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Abel to Yzerman

Bottom Line: How Bad Do The Wings Want This?

by IwoCPO on 04/13/09 at 08:40 AM ET
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Today we’ll have the starboard side updated with all the Columbus links, like we do every year.  We’ll bring you the bloggers and the beat writers, the message boards and other stuff.  Like we do every frigging year.

We’ll break down the matchups and we’ll analyze everything, like we do every single year.  It’s another first rounder, another beginning to another run. 

The Wings have been through this before, so many times. Every one of them.  They’ve been here before. Chris Osgood, despite the throw up in your mouth season he’s given us, knows exactly what it takes.

Does Steve Mason?  Eventually, he will.  And he’ll be great, most of the time.  He’ll see 40 per night.  We need him to stop no more than 37.  And it makes me sick to my stomach to type this, but here’s what we need from Osgood.  28 saves per night.  30 shots, 28 saves…slightly above his 1.55 GAA of last postseason.

If our goaltending is giving up 3 goals per game?  Goodbye. And goodbye early, like 5 or 6 games in Round 1 early.  I really believe that. More, more, more, so much more on goaltending to come later. But don’t let anyone tell you that anything is more important than that matchup because it isn’t.  Nothing is even close to this. 

More we need to discuss this week: Henrik Zetterberg, Kris Draper and Nick Lidstrom know how to shut down superstars in the playoffs. Ask Crosby, Malkin, Modano, Forsberg, Thornton, Iginla and others. 

Does Rick Nash know how to deal with what those three can bring when they give him no room to breathe all night?  Between you and me, I think he does.  We’ll see. 

I believe our Uncle Mike is the best coach in the NHL.  I do.  But Ken Hitchcock is pretty damned close.  He’s got a system. He employs that system.  His team dislikes him intensely and he doesn’t care.  They’ve bought into it and here we go again.  It’s 1998 and the Wings are playing a gritty, hard-hitting, abrasive Dallas Stars team with great goaltending.  11 years later and here we are again. 

Listen to Hitch and you’d think his boys have no chance. None.  Lou Holtz-like.  The Columbus press, because they’ve never covered a playoff series before, is eating up everything he’s saying and spitting it right back.  They’re in for a lesson, too.  Hitch is going to lie to them the whole way. Every word is strategy.  Every single one.

Post Dispatch

“There’s not one person with any degree of sanity who is going to pick us to win” the series, Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock said.

Wrong.  I’m telling you right now that this will be the sexy pick for the MSM. Watch. 

“They’re the only team in the league with a knowledge of what it takes to win the Stanley Cup. Everybody else can only talk about it, but they’ve got 95 percent of last season’s club back, the guys that got it done.”

What’s he telling his team?  Watch “Miracle” tonite.  Fast forward to the “this is your time” speech.  He’s saying nothing even remotely close to that quote above.  He’s telling his team that if they want their division, if they want to stamp out big brother, put him down for good and make a statement of their own?  The next two weeks is the time to do it.

“Detroit is the top five-man faceoff team in the league,” Hitchcock said. “By that, I mean, all five guys on the ice work hard to retrieve the puck, not just the center. They’ve been the best in the league for a few years now.”

Now that one’s pretty close.  He has to impress upon his young team that if they are to win this series, every man on the ice has to work harder than every Wing.  He’s going to tell them that winning this series isn’t going to boil down to raw talent. Instead, starvation will be the key. Who wants every puck.  Who wants to win every battle.  If he’s real smart?  He’ll remind his team that the Wings have shown a pathetic lack of interest in winning those battles during the regular season.  Hitchcock might tell his team that if the BJ’s win the first few?  The Wings will find that to be routine and a hard rut to climb out of.

“Body contact is not going to bother Detroit,” he said. “They’ve been through this before. It’s not going to wear them out like everybody thinks. None of that is relevant.”

That is an outright lie.  Ken Hitchcock is a lying liar. Want to know what he’s going to tell his team?

Here’s what he’s going to do Wednesday. He’s going to gather his team around him real close so that he can look each one of them in the eye and he’s going to challenge their collective manhood.  He’s going to tell them that if they have any sack at all that they’re going to hit Datsyuk and they’re going to hit Zetterberg and that every time Marian Hossa tries to bull his way down the middle?  Hitch will tell his players that if they allow that?  Well, then they might as well turn in their gear and flip on Lifetime.

And the Blue Jackets are going to listen to every word because Hitchcock got them here and every one of them is thinking that all the crap they had to put up with all year is worth it.  They’re all thinking that Hitchcock knows what he’s doing and that they need to follow him blindly, with cult-like fanatacism.  And they will.

So that’s what our Wings have to look forward to.  That’s what all of us who wanted this matchup are going to have to deal with.  A young, hungry team with a rookie stud in goal, Rick Nash and his violations of us all year, and a genius coach who knows how to win in the playoffs.

And the Wings have four days to get their heads on straight.  If they play the way they’re capable of? This could go 5 games, maybe less.  But if not?  If any element of the regular season lingers in that room?  Done like dinner, and that’s a guarantee. 

There is a very fine line the Wings are straddling right now. One drawn and defined by the amount of sacrifice the Wings are willing to make to cement their dynasty.  We’re going to see how much that really matters to this team in the next few weeks.

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Welcome to Abel to Yzerman, a Red Wing blog since 1977.  No other site on the internet has better-researched, fact-laden and better prepared discussions than A2Y.  Re-phrase: we do little research, find facts and stats highly overrated and claim little to no preparation.  There are 19 readers of A2Y. No more, no less. All of them, except maybe one, are juvenile in nature.  Reminding them of that in the comment section will only encourage them to prove that. Your suggestions and critiques are welcome: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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