Two Saturdays. Two horrific performances by the Red Wings defense. Where are their heads these days?

Last week, they choked on the road. This week they can’t put on a half-decent performance in front of the home fans?

Before anyone blames Osgood for this one, let me set the record straight. Goals one through four were bad defense, pure and simple. The first two were deflections by uncovered players, while the third and fourth were awful turnovers. We missed the fifth because we had the TV on another channel for intermission and misjudged the start of the period. Goal six could have been stopped. Goal seven was another bad turnover.

Now, you’d like to see Osgood steal a game here and there, but that becomes difficult when your team provides zero support and when your best players are coughing the puck up like Andreas Lilja on his worst nights.

Unbelievable. There are 16 games left in the season and we’re being subjected to this crap? All year, I’ve been confident in the team’s ability to step it up when it counts, even though they’ve been in a season-long funk for some inexplicable reason. Well, my confidence is starting to crack. Time is running out for a turnaround.

I don’t know what’s wrong with this group, but they’d better figure it out soon or they’re headed for a first-round bounce. And it could come at the hands of one of the teams to which they’ve surrendered 8 goals over the past week.

IwoCPO suggests the Wings flout the NHL’s directive regarding Lidstrom and Datsyuk by dressing them anyway. No argument here. Arbitrary rules like this beg for testing. Let’s see what Bettman does in the face of opposition.

Will the Wings do it? Highly unlikely. The organization is too much of a good citizen, which is precisely why it doesn’t deserve to be the object of such an abusive exercise of power.

Tonight is the third of four games between the Wings and the Flames this season. Detroit won the first game 6-3 in the first weekend of the season but lost in Calgary 3-1 on November 14th.

The Wings are coming off a successful three-game California road trip. They beat San Jose on Saturday and LA on Monday, though they lost to Anaheim last Friday. After skating to a 7-5-2, the Wings will look to return to something closer to their October 11-1-0 form in December. All but five games this month are against Eastern Conference opponents so they’ll have to be on their A-game if they want to keep ahead in the Western Conference standings.

The Flames have lost two in a row, one in regulation (in Nashville on Tuesday, 2-0) and one in a shootout (versus Edmonton last Friday, 2-1). After winning 8 in a row to start November, they hit a sporadic stretch in the second half of the month, going 2-2-1. The Nashville game kicked off a five game road trip that will take them out East for three games before they return home to play Ottawa and Boston later in the month.

Since Manny Legace is out with a knee sprain and Jimmy Howard started Monday, Chris Osgood should start tonight.

Robert Lang is out indefinitely with a groin injury, the papers say. Both report that Mark Mowers will take his place on the roster.

Both papers also make mention of the Bob McKenzie article of a couple days ago. The TSN columnist wrote that he wouldn’t be surprised if Yzerman called it quits this week based on The Captain’s reduced ice time and his sitting out of Saturday’s game. When I read that, I thought he was vastly overstating the situation and underestimating Yzerman. Mike Babcock agrees. He told the News: “I thought he (Yzerman) played outstanding in Los Angeles. He didn’t tell me anything. Sometimes as a coach you’re the last to know, but I don’t think that (Yzerman is considering retirement).”

The Flames will be a stiff test for the Wings, who have won solid games over two other strong opponents in the past two. Iginla and Company always come to play and Miikka Kiprusoff will be as hard to beat as ever, I’m sure. If the Wings play like they can, we should have an entertaining and exciting game tonight, regardless of the outcome.

It’ll be good to see Darren McCarty back at the Joe, for the second time this season.

Changes things a bit in the West.

His heartbeat was irregular again; he has been released and will undergo more tests soon.

The Wings finished out their West Coast road trip with another win, beating the Kings 5-2 last night in LA. They played a very solid game defensively and were strong offensively, putting a nice cap on the trip and helping us forget their disastrous trip to Western Canada earlier in the month.

Jimmy Howard was strong in his debut and showed us that the hype surrounding him is well founded.

Jason Woolley made his return from his groin injury but the Wings traded him for Robert Lang, who went down in the second period with a groin injury of his own.

It worked out well in the end, however, as Steve Yzerman had one of his best outings of the season after taking some of Lang’s ice time in his absence.

Overall, a very entertaining game to watch, though I had a hard time concentrating on it since just about all of my friends chose last night to have a pizza/homework party in the lounge around the TV. They are very distracting. So, this summary will be more impressions than details.

First Period

The Wings came out of the gates with a fair amount of jump. They had a number of good chances pretty early on but didn’t finish on any of them. For example, Yzerman flubbed a shot down low after taking a pass from Holmstrom and Pavel Datsyuk hit the post after taking a pass from Henrik Zetterberg just a few minutes later.

The Kings weren’t just sitting back themselves. They played a physical game and skated hard. Dustin Brown welcomed Woolley back with a big hit in the corner about five minutes in, reminding us that the Wings don’t have anyone quite capable of laying on a big hit, with Jiri Fischer out. When the Kings generated pressure of their own, Howard was very steady and looked nothing like the rookie he is. I quickly gained confidence in him and forgot it was his first NHL start.

The Kings “scored” a goal before the half-way point of the period but it was quickly disallowed after replay showed the puck had gone in under the side of the net. Howard had the post covered and knew it wasn’t a goal and so did Datsyuk, who immediately went to the ref. The net was raised a bit off the ice but they fixed it at that point and the game continued.

The Wings’ PK unit was solid in the first and their power play got a couple of good chances on the one man-advantage they had.

Shots for the period were 12-9 Wings.

Second Period

The Wings got a power play early on in the period but it only lasted 6 seconds before Zetterberg got a penalty and made it 4-on-4. The teams traded good chances, with Lang getting a flurry down low in front of the net and Eric Belanger getting a full-blown breakaway. In both instances, the goalies made the necessary saves. For Howard, it was a real baptism by fire, facing his first NHL breakaway in his first start.

The game continued to have a fast pace, with the Wings getting the majority of the chances.

Chris Chelios finally opened the scoring at 4:03, stepping up and taking a blast from the blue line that beat LaBarbera “clean” (as color-commentator Pat Verbeek kept repeating). He was using one of Kirk Maltby’s sticks, which he said caused him to break three panes of glass at the Staples Center during practice. Apparently, his shot was up to 105 mph so he switched. It paid off pretty well, ending a 57 game scoring drought. 1-0 Wings.

Lang was sent to the box for hooking at 5:37 and though the Kings didn’t score on that power play, they did score as a direct result of events during that time. Kirk Maltby, trying to kill off the penalty, ended up on his stomach and swinging his stick out as a Kings player jumped over him. The stick, knocked out of Maltby’s hands by the skates of Joseph Corvo, went flying and the ref called Maltby for throwing his stick in the offensive zone. Pretty BS call, in my opinion. Anyway, as per NHL rules, Corvo was awarded a penalty shot. He ended up scoring after freezing Howard and creating a small gap at the post. Howard certainly got both barrels, with an out-right breakaway and a penalty shot in the same night. 1-1 tie.

The Wings regained the lead just under two minutes later when Mathieu Schneider scored once again. Tomas Holmstrom was out front and doing his usual good job of screening the goalie, who may have never seen it. 2-1 Wings.

Brendan Shanahan laid a borderline dirty hit on Sean Avery around 11:16 and was immediately attacked by Tim Gleason. Both players got fighting majors, though Shanahan was just defending himself. The refs also tacked on an extra two minutes for the initial hit. Dan Cleary had a nice breakaway chance while shorthanded and drew a penalty on the play. After a period 4-on-4 play, the Wings went to the power play. Steve Yzerman made it 3-1 when he tipped in a shot from Jason Williams at 13:43. That ended the power play they were on but because the Kings had been called for another penalty on the play, the Wings continued with the man advantage. They got some good sustained pressure going but didn’t get the puck in the net however.

The Wings had LA on their heels at this point and were really dominating play.

Shots were 12-8 Wings.

Third Period

The Kings rebounded a bit in the third and made a good effort at coming back for the first half of the period or so.

The game settled down a bit after that, however, and the Wings had it pretty well in hand.

Zetterberg scored at 15:19 to make it 4-1 after taking a nice pass from Samuelsson. He was stopped on his initial shot but scored on the rebound.

The Kings pulled their goalie with about 3:00 left and the Wings scored without a whole lot of effort. Lidstrom lobbed a bomb from his own blueline and made it 5-1 at 18:17.

The Kings made the score somewhat more respectable at 18:59 when Sean Avery scored on a tip in off a shot from the point. The puck beat Howard high and wasn’t really his fault.

Shots were 5-7 Kings and 29-24 Wings for the game.

Sorry for the lateness in getting this posted. It was too late last night and I had classes all day today. And now I have to go to work. May append this later.

My second team report installment is up at FantasyHockey.com.

In other news: The Wings defeated the LA Kings last night, 5-2, with Jimmy Howard in net for his first NHL game. As much as I wanted to stay up and watch the whole game (it started at 10:30), I fell asleep after two periods. It was only 3-1 when I went to sleep, but the Wings looked better than they have in some recent games.