On the Wings

I’m sorry about my tardiness in getting a reaction to the game posted, but I was out of town this weekend and haven’t had a chance until now. Once again, this won’t be a minute-by-minute recap because I’m short on time. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a system down now that I’m home so that I can get that consistency back, so please bear with me until I get settled into a routine here.

Some thoughts on the game:

… The big news of the game, aside from the win, was obviously the injury to Mathieu Schneider in the first period after a high and awkward hit by Patrick Marleau. Schneider has a broken wrist and is out for the remainder of the playoffs, a huge loss for the Wings, who used Schneider as an essentially #1B defenseman. It looks like Brett Lebda will return for Game 6, but the Wings will still have a rookie on the blueline for the rest of the postseason and, though it’s a weakness I think they can handle (Kyle Quincey is no slouch, and neither are Derek Meech and Jonathan Ericsson, the other options), it’s still a weakness. They’ll have to dig deep and make up as best they can.

… Dominik Hasek bounced back very well, I thought, following that awful goal in the first. That shot has to be stopped and he knew it, so it was good to see him look so strong for the rest of the game.

… Following that goal, I was not very optimistic about the game. I thought the Sharks were outplaying the Wings by a fair margin, but gradually, they fought back. That was good to see. I wrote in my gameday comments that the Wings can’t count on being able to come back, but I was definitely proven wrong. This team has a tenacity I haven’t seen from a group in the Winged Wheel in years. I think we can start to hope, folks.

… Starting the second period on the power play must have energized the Wings, as they were swarming all over the Sharks on their first goal at 3:10. On that play Tomas Holmstrom showed once again why he’s so important to this team, as his ability with the puck around the front of the net led to a great Henrik Zetterberg goal.

… I’m not sure what Evgeni Nabokov was thinking around the 16:10 mark of the second period, but he made an incredibly boneheaded play with the puck when he came out of the net. Sure, Pavel Datsyuk faked him out a bit, but he could have easily sent the puck to Carle on the other wing. Sending it right at Datsyuk was about the worst of his options. Pavel nearly turned the wrong way after the puck bounced off him, but he picked it up and had a very easy goal. Definitely a back-breaker for San Jose.

… Late in the second period, Andreas Lilja laid what I thought was a pretty tame hit on Mike Grier. NBC couldn’t get a very good angle on it, so perhaps it was worse than it looked, but it didn’t seem to me to be anything worth getting worked up over. The Sharks didn’t think so, though, and there was a scrum at center as a result. I don’t know what Hank did to deserve it because NBC never showed a replay of the entire sequence, but Rivet went after him and ended up on the ice on top of him, holding him in a headlock. Then, Tomas Holmstrom pulled Rivet off Hank and started roughing him up. At the end of it all, the Wings started the third period on the power play as Homer and Zetterberg were given penalties, as was Rivet.

… The Wings’ power play showed it could click even without Mathieu Schneider when Datsyuk and Zetterberg combined to deliver the puck to Mikael Samuelsson, who beat Nabokov to make it 3-1 at 3:46. Less than three minutes later, Pavel and Hank made Holmstrom the beneficiary of their skill with a nice set-up to him in the slot to make it 4-1. That goal also came on the power play.

… By that point, the Sharks were visibly flustered and Nabokov didn’t help them when he turned the puck over to Datsyuk again. It was trickling just wide when a Shark beat a Wing to it and cleared the crease.

… The teams traded penalties as the period wound down, with the Sharks getting one in the final minute. During the break in play, at least four octopi were thrown on the ice. Two of them were real, the other two were stuffed Al the Octopus’s. It was a fitting end to the game for the fans at JLA, who showed some real spirit and enthusiasm. I’m glad to see the idea of a long Wings playoff run has finally caught on.