My First Blog

Friday May 16, 2008 @ 07:40 AM EDT

I’ve only been a member here for less than a month, and I’ve read some very good blogs so I haven’t felt the need to write one. But since I love hockey and talk about it constantly I may as well throw my two cents in about the Wings/Stars game 4. The Stars were the better team. More controlled, better defensively, better goal tending. You can say what you want about the Holmstrom no-goal but the reality is one more goal would not have made a difference. The Wings couldn’t get sustained pressure on Turco nearly as often as they did in the first three games. I heard the announcers say Dallas played with desperation, but they were wrong. Desperation alone won’t win games. It usually loses them because everbody tries to be the guy that turns things around and teamwork breaks down. Dallas won because they played a perfectly executed game. Modano and Morrow were brilliant. Perfect feeds, lightning fast releases. getting open at just the right moment. Both of them hurt in the previous game, and both disregarding the injuries to play at the top of their game. Turco never once looked out of his game or in his head. Stellar positioning, laser focus. The role players played their roles to the hilt. The new line combinations proved dynamic. This sounds like a Stars fan blog, but it’s all true.
The thing is, my Wings didn’t play a bad game. We didn’t beat ourselves. Dallas didn’t get lucky. We played a very good game. It would have been enough to win in the first round. Maybe even the second. We had sound positioning most of the time. Ozzie made some great saves, The Datsyuk/Zetterberg duo was still effective. We didn’t make huge mistakes. The difference was that Dallas played as close to perfect as it gets. And by doing it they showed Detroit that two can play that game. When a team takes as many penalties as the Wings did it’s because they’re getting beaten in the man-to-man battles and have to hook/hold/trip to stop a goal. Even Nick went to the box for hooking on what’s often called a good penalty because it prevented a very good scoring opportunity. But it also means somebody missed his man and once it was Nick. That’s saying a lot.
An odd little side note here, I’m not crushed that we lost. I secretly did not want a sweep. Dallas is too good to go down in four, and the Wings need adversity to overcome. Losing the Mule was certainly adversity, but having to put the Western Conference Champion ball caps back in the box hurts their pride. And I’m still a fan of Turks and Modano, two Michigan boys who gave us a lot to cheer for before they moved away. As I get older I’ve found I enjoy good hockey as much as my team winning. When I was young I was starved for the ‘My team is great’ feeling. Because the Wings, my team forever, sucked. Their symbol should have been a straw. If you’re under 30 you probably don’t remember The Drought, but between the late 60s and the mid 90s wins were as rare as diamonds for the Wings. Barry Melrose often tells his best Wings story. In 83, when he was finishing his career in Detroit, the only instructions the coach gave the team was’for God’s sake don’t let the kid get hurt!” The kid was Steve Yzerman. The other players understood. He was the fuure of the team. He didn’t change them overnight. A decade would go by before they became legitimate contenders. And in that time he changed his style from high scoring offense only phenom, to team building leader who let his stats drop so his team could improve. That’s when you fall in love with a team. When they get knocked down and don’t get the breaks and walk off the ice having left everything on it, still losing, and giving it everything again two days later. And that’s why I know they will will in Detroit and move on to the cup. You can see it in their eyes on the bench. You can hear it in Babcocks’ no excuses post game interviews. They let their focus slip and it cost them the game. But that focus was slapped back into them with the loss. For the first time in six years they look hungry. They didn’t Wednesday night in Dallas. But they did Thursday morning.

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