Thoughts on the game: the Wings outplayed the Ducks completely for 50 minutes. As much as I resent Hasek sometimes, he was the Dominator last night and played a stellar game, besides the huge dive he took in the second period. I hate that crap.

Schneider had a couple nice giveaways that gave me some Schadenfreude. I hate Pronger more every time I see him play, and you are spot on about him last night, Matt. When I saw Cleary squaring off with Pronger, I though Cleary would get a whooping laid on him, but he held his own for the first part of the fight anyway. I was proud.

Couple terrible calls by the refs, especially Filpulla’s holding call, but they made a lot of great non-calls as well, so I won’t complain too much.

Datsyuk is really my favorite player. His passing vision is unparalleled. Even on the plays that don’t make the highlight reel, he keeps the Wings in the play much longer than they should be on many occasions.

The thing that stuck out to me the most in the game was how badly the Wings played in the last 10 minutes. It’s not that they play badly, they just seem to play cocky. If they’re winning going towards the end of the game, they sit back and play a TOTALLY defensive style, which ain’t a bad idea but for the fact that they don’t do it well; they’re not that kind of team. It’s tough to go from total puck possession to a dump and chase when you’re playing in your defensive zone for eight straight minutes. Add that to the fact that the Ducks had all the momentum and our style of play was doing nothing to change that. I think the Wings should count themselves lucky the score wasn’t evened before the game ended, but all in all I was pleased with most of the play in the game.

A week off? Yeah, great for them, crappy for me.