Blogging Hockey

Hockey Blogging - Saturday, January 3, 2009

I’ll be watching the Canada-Russia junior hockey game and the Detroit Red Wing-Minnesota Wild NHL game as well. I’m going to try blogging both games and see how it works out. If it isn’t too bad, I’ll post it on my blog. As I wait the real hockey games, I’ll kill some time and watch the Leaf-Senator game. Jason Spezza and Dominic Moore are both going off for some early game stupidity. Naturally this got the faithful for Toronto in the stands and in the booth, of course, all twisted up in their knickers. Toronto just got another stupid penalty to go down two men. It is now 1-0 Ottawa.
After watching the first 10 minutes of the Ottawa-Toronto game, it is a distinct pleasure to watch the kids play. Canada is already up 1-0. I love the energy of these young players. The teams really go all out on each shift. The Russians just scored to tie the game. It is now 2-2. I knew that the Russians wouldn’t be as bad as everyone said they would be. We Canadians too often get a little ahead of ourselves when it comes to our game. Whenever Pierre Maguire opens his silly yap, I have to change the channel. He is that annoying! Gord Miller, as always, is a pleasure to listen to.
I’ve just switched to the Red Wing – Wild game. It is always so much better to have Ken Daniels and Mickey Redmond calling the game. As Mickey just said, Detroit has to watch for a let down after the New Year’s Day game in Chicago’s Wrigley Field. It was one of Detroit’s best games this year (they certainly haven’t had many, for sure). Hudler almost scored early in the game on a beautiful set up from Brian Rafalski. Detroit has had at least three more superb scoring chances. Datsyuk is, as usual, amazing. Chris Osgood has been steady and solid in the Detroit net. He hasn’t played since December 15th. It really surprising that Minnesota has the best defensive record, along with Boston, in the league, and yet the Wings have been all over them. It’s been a combination of good goaltending by Josh Harding and some really bad luck for the Detroit forwards.
On a truly gritty play, Henrik Zetterberg just missed a crushing check by a Wild defenseman and made a beautiful pass to Mikael Samuelsson who immediately deposited said pass into the net behind Harding. The first period is now over with Detroit outshooting Minnesota 11-8. I thought the shot differential would have been a lot bigger than that. Detroit really did dominate the period. It was quite a treat to watch Zetterberg and Marian Hossa play together; I wouldn’t be surprised if they both have multiple point nights. They have been particularly effective tonight.
It is still 2-2 in the junior game. The second period has started and we have our first penalty. Brad Stuart got the gate. The Wild have the man advantage. We killed it off; Ozzie looked impressive. The Wings just got their first shot on net in the second period. We haven’t exactly cranked it up like we can. I expect them to kick up a notch or two very soon. Dan Cleary just got a slashing penalty, only the second penalty in the game. This was followed by a delay of game penalty to Andreas Liyla. Now we are down 2. Luckily the intermission breaks up the 5 on 3. The Wild will have a two-man advantage for 31 seconds in the third period.
Minnesota scored on the 5 on 3 and then they scored again when Niklas Kronvall coughed up the puck in his own end. Wings scored late in the third to tie it on their second consecutive power play. The overtime has been pretty well dominated by the Wings, but there have been no goals, alas. We go to a shootout.
Pavel Datsyuk made a typically Datsyukian move that will be on all the highlight film reels at 11:00pm. Ozzie stopped all three Minnesota shootout attempts.