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Abel to Yzerman

GDT - SC Playoffs, Game 2: Red Wings host Blue Jackets (6:00)

by Jeff OKWingnut on 04/18/09 at 09:15 AM ET
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Coach Hitchock believes his BJ’s just don’t get any love, and he is all blue about it.  Recall before the series started that Hitch was concerned about the Wings having all the powerplay time?  Game One, 1st period, Wings whistled for 4 minors, BJ’s only one. Yesterday, Hitchcock bemoaned that the Wings cheat on draws.  Hitchcock demands reciprocation, if the Wings cheat, his BJ’s will also. The BJ camp certainly are determined to try to instill confidence in the players; glass half-full analysis abound.  Hitchcock even said:  “We put two in our own net,” “The game was right there for us halfway through. Then they took over on the faceoff dot, and they started to control the game.”  Granted Malholtra’s play was bone-headed, but CBJ had only eight shots in the final 40 mins of the game, including 2 - count them - 2 SOG in the 3rd.  I don’t claim to be a hockey genious (just a rabid Wing fan), but were the BJ supporters really watching the same game 1 as the rest of the “19”?  My two-cents: Wings started slow (imagine that), Ozzie was brilliant, especially in the 1st (imagine that too!, and he didn’t have to do much of anything for the rest of the game), and once the Wings got their legs, game over. 

Game 2 is early tonight, see you Bitches on the train.

POST Season Stats (rank):

DET:  1.00 point% (1), 4.00 g/g (1), 1.00 ga/g (3), 3.00 5-5 f/a (2), 25.0 pp (3), 1.00 pk (1), 34.0 s/g (6), 21.0 sa/g (2), 57.1 fo% (4).

CBJ:  0.00 point% (10), 1.00 g/g (14), 4.00 ga/g (14), 0.33 5-5 f/a (11), 0.00 pp (12), 75.0 pk (14), 21.0 s/g (15), 34.0 sa/g (11), 42.9 fo% (13).

PLAYOFF Player Stats:
DET Skaters:
POS Player GP G A PTS +/-
C Valtteri Filppula 1 0 2 2 2
RW Johan Franzen 1 1 1 2
RW Jiri Hudler 1 1 1 2 2
RW Mikael Samuelsson 1 0 2 2 2
D Jonathan Ericsson 1 1 0 1 1
D Niklas Kronwall 1 1 0 1 0
C Henrik Zetterberg 1 0 1 1 0
RW Daniel Cleary 1 0 0 0 1
C Pavel Datsyuk 1 0 0 0 0
C Darren Helm 1 0 0 0 0
RW Tomas Holmstrom 1 0 0 0 0
RW Marian Hossa 1 0 0 0 0
RW Tomas Kopecky 1 0 0 0 0
D Brett Lebda 1 0 0 0 1
D Nicklas Lidstrom 1 0 0 0 1
LW Kirk Maltby 1 0 0 0 -1
D Brian Rafalski 1 0 0 0 0
D Brad Stuart 1 0 0 0 1

DET Goalies:
Player GPI W L GAA PCT
Chris Osgood 1 1 0 1.00 .952
Ty Conklin 0 0 0 0.0 .0

CBJ Skaters:
POS Player GP G A PTS +/- 
C R.J. Umberger 1 1 0 1 1
RW * Jakub Voracek 1 0 1 1 1
RW Jared Boll 1 0 0 0 -2
LW Jason Chimera 1 0 0 0 0
D Mike Commodore 1 0 0 0 -2
D Jan Hejda 1 0 0 0 -3
LW Kristian Huselius 1 0 0 0 -1
D Rostislav Klesla 1 0 0 0 1
C Manny Malhotra 1 0 0 0 -1
D Marc Methot 1 0 0 0 0
LW Fredrik Modin 1 0 0 0 0
LW Rick Nash 1 0 0 0 -1
C Michael Peca 1 0 0 0 0
D Kris Russell 1 0 0 0 -1
LW Raffi Torres 1 0 0 0 -2
D Fedor Tyutin 1 0 0 0 1
C Antoine Vermette 1 0 0 0 1
RW Jason Williams 1 0 0 0 -2

CBJ Goalies:
Player GPI W L GAA PCT
Steve Mason 1 0 1 4.00 .882

Injury Report:
DET:
Andreas Lilja (D) Concussion (Sidelined indefinitely)
Kris Draper (C)  Upper body (Day to day)

CBJ:
Andrew Murray (W/C) Hamstring (Day to day)
Ole-Kristian Tollefsen (D) Knee injury (Sidelined indefinitely)
Derick Brassard (C) Shoulder surgery (Remainder of regular season)

HOT and NOT:

UNAVAILABLE

Jeff Sagarin NHL Ratings, from USAToday.com:

To make predictions for upcoming games, simply compare the RATINGS of
the teams in question and allow an ADDITIONAL .25 goals for the home
team.  Thus, for example, a HOME team with a rating of 4.43 would be
favored by .57 goals over a VISITING team having a rating of 4.11.
Or a VISITING team with a rating of 4.56 would be favored by .42 goals
over a HOME team having a rating of 3.89

NOTE: Use whatever home advantage is listed in the output below.
In the example just above, a home edge of .25 was shown for
illustrative purposes. The home edge will vary during the season.

NHL 2008-2009 through 2009 April 17 Friday
HOME ADVANTAGE=  0.36       RATING   W   L SCHEDL(RANK) VS top 10 | VS top 16 |  ELO_CHESS   |  PREDICTOR
2 Detroit Red Wings     =  4.70   52 31   4.00(  16)  15 12 |  27 16 |  4.68   2 |  4.71   2
16 Columbus Blue Jackets   =  4.02   41 42   4.06(  2)  18 17 |  22 21 |  4.02   14 |  4.02   15

The AccuScore Game Forecast from The Sporting News:  Is no longer available.

“The Highlander” notes that the Wings will roll with the same lines as Thursday:

DETROIT
Holmstrom-Datsyuk-Hossa
Franzen-Zetterberg-Cleary
Hudler-Filppula-Samuelsson
Kopecky-Helm-Maltby

Lidstrom-Rafalski
Kronwall-Stuart
Lebda-Ericsson

Osgood
Conklin

Times, they are a changing for the BJ, but no-one knows which direction, from Puck-rakers:

Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock said again today he plans to make lineup changes for Game 2. He also once again refused to share the important details.

Jackets captain Rick Nash says he isn’t privy to the coaches thoughts on lineup changes, but added, “he might change his mind again by Saturday.” Very nice. Our guess is it might be one, two players at the max if he makes any changes at all.

—Hitchcock did acknowledge certain players struggled and certain lines were guilty of not getting pucks deep. Hitchcock said the team needs better efforts from Kristian Huselius and Antoine Vermette. He thought Kris Russell and Marc Methot had the “deer in the headlights” look and played tight.

Dave Waddell, Windsor Star, wrote an excellent article about the Wings defending the BJ nemesis, Rick Nash:

In Detroit’s 4-1 victory Thursday, round one of the battle went convincingly to the Wings as they held Nash to four harmless shots and kept him to the perimeter.

However, the Wings know that victory can be fleeting against Nash and tonight’s Game 2 at Joe Louis Arena could be very different.

In four of the six games between the clubs this season, Detroit limited Nash to no points and a minus-four. In the other two games, Nash scored hat tricks and was plus-five.

“In my opinion Rick Nash is the best power forward in the world right now,” said Detroit winger Dan Cleary. . .

“I expect to see him (Zetterberg) mostly,” said Nash, who had 40 goals and 79 points this season to help the Jackets make the playoffs for the first time. “They used his line against us mostly, but it’s more the defensive pairings I see.

“Usually I see Lidstorm and Rafalski. Those are two of the best in the league.”

Lidstrom in particular was outstanding against the Columbus captain.

The six-time Norris Trophy winner harried Nash, sometimes even following him up near the blue-line, while at other times his elegant defending made it look startlingly easy in poking away pucks.

“If you have a third player high, the defenceman can step out and he can cover behind you,” Lidstrom explained. “Sometimes, I was able to put pressure on him before he got the puck.

“I thought our centreman did a great job helping out the defence.”

There are some good comments posted over at the CBC.ca DET/CBJ series page, and a Lidstrom milestone noted (I, uh, don’t recall the Diggers having made mention of this fact, but I could have missed it):

Columbus coach Ken Hitchcock insists the key to long-term survival in the Stanley Cup playoffs is the ability to bounce back, which is exactly what his team must do after opening its first post-season appearance with a 4-1 setback to the Detroit Red Wings in Game 1 of their Western Conference series played Thursday.

Heading into Saturday’s second game of the best-of-seven set, Hitchcock figures he’ll find out quickly what his team is all about.

“To me, winning a playoff series is all about regrouping,” Hitchcock said. “There’s going to be times in this series where you’re going to be devastated. There’s going to be times when it’s going to be very emotional. There’s going to be times maybe even when one team gets blown out. Who knows?

“It’s once they’re inside the locker-room, who can get them grounded again and we’ve got guys who can do that. To me, the reason a team like Detroit has won so often is that they play well as a team. Our challenge is to stay tight and cohesive and then to regroup quickly, because no series against the Red Wings is going to be easy.

“It’s going to be over the course of a series that Detroit breaks you down. It’s over the course of two weeks that they break you down. Our job is to keep this group together and to continually get better as the series goes on and use what we’ve learned from playing these guys so often.” . . .

“He thinks he’s got an advantage, I think I’ve got an advantage,” Babcock said of his showdown with Hitchcock. “I think that’s how we all think in this league. It isn’t just winning a Cup. He’s been there. I like to think that I’ve been there, too. I’ve been there a couple of times, so you’ve got some experience you can draw on. That experience, that’s also about the past. We’re living right here, right now. We’ve got to do it this year.

“In saying that, I think what experience does for a coach is that you’re steady on the rudder a little longer. You don’t flip from place to place. You’re poised, and yet you understand you need to make changes. I think success in any walk of life leads to confidence and confident people make good decisions under pressure.” . .

The moment he stepped on the ice Thursday, Detroit captain Nicklas Lidstrom set a record, becoming the first player in Red Wings history to appear in 17 consecutive Stanley Cup playoffs. It was his 215th career playoff game, a club record and also the NHL mark for a European-born and trained player.

Lidstrom has never missed a playoff game in his career, playing in 215 straight since he debuted in 1992 against the Minnesota North Stars. That was the last playoff series the franchise played as the North Stars before moving to Dallas. Thursday was the first playoff game in Blue Jackets history.

In between, Lidstrom also opposed the San Jose Sharks (1994) and Nashville Predators in the first playoff games in the history of those franchises.

“You have been checking up on me,” a surprised Lidstrom said before talking proudly about his endurance. “It’s something I take a lot of pride in, not having missed any playoff games. I’ve been fortunate enough to be with a team that’s made the playoffs every year that I’ve been here. Going deep into the playoffs, it really adds up.”

The man he’s chasing now sits next to him in the Detroit dressing room. Wings defenceman Chris Chelios, a healthy scratch Thursday, has played in a record 260 Stanley Cup games.

“I’m working on it,” Lidstrom said.

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