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Abel to Yzerman

Third Try To Tie Some Loose Ends

by IwoCPO on 12/29/07 at 04:29 PM ET
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I’m in a bit of a rut.  I can’t finish this damn post. I’ve started it three times now and it’s turned into a term paper at 2300 on a Sunday night.  I have opinions I believe you and your families need to read, but for the frigging sake of sweet baby Jesus I can’t get my fingers to type them.  Topics we need to close the loop on: the remaining holiday wishes for the best team in hockey, my final observations on the sports radio situation and perhaps a closing thought on A2Y’s two-year anniversary.

First:  thanks to all for the compliments regarding the A2Y Christmas card.  Didn’t know how easy it would be to find a ready-made family on Ebay, but that evolution turned out to be successful, especially considering it was just a rental situation for the sake of the picture.  They insisted on keeping the Wing jerseys too.

You may not remember this because it’s been like a month, but we started a Holiday Wish List for the Wings. Made it through the defensemen and five of the forwards before I passed out.  Let’s wrap it up now.

Henrik Zetterberg:  Of course health is the first wish of the season for our future captain.  This back thing pissed us all off long enough and would have ruined my Christmas had it not been for the stunning play (and that’s the first time in A2Y history we’ve used the term “stunning”) of non-circus participants.  It’s to the point now where, like last March and April, there is absolutely no hurry in bringing him back because strange things are happening in his absence.  An October prediction of 25 goals for Filppula was looking downright idiotic a month ago.  Now? Someone’s looking like a genius and from time to time that someone goes by the name of Duke.  But Hank?  What to wish for?  In this order:  a healthy playoff, a Conn Smythe, and a 7-year,  50 million dollar contract to stay in Hockeytown.  As Michael Scott would say, that’s a win-win-win.

Pavel Datsyuk:  Mike Babcock said it this morning. Or he could have said it last week and Khan(!) just elected to use it today. 

“I read somewhere the other day where someone said Pavel isn’t the best player in the game right now,” Babcock said. “Well, that’s because they haven’t been to enough games. ... To me, he’s just magic right now.”

Another digger said something else today too, and I can’t remember which one but who really cares because they all spew the same spoon-fed “news” every day anyway.  Datsyuk is generally considered a brilliant stick handler, a shootout master.  Ok. Got it.  That’s Melrose-like in its shallowness.  From this day forward, here’s how you can tell if an MSM hockey “expert” knows his stuff.  If they’re referring to Datsyuk in those pigeon-holed terms, they’re a dumbass.  My wish for Datsyuk is the recognition he deserves as one of the top five best all-around players in the game.  You saw Ovechkin recently.  Does he backcheck the way Datsyuk does?  Does he hustle every shift? I can tell you from seeing him in person that he absolutely does not.  He’ll float. Not a lot and don’t get me wrong, he’s a great player. But Datsyuk’s better.  And guess what? He’s better than Crosby too.  Woops.  Guess that makes him, yep, the best player in hockey?  Could be.

Tomas Holmstrom:  The opportunity to walk into the NHL league office with a stack of tape and show them how he’s being shafted around the crease.  The only redeeming thing about his “deep knee bruise” is that I don’t have to yell at my fake family every time a bogus penalty is called on him.  Look. We know Homer takes his liberties with goalies and anyone around the crease.  He pushes the edge of the rules envelope and deserves some of the penalties he gets.  But my frigging god, the agenda the refs are operating under is obvious even by Gary’s standards.  Does Smyth get whistle-raped like Holmstrom does?  He pretty much avoided the crease when Detroit kicked their asses the other night so it was hard to tell.

Aaron Downey:  A goal and a spot for the rest of the year, including the playoffs.  I don’t care if he plays every night, or every two or three games.  He’s a character guy who by all accounts is thought highly of by his teammates because he froths at the mouth any time the opposition targets one of his pals.  He’s an honorable fighter and a respected player, a kid who deserves the opportunity to stay with this team. 

Kris Draper:  Nothing at all. Nothing more than he already has.  Three Cups, the alternate captaincy on the league’s best team, and league-wide respect as one of the hardest workers in hockey.  He excels in areas that require more effort than talent: faceoffs, defense, backchecking, forechecking, penalty killing.  If you want to wish for something, you’re tempted for more offense but that’s not Draper. It’s not his game and that’s cool.  He’s the heart of Hockeytown and anyone who asks for more than that is dumber than a Blues fan.

Johan Franzen:  A few lessons, more than a few, with Joey Kocur.  That “fight” with Walker the other night should have had Ken Holland on the phone to Kocur before the last blow landed on the back of Franzen’s head.  No matter how awkward it may have been, he got wasted.  Franzen’s got the build and the attitude to be a fairly frequent fighter.  His size and strength would make him a good one.  Combine a little pugilistic acumen (fighting ability…sorry Blues fans) and you have a player who would be literally feared.  Franzen’s a life-long Wing. You see that in him.  Now it’s just a matter of refining his offensive abilities and adding a little ass kicking to his resume.

Kirk Maltby:  He got his gift last spring when Holland handed him a three-year deal.  I didn’t agree with it then, and I definitely don’t now.  The only thing his back injury has done is proven that, sorry, his time as a Wing has come and gone.  He’ll hang on and his penalty killing ability will be valuable in the post season.  But, if his stint on the IR lasts even longer than expected; this team won’t miss a beat.

Tomas Kopecky:  More…ice…time.  Easier said than done, but only Matt Ellis and Downey average less TOI than he does.  Unlike Downey, Kopecky has a scorer’s touch and a thirst for the corners.  Unfortunately, it’s hard for him to earn more time when Hudler, Filppula and Cleary are playing well enough to populate most team’s first lines.  His gift will come eventually, but—short of injuries—not any time real soon. 

Matt Ellis and Mark Hartigan:  You’ve got your gifts boys, the experience of being around one of the most complete teams the Wings have iced in twenty years.  Learn from it. 

Finally:  Mike Babcock.  We have a strained, strange relationship with Uncle Mike here at A2Y.  Not a week goes by that we don’t mention the fact that he lies to the media, stumbles his way through some pretty basic sentences and can be a pretty goofy fella.  But, let’s not overlook one little thing:  he’s the best coach in hockey and he’s proving it by a long shot this year.  Choose your evidence: the way he’s brought along Filppula, Hudler and Cleary.  Winning in spite of injuries to Zetterberg and Holmstrom. The deft way he’s handled the goalie situation.  All of that just this year.  Take it a step further and examine this team, the way they play, the cohesive grit.  Add that abrasiveness, new to Detroit with the arrival of Babcock, to the manner in which he’s maintained the Wing-specific tradition of puck control.  It’s brilliant.  The guy needs a Cup, more than any of us.  Only a Cup can prove to everyone just how good he truly is. 

———-

Sports radio and the Detroit MSM in general.  Yesterday we took a four-hour look at the WDFN and WXYT.  Out of those four hours, ten minutes of discussion was devoted to the Wings.  That, my friends is an absolute disgrace.  A few of you, Gramps and HockeyinHD in particular, pointed out—each very effectively—that I may be making a bit much of this.  Some of you may agree.  A few of you have mentioned that my consistent bashing of the diggers, the columnists, the radio idiots is a bit overboard.  Noted.

Two years ago today I started this blog out of absolute frustration with the Detroit media.  Right in their laps, right in their front yard, they have the best team this state has ever known.  The most consistently successful sports entity (college or pro) that Michigan has ever seen.  And they absolutely ignore it.  As a Wing fan, nothing pisses me off more.  And I mean that…to this day.  I can scoff at it, and joke about it.  But listening to that garbage yesterday…the incessant, redundant, monotonous re-hashing of the Lions problems—when the Wings are far and away the best team in the NHL, and defeated the Dive of all teams less than 24 hours before—made me as mad as I’ve been since we started this project.

Should I care that much about this particular subject, the fact that the total of sports columns in the News and Freep that have not touched on the Wings has now run to 123 straight?  Am I being deprived of quality information I wouldn’t find anywhere else? Absolutely not.  What this is about with me is 100 percent principle.  Who the hell does Bob Wojnowski think he is to pen a column on the Wings in April, when he’s ignored them for 7 consecutive months?  How many UM columns is he going to write before he realizes that Henrik Zetterberg is playing in Detroit? 

And here’s something else.  Michael Rosenberg, Mitch Albom, Bob Wojnowski.  No city in American has a trio of better sports columnists than Detroit does.  I think that’s a fact.  While I bash them every chance I get for the reasons above, it’s also more than a little disappointing that we aren’t allowed to read their views on this dynasty.  And if you think that doesn’t contribute to the state-wide apathy where the Wings are concerned, you’re blind.  A lot of you have said you don’t need the papers, or the sports radio, to get your Wing news.  You get it here, or at any of the other great Wing blogs out there. 

You’ve resigned yourselves to that.  Gramps spoke of the players’ privacy.  I’m not talking about invading privacy. I’m talking about letting people of our state see a side of the Detroit Red Wings that a blogger can’t give you because we don’t have the access (or, admittedly in my case, the ability) and the Diggers can’t because they don’t have the time.  You don’t think a Wojo or Albom column on the Swedes would be interesting?  How about Rosenberg’s opinion on the goalie situation?  Speaking of which, Chris Osgood is having the season of his career.

Not one damned column about it.  My blood temperature is rising just typing that.  Going overboard?  Maybe.  But you deserve better and you are absolutely not getting it. 

——-
You may have missed the mention above (in the rant about the Detroit MSM) that today is Abel To Yzerman’s two-year anniversary.  There is a lot I could say about that: how much I’ve enjoyed it, how the site has evolved,  the three iterations, our place within the Empire.  But, really, the bottom line is this:  I’ve enjoyed it and kept at it because I like writing about the Wings and I like to make my friends laugh.  All 19 of you definitely fall in that category.  Thanks for reading. 

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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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