The Wings halted their three-game skid with a 3-2 shutout win over the Vancouver Canucks last night. We won’t know for sure until tomorrow night’s game in San Jose, but it looks like we saw something of a return to form. The game wasn’t perfect, but their performance was better than anything they’ve put on since the win over Colorado last week.

Some thoughts:

… I thought Dan Cleary was the best player in red-and-white. His level of individual effort all night was incredible and would have made him a star in my book even without his two goals.

… In spite of myself, I was impressed with Roberto Luongo last night. He played a heck of a game and made a number of incredible saves that weren’t necessarily a direct result of his physical size combined with large padding. The Wings kept him working hard all night and he was nearly the difference.

… At the other end of the ice, Dominik Hasek was strong as well. He wasn’t tested nearly as much as Luongo, but he was forced to make some good saves. He could have controlled the rebound on the Sedin goal better, perhaps, but he had no chance on Naslund’s goal as the puck went in off Rafalski’s skate.

… Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg were kept off the scoreboard, but I thought they played fairly well. Still the occasional  bonehead pass by Hank, but that’s not the end of the world. It’s interesting that Babcock will put a slumping forward with one of those two in order to get them going, while he’ll put them together if they’ve both hit a bit of a dry patch. If they continue to play on the same line, we can expect a breakout game sometime soon.

… Valtteri Filppula fell inexplicably at least three times last night. I’m thinking it’s time to keep track. And for someone to convince him to try different skates.

…  Still not sure about the Kronwall/Lidstrom, Rafalski/Lilja experiment. The latter two have some complementary flaws in their game that you’d think Babcock would want to avoid.

… Is it just me or does Datsyuk only use one move in the shootout?

… It was good to see Hank try a move other than the Peter Forsberg Deke™.

… I think this was a game that would have been a relative positive, even if the Wings had lost. They put forth a strong performance and have something to build on as they head into San Jose tomorrow night.

Links

• Highlights
• Post-game interviews
  • Dominik Hasek
  • Mike Babcock
  • Henrik Zetterberg
  • Dan Cleary
• Snapshots post-game media breakdown
• Canucks Hockey Blog
• Waiting for Stanley
• Canucks and Beyond

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