Monthly Archive for December, 2006Page 4 of 4

GameDay: @ St. Louis (7-15-3, 17 Pts). 8:00 ET

Published
by
Matt Saler
on December 5, 2006
in 2006-2007, Blues and GameDay
. 0 Comments

I don’t have time to do a full preview so here are just a few quick notes.

Tonight is the third of eight games between these two teams this season. They will play again on Thursday, in Detroit.

The Blues have lost four straight since beating the Wings 3-2 on November 24th. The losses were to Phoenix, San Jose, Nashville, and Chicago.

The Wings won two in a row before losing 3-2 to the Sharks in their most recent game (Saturday).

The Wings’ injury situation is as reported yesterday: Johan Franzen (knee), out; Niklas Kronwall (groin), out; Chris Osgood (wrist), out.

The Blues will be retiring Brett Hull’s #16 tonight before the game. Hull will be remembered by the League and most fans as a Blue, but my memories of Brett will be of him in the Winged Wheel. Congratulations, Brett.

Let’s hope the Wings can put on a better performance this time around.

I have to work on a paper so I don’t think I’ll catch any more than snippets of the game. Sorry.

Griffins Update (12/04/06)

Published
by
Megan Hirdes
on December 4, 2006
in AHL, Darryl Bootland and Griffins
. 0 Comments

The tables seem to have turned for the Griffins. Between November 7 and November 17, the Griffins went winless in seven games, getting one point in an overtime loss to the Milwaukee Admirals. Since then finally winning a game on November 24 (against rival Chicago Wolves), the Griffins have gone 4-1-1. Most notably, their two most recent wins came against the then league-leading Rochester Americans (affiliate of the Buffalo Sabres), defeating them 4-2 and 4-1. Their record is now 10-10-4. The team leader in points is still Kip Miller (AHL contract), with 10 goals and 28 points, and is +1. Josh Langfeld is second with 6 goals and 18 points. The +/- leaders are Darryl Bootland and Jonathan Ericsson, both at +5. The Griffins are now fourth in the North Division, which has six teams. They are 9 points out of first in the Division, but only 1 point separates them from both third and second place. GR has 70 goals for and 76 goals against.

Stefan Liv has been the huge disappointment for the season. He was expected to adjust much faster to the North American style of play. However, at 1-5-1 and a 3.66 GAA, he has not impressed many. On November 28, he was sent down to Toledo of the ECHL. Liv was pulled from the last three games he started in GR. He has not played well, and therefore has not been given opportunities to play. Thus, they sent him to Toledo in hopes that he could adjust there and hopefully work on his game. He fell a long way from being called up to Detroit to back up Hasek. Granted, he was never expected to play in the NHL, but within one month, Liv has been with three different teams. He was recalled to Grand Rapids today. While in Toledo, Liv was 1-1-1. However, he was apparently stellar in his one win. He gave up only one goal in this game against the Trenton Titans. He did, however, give up four goals in each of his losses (4-2 and 4-3 OT). I’m not really sure if the trip did him any good.

Meanwhile in Grand Rapids, Jimmy Howard has been good. I still don’t think he’s living up to the standard he set for himself last season. At the same time, he had a much better team playing in front of him than he does now. From what I’ve seen personally, he’s doing well and developing on-schedule. He has a tendency to give up soft goals from time to time, but separates them by exciting and impressive saves. His record is now 9-7-1, with a 2.81 GAA. Jimmy played a strong game last Friday against Rochester, making 26 saves.

Derek Meech is having a very strong season, playing like we’ve been waiting for since he was brought to GR. While he hasn’t done much scoring (0-3 for 3 pts), his defense has been quite strong. He is +4, tied for third on the team. He was really good in juniors, before he was brought to Grand Rapids. However, some have said that this was mostly because he was paired with Dion Phaneuf. While I’m sure this helped him, Meech is proving to be a good defenseman on his own. This season, he’s been honored with an ‘A’ on his sweater.

Darryl Bootland has come off his mysterious 3-game healthy scratch with something to prove, apparently. He has five goals in six games (5-0-5), and is just the 8th Griffin to reach 60 career goals, many of which came last season. He also only needs 3 penalty minutes to reach 1,000. He will be the first player in franchise history to reach that mark. He could very easily do it next game, and likely will, knowing Darryl. I have to say, it’s good to see him come back this strong. I was worried for a while. Perhaps the mysterious scratch was to light a fire under his butt. The team really needs him to play well. At this point, he’s a veteran on the team.

A surprise this season has been Eric Himelfarb. He has been a notorious underachiever. I have never liked him, because of his Lilja-esque tendencies. He turns the puck over in the defensive zone, he has trouble clearing the puck, he has great speed but no puck-handling ability, he fans on every other shot…well, you get the point. Himelfarb and I don’t get along. This is just from what I’ve seen in games I’ve been to. Lately, he’s actually been…dare I say?…good! He has 3 goals and 5 assists for 8 points in 15 games (he was out with a back injury early in the season). Griffins GM Bob McNamara speaks very highly of Eric, as reported at Redwingscentral. McNamara thinks that Himelfarb is the most improved from last season. That’s not so hard to say, since only seven players returned and the majority of them seem to have taken a step backward. From going to games, however, I can agree with this. He’s actually learning how to use his speed to do something other than run goaltenders.

This weekend features a home-and-home series against the Toronto Marlies. The Marlies are currently 5th in the North division, with 22 pts (9-11-4). They are obviously the affiliates of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Grand Rapids defeated them in the playoffs last year, despite Toronto having many NHLers on the team. GR has played Toronto twice already this season, winning the first 4-2 on the road and losing the second 4-0 at home. They just beat the best team in the league twice, so that should give the Griffins some confidence. They also managed to score 4 goals in two game in a row. This is a busy month for the Griffins. Hopefully they can win a few more than they did in November.

12/04 Injury Update

Published
by
Matt Saler
on December 4, 2006
in Chris Osgood, Henrik Zetterberg, Injuries, Johan Franzen, Niklas Kronwall and Pavel Datsyuk
. 1 Comment

Both Helene St. James and Ansar Khan report that Chris Osgood has had a setback in his recovery from a broken wrist. He had the cast taken off today, but had to have another one put on as his wrist is not yet healed. It will be on until Saturday at the earliest, making it highly unlikely he’ll return before the Wings’ December 14th game in Chicago.

Well, I guess that means the edginess about the goaltending among the Hockeytown citizenry will persist for another couple weeks. If you’re worried (we’re not) that Joey MacDonald might see time in the net, rest easy: we don’t have any more back-to-back series until December 22nd-23rd, a week or so after Osgood is due back.

Khan and St. James also write on Johan Franzen and Niklas Kronwall, though they have slightly different takes on the former. St. James says Franzen will be out another week, while Khan says he won’t play in either of the two St. Louis games this week. Both say Kronwall will try to skate tomorrow, though Khan is of the opinion that Nik will be out another week. Nik, is it too much to ask for you to get healthy and stay that way? Sheesh.

One final note: they both think Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg could be reunited soon. Apparently, they’ve been practicing on a line together with Mikael Samuelsson and could play together tomorrow night in St. Louis. That’d be a good way to get both of them going consistently, though it spreads the offense thin elsewhere.

Robbed again: Wings 2, Sharks 3

Published
by
Matt Saler
on December 3, 2006
in 2006-2007, Game Reports and Sharks
. 4 Comments

I did catch the game last night, but didn’t take notes so I won’t be doing a full summary. I just have a few comments.

The title of this post refers to a play that took place at 3:13 of the first period. On this play, Mathieu Schneider scored a goal from the left wing after manuevering around the Sharks defense. It was a great goal but it was called back. Do you know why? You can probably guess, since it’s happened twice before this season. The referee immediately waived the goal off because Tomas Holmstrom was ruled to be in the crease.

Okay. Maybe he was. Let’s watch the replay: no, he’s not in the paint now … or now … or now … there’s the puck going in … and he’s still not in the crease.

Hmm. Maybe it was contact with the goaltender. Let’s watch again: there’s Toskala at the top of the crease with his glove hand on Homer’s back … he’s practically out of the crease … now he’s backed up and Homer’s near the edge … they’re not touching at all … there’s the puck again. Going into the net. A goal. Right? Wrong.

I swore that if the Wings lost by a goal, I’d be pissed. Well, they did and I am. The other times this season the Wings have been denied a goal due to contact or presence in the paint, I thought they were BS calls but I could see why the official called it that way. Last night, however, there is no way that goal should have been called back. Absolutely no way.

The League needs to clarify the rule. When I, as a long time fan, have no idea why a goal was called back, there’s a problem. They also need to fix the replay policy. There is no way it’s okay for a goal to be overturned like that and if they reviewed every goal and the booth had the power to counter the verdict on the ice, you wouldn’t have actual goals being taken away. It probably wouldn’t be a perfect system but it’d sure as heck be better than what we have now.

I’d hate for something like that to happen when the games actually mean something.

Anyway, as nice as it would have been to have had that goal, I don’t think I can really say that they lost only because they didn’t have it. Frankly, the Wings did not play that well last night. The defense was no where nearly as tight as it has been and the Sharks had Joey MacDonald making some very, very good saves for much of the game. They gave up 35 shots, the most they’ve allowed all season, 19 of which came in the third period.

Dan Cleary’s turnover at the end of the game was tragic, but was just one example of the many times the Wings turned over the puck during the game last night. Once again, they hung MacDonald out to dry defensively and it’s only because he played so well last night that the game was even close. Even if that goal had not been turned over and the Wings had won, it’d have been due to Joey’s play.

One thing that did look better was the power play, which got one goal. I’m glad but they can’t forget to play well defensively as well.

They get a little bit of a reprieve on Tuesday with the Blues. Let’s hope they can spoil Brett Hull’s Retirement Night.

GameDay: vs. San Jose (19-7-0, 38 Pts) 7:00 ET

Published
by
Matt Saler
on December 2, 2006
in 2006-2007, GameDay and Sharks
. 0 Comments

Update (6:27 PM): George Sipple of the freep reports that the Wings will be sticking with their original plan of not playing Dom in back to back games.

“If we change our mind now and we screw it up we’ll be the dumbest people alive,” Babcock said.

Thus, Joey MacDonald is slated to get the start tonight. Also, Jason Williams is making an early comeback (he was orginally not supposed to be back until Tuesday) in light of the injury (or rather, re-injury) to Kronwall. -Sarah

Update (4:45 PM): Um, I forgot to mention this little important detail: Jonathan Cheechoo may be back in the San Jose lineup. That’ll make things a little more interesting. - Matt

I don’t really have the time to write a real preview of the game tonight so I’ll just say a couple things.

It’s the third of four games between these two teams. The season series stands at a game a piece, with the teams trading home wins a month ago. They’ll wrap it all up on January 4th in San Jose.

The Sharks have won their last four and are in the middle of a four-game road trip that ends Monday in Dallas.

The Wings won in Minnesota last night and, contrary to my prediction, actually got their power play going, effectively scoring two times on the man-advantage (one goal came just after the penalty expired).

Niklas Kronwall aggrevated his groin injury last night and likely won’t play tonight. That means the Wings will have to call someone up if they want to have a full roster tonight, as Brett Lebda will have to move back to defense. As of now (1:00 PM ET), they have not yet recalled anyone from GR, however.

Dominik Hasek may be in net tonight, despite playing last night. He’s had a light enough work load this past week for the Wings to consider it.

I may or may not be watching the game tonight. We’ll see what I get tonight this afternoon and what happens this evening.

GameDay: @ Minnesota (13-10-1, 27 Pts) 8:00 ET

Published
by
Matt Saler
on December 1, 2006
in 2006-2007, GameDay and Wild
. 0 Comments

Update (7:15 PM): Helene St. James reports that Babcock will have a couple new lines tonight:

Kopecky-Datsyuk-Holmstrom
Lebda-Filppula-Maltby

Both should be good at generating pressure, I’d think. - Matt

Tonight is the first of four meetings between these two teams this season. The Wings won the 2005-2006 season series 3-1, with wins coming November 11th, 2005 (3-1), and January 30th (5-4), and April 2nd, 2006. The Wild’s win came on January 3rd, a 4-2 decision. The teams will wrap up their season series in December when they play three games over five days.

After a strong 6-0-0 start, Minnesota came back to earth, filling out their record with 7 wins and 11 losses, including one overtime loss. They have lost two in a row and have only won two of their last seven. Their recent troubles can no doubt be attributed in part to the absence of Martin Gaborik (20. Oct, groin) and Pavol Demitra (20. Nov, concussion), both of whom contributed offensively when in the lineup. Gaborik may return tonight tonight, the AP reports.

Unfortunately for Minnesota, Demitra and Gaborik aren’t the only players out with injuries, as Michael Russo of Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune writes today in a sob-story of a piece. The team will be without six regulars tonight if Gaborik sits.

Flint native Brian Rolston leads the team with 12 goals and 21 points. Starter Manny Fernandez has a 9-8-0 record, a 2.69 GAA, and a .913 save percentage.

The Wings snapped a five-game losing streak with a 2-1 win over the Dallas Stars on Monday, socring their sixth and seventh shorthanded goals in the process. The power play is still a concern but the team apparently has been working on it this week so perhaps we’ll see a new look tonight.

Dominik Hasek will get the nod tonight, meaning he’ll likely be on the bench tomorrow at JLA against the Sharks.

Brett Lebda will play as a forward tonight to help cover for the absence of both Johan Franzen (sprained knee) and Jason Williams (charley horse).

Despite their injuries, the Wild still have some weapons to go with their defensive game plan. The Wings will need to play tight defense themselves, while at the same time getting higher quality shots at the net. I have a feeling the power play may not click tonight because Minnesota is #3 in the League on the penalty kill. Our own PK unit will need to be sharp against the #4 power play. Given where both these teams are this season, it should be a hard-fought game.

I don’t know that I can justify watching the game tonight with my end-of-the-semester homework load (yeah, on a Friday night. It sucks, I know). We’ll see though.