Despite the fact that they outplayed the Ducks by a wide margin yesterday, the Wings lost 2-1 in overtime and are now down 3-2 in the series, facing elimination Tuesday in Anaheim. It was a game the Ducks were fortunate to win, because the Wings blew 5 or 6 very good scoring chances that could have made the score 5 or 6 to 0 going into that final minute. JS Giguere will get a lot of credit, but I think it was more a case of the Detroit shooters putting it in the crest of his jersey than him actually making a spectacular save. I guess you can give him credit for being in position, but the Wings made his job easier.
The Wings played a strong game, but they need to find a way to finish. They were less than a minute away from being up 3-2 in the series and had to find a way to kill off a BS penalty. Another six inches and they probably would have. One of their biggest problems in this series has been their inability, at times, to clear the zone and it really came back to bite them in Game 5. Even given the tying goal, however, they had a chance to win it, but they came out fairly flat in OT and let the Ducks take over. Andreas Lilja was pressured by two forecheckers and ended up coughing up the puck. Teemu Selanne made no mistake on the play and roofed it over a down-and-out Hasek.
And now the Ducks have a series lead after winning two games they had little business winning. It’s not over, though. I believe this Wings team is tougher than that. I’m confident there will be a Game 7 Thursday night.
I’ll have more tonight after work.
The Wings will need to step it up next game. I think that if they can win the next one, they could really do it. Then a European captain would finally win the Cup. Cleary first star!
*OnHockey.ca*
**dannygreen.blogspot.com**
hve to agree, the wings were jobbed out of a win by sheer bad luck, not gonna blame the refs they missed some obvious calls but they called a couple in detroits favor that should not have been called. Bad luck on the 2 posts (think god (i mean zetterberg) hit one when anaheim had giguere pulled) and even worse bad luck on the flukey bounce for the game yng goal of lidstroms stick, and the wrst kind of bad luck on the game winner by teemu selanne (loved him winnipeg but since i am canadian {wings still my favorite team though, by far, in fact i don’t even have a second fav team, and to make things worse i live in a city exactly 1/2 way between Edmonton and Calgary- last 2 years have been really rough being a wings fan hehe} but selannes dirty hit on *pronger, of all people during the olympics a few years ago made me see how dirty of a player he can be). Anyways, there is noway the wings should have lost this game, in my opinion they should have lost game won and then won the last 4 for the series and the matchup against ottawa, but since they say bad luck comes in 3’s hopefully the next 2 games are the wings, they deserve to win they have outplayed the ducks by a huge margin in every game since the middle of game 2. Go wings.