrom-Chelios
Woolley-Dandenault

PP-
Whitney-Datsyuk-Hull
Shanahan-Yzerman-Holmstrom

Lidstrom-Woolley
Schneider-Chelios
Lidstrom-Schneider

PK-
Maltby-Draper
Shanahan-Yzerman

Lidstrom-Chelios
Fischer-Schneider

OT-
Datsyuk-Hull
Maltby-Draper
Shanahan-Yzerman
Yzerman-Thomas

Lidstrom-chelios
Fischer-Schneider
Woolley-Dandenault

Net-
Dominik Hasek

It was a goaltending battle between Hasek and Roloson which featured a Pavel Datsyuk penalty shot, and many huge scoring chances. The Wings played a pretty good game against the Wild, especially considering it was the second game in two nights. Coach Dave Lewis had pretty much decided that Yzerman would sit out to rest his knee, but the Captain decided that the team needed him with all the holes in the lineup already due to injuries. So he wrote himself into the lineup, and came up big with just under 8 minutes left in the 3rd, tying the game at 1 and picking up his team-leading ninth goal. Thus far, Yzerman has clearly been the team MVP this season, picking up the slack when his teammates seem sluggish. His consistent play has been one of the few guarentees for the Wings in this stretch of the season. When Pavel Datsyuk drew the penalty shot, all Wings fans thought of his breakaway goal on Turco that featured an incredible puck-on-a-string fake right. Unfortunately, all Wings fans AND Roloson thought of this move, because when Datsyuk tried it again in his penalty shot, Roloson seemed like he was almost waiting at the point where Pavel shot it. Dave Lewis said

“The problem with that move is that every goaltender in North America saw it more than once. Pavel will have to come up with something else.”

The Wings are now in a good position to take command of the West, just after it seemed like they were fighting for 8th seed status. It’s certainly been an odd start of the 2003-2004 season though, with new teams leading each division, and super-powers like the Avs and Wings and Ottawa temporarily shell-shocked. The key word is temporarily though, because this cannot last. I sense the Wings breaking out of this funk, and I can’t see the Avs and Ottawa not doing the same certain or later.

In his first game since spraining his wrist October 21 against Boston, Paul Kariya reinjured the wrist in the third period against Dallas on a check into the boards by Brenden Morrow. Get well later, Paulie. We’ve had enough of our own injury problems, so I’m glad to see Colorado getting a little of that too.

After all the confusion between conflicting reports, we have word from Peter Forsberg’s best friend and father that he has an abdominal injury, although it is not serious enough to require surgery. It is described as an “inflamation” of the stomach. He would probably be playing if this were the playoffs, but he is questionable to enter the lineup any time soon.

Unlucky Eric did it again. Lindros is listed as day-to-day after receiving a scratched left cornea. He will probably get back in the lineup within the next week. Interestingly, Lindros previously had an eye injury in 1995, one that many thought cost him the Art Ross Trophy. It’s too bad a guy as talented as Eric (and to all you naysayers, the guy is talented, remember his first seasons in the NHL) has gone through so many injuries and circumstances that have limited his performance.

And with much hope that Mario Lemieux could be returning soon to the Penguins minor league lineup, there have been reports that his hip injury could be much worse than what was thought. The hip flexor Lemieux has been plagued with could be as a result of either a muscle tear or an arthritic problem in the hip joint. It’s really too bad that one the NHL’s perrenial mega-stars and Hall of Famers has to be plagued with so much injury. He never expected to be playing 82 games when he returned, but I don’t think he thought he was going to be going through such a series of serious injuries. I think he had in mind that he would miss games due to rest more than injury. But he’s sure a trooper to stick with this.