Looking sharp early

Friday April 11, 2008 @ 06:47 PM EDT

Thorsten currently plays wealthy casino owner, Zach Slater, in ABC’s daytime drama, All My Children. For that role, he received a Daytime Emmy nomination for “Outstanding Lead Actor” in 2006. He has also appeared in films, The Silencers, Deadly Desire, and The Bone Collector. An avid rugby and hockey fan, Kaye will chronicle the Detroit Red Wings run to the Stanley Cup.


In playoffs, it’s always one game at a time.


Well…one down, fifteen more to go.


The boys looked great coming out of the gate last night. Even though I was working, shooting a scene with my friend Cameron Mathison, and one of the execs happened to be on set and we got him to push the Versus feed down to where we could see it. So we were filming, but between takes, we got to see the scores and the replays.


Believe me; I won’t miss this time of year for anything. As a matter of fact, I’ve watched all the games, every one of them. I’ve had to flip back-and-forth between a couple, but I haven’t missed seeing at least part of every single game. My family isn’t exactly loving me right now, but I can’t help it. This is by far the best time of year.


But before anything else, I want to say something about Brendan Shanahan.


I’m going to be so sorry when Shanny hangs them up. I hope he will stay in the game, to coach, to manage, whatever – because he’s such a classy guy, and he showed it a couple nights ago.


When he got that breakaway, when he passed up career playoff goal number 60, I was saying to myself: “I can’t believe he just did that.” He has an empty net, he has earned the right to score if he wants, he is one goal away from 60 for his playoff career, and he passed it to Nigel Dawes, a rookie.


That’s Shanny for you. I’ll be honest, I miss him in Detroit. He’s one of those guys I was talking about in my last blog, one of those good blue-collar athletes you can be proud to call him a friend. You just don’t see things like that in sports anymore, and it was a perfect example of what I was talking about.


Hockey players are the best sort of athletes.


Heck, they’re the best sort of people.


But back to the playoffs: the Ducks came out like the class bully last night, the kind that figures they’re bigger and stronger than everyone else, but Dallas came right back at them and showed them why they won’t be able to push them around. Four powerplay goals! That’ll teach the Ducks a little control, I think.


Watching that game, I realized that I like the Stars as a hockey club. They’re not my favorites, of course, but Hull is one of my favorite players of all time, and I’m glad he’s still associated with them. He’s doing what I hope Shanny will do when he is finished, stay in the game in some capacity.


Which brings me back a full circle: to the Red Wings. Like I said, they got off to a good start, and their guys coming off of injury looked good. Cleary looked great, Drapes looked sharp, and Stuart, for all the time he’s missed good with a broken finger he looked sharp as well.


I’ll tell you, I’m trying not to get overexcited, but I can’t help it. I am excited.


One thing – and this is the tiniest of criticisms – but Datsyuk has to shoot more. He’s so confident with his puck handling ability, and he always wants the pretty goal, but I want to see him firing pucks on net whenever he has the chance.


And to give credit where it is due, I have to say Ellis played a great game. That game could’ve been done really early, there were some great chances by the Red Wings. He stoned Zetterberg once, and Samuelsson, who looked good as well, once or twice.


Finally, Franzen was solid, and I guess that should be expected. At first, it seemed like he got points just by playing with Datsyuk and Zetterberg, but he’s looking good on his own, better every night. He’s so big and strong, he can really skate, and he can handle the puck – he almost does what he wants out there.


At the risk of getting too excited for this team, I have to say they looked ready, and they haven’t looked that ready since 2002 perhaps.


We’ll see what happens in Game 2.


Rememer, one game at a time.


Until next time.


TK

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