Well, I’m home for the summer after the hassle of check-out and back on dial-up (hopefully not for long) after a semester of decent wireless. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to do a blow-by-blow account of the game last night (and my notes aren’t good enough, anyway), so here are some disjointed thoughts:
… The Versus crew kept raving about how the Wings were dominating the game and the Sharks had gotten a couple fortunate breaks, but I definitely did not see it that way. The game, to me, consisted of long stretches of average or below average play by the Wings interspersed with brief periods of pretty strong play. Maybe they were referring to the fact that the Wings were widely out-shooting San Jose, but that does not mean dominance, especially when so many of those shots were routine saves for Nabokov. I give them lots of credit for hanging in there and pulling out the win, but until Holmstrom batted that puck out of the air and into the net, I had very little hope for the outcome of the game.
… Speaking of Holmstrom, he made an immediate impact, even before his goal. He was wrecking havoc around the net and getting into Nabokov’s head, that much was obvious, and Craig Conroy’s stick evidently didn’t affect his hand-eye coordination. By the way, he was not injured last night, he just had a broken skate blade, according to the Detroit News.
… Robert Lang is getting mixed reviews on this game, so here’s my take: I thought, overall, he put on a solid performance. There were definitely times where I rolled my eyes at his lack of effort, but I found myself surprised at other times to note how hard he was playing. The consistency is obviously not there yet, but maybe we can’t expect that out of him. As long as he’s not consistently lackadaisical, I’m okay with that. He just has to knock around the offensive zone like he was last night on every other shift. As long as he’s scoring goals like that, I guess I can live with him until free agency begins.
… Mathieu Schneider’s play on the game-winner was spectacular. He grabbed a San Jose clearing attempt out of the air and at that moment, all I wanted was for him to get the shot off. When it went in, I couldn’t believe it, but we all started yelling when we saw the Wings celebrating. A great moment.
… A couple comments on the Sharks’ goals: Todd Bertuzzi needs to be stronger on the puck. He turned it over inside the Detroit end and it ended up on the stick of Joe Thornton down low, with Jonathan Cheechoo across the net out front. Talk about a slam dunk. As for the second goal, the delayed call on Schneider was pretty lame, but even more so was the fact that the officials blew a San Jose bench minor penalty. Lilja must be glad he wears coverings over his ears because the puck went in off the side of his head and it was already in the net before Hasek reacted.
… Following their second goal, the Sharks settled back and put on only enough offense to keep the Wings’ defense busy. Not the best strategy, as it turned out.
… Toward the end of the second period, the Wings had an absolutely glorious scoring chance as Nabokov kicked a Pavel Datsyuk shot right to the wing Henrik Zetterberg was skating down, but Hank’s efforts at getting the puck on what would have been a slam dunk goal were hampered by McLaren’s textbook example of interference. No call. Oh well. The Wings scored about a minute later, after McLaren took a penalty on Franzen.
… The Wings really started picking up their play in the third, finally living up to the hype the Versus announcers were giving them, but I was beginning to think they’d run out of time. Then Lang scored and the Wings didn’t really look back after that. Play picked up in both ends and though the Sharks scared us all half to death in overtime, Hasek made the necessary saves, and the defense held off the rest. Like I wrote last night, I hope the Wings can carry that finish through for the rest of the series. The two-day break will be good as far as rest goes, but hopefully it won’t slow them down. They may very well have taken the wind out of San Jose’s sails, but we’ll have to wait until Saturday to see. I can’t wait.