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Abel to Yzerman

Tuesdays Without The Cup

by IwoCPO on 06/16/09 at 04:09 AM ET
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By my count, there are approximately 50 more of these left.  So make ‘em good.  Oh. Woops.  Was that “arrogant”?  I forgot the new internet rules that Wing fans are no longer allowed that luxury. 

If you’re a guy, and if you really sit and think about it for just a second…you can probably feel a sharp pain.  Will it hurt as much as Nick Lidstrom’s injury?

I don’t know because I’ve never been speared in the nuts with a hockey stick.  Lidstrom has. Then he was operated on. Then he was playing.  All in a span of like six days.

Freep

“When I first saw the doctor in the morning, he asked me if I had any kids, and if I planned on having more kids,” said Lidstrom, 39, who has four sons.

But when Lidstrom woke up on the 24th, he was in too much pain to play. He needed surgery immediately. Now here was this doctor, telling Lidstrom he might emerge from anesthesia with one testicle.

“He said he didn’t know until he actually went in there and looked,” Lidstrom said.

I know the Red Wings didn’t win the Stanley Cup. I’m convinced of it now because there was a parade in Pittsburgh and massive amounts of people showed up, to the tune of like 375,000.  Holy hell.  That is a lot of people.  An unprecedented amount.  Western PA loves their hockey boy.  375,000…jesus.  That’s hard to type, much harder than say…one million.

I’m also convinced the Wings didn’t win the Cup because I haven’t seen fit to write a letter to any Pittsburgh newspapers complaining about the way I was treated or the way my team has been disrespected.  I remember last year, the last time the Wings won the Cup, 11th overall and 4th in 11 years if my math is correct.  I just don’t remember feeling this great need to complain, to seek validation or justification for anything.  All I wanted to do was take a deep breath, relax and look forward to a summer knowing my team would be jet-setting the Cup all over the world.  I guess that’s just us, though.  I’ll have to go back and research the Anaheim, Tampa, Carolina, Jersey, even Colorado blogs and papers and see if their fans sought out anyone who would listen and try to explain that their team did, in fact, deserve the Cup.

I’m absolutely positive the Penguins won the Cup this year because as I perused the Beaver County Times, circulation 375,000, guest columnist Mark Madden elected not to write about how well his team played, how much the Cup meant to the fans of PA or the city, errrr, county of Beaver.  Nope.  I know the Pens won the Cup because Madden elected to re-write history.

Beaver

Then, when the Stanley Cup was presented to Sidney Crosby, I was shocked by the avalanche of boos. It was classless, and I don’t recall it happening when Detroit picked up the Cup at Mellon Arena last year. In fact, I recall respectful applause from a heartbroken crowd.

Interesting.  I recall silence.  Claps from the Wing fans in attendance, then boos when Chris Osgood skated the Cup.  See here if you’d like.

But Madden wasn’t finished.  Nope.  Apparently he’s still sad that his hero didn’t make the ‘06 Olympic team, and whose spot should he have had?  Go on.  Guess.

Notice Lidstrom didn’t complain. Just the has-been forward that piggybacked his way to a fistful of rings. Crosby didn’t complain when Draper inexplicably stole his spot on Team Canada for the 2006 Winter Olympics. Canadians, however, complained when their low-octane team lost in the quarterfinals.

Yes.  I know the Pens won the Stanley Cup because I learned from a Western PA paper that Kris Draper has “piggybacked his way” to the Cup four times. 

Note to Pens fans and media:  You won the Stanley Cup. I promise.  Your boys earned it.  It’s ok to enjoy yourselves.  No one’s going to take it away from you for eleven months and about fifteen days, unless you bow out earlier than that.  Unthinkable, considering the leadership you have.

Back to the injury front.  News, as expected, is filtering out of the Wing room and it’s no surprise really.  Significant injuries slowed the Wings almost from the first round against Columbus. 

Triple Deke

But still, the much anticipated injury report was extermely interesting. Raf had a herniated disk, unveiling the mystery as to why he missed time during the Anaheim series. Draper had torn neck cartilage (I can’t remember if we wrote it or not, but after we went to Game 1 against the Ducks and saw Drapes take the pregame skate with a turtleneck, we speculated to each other that he had some neck issue, and not a concussion like some people thought.) Cleary played with a “significant” groin injury that would’ve shelved him during the regular season, and Pav had a charley horse to go with his foot injury. I also read that Z was playing at about 70%. As of right now I have yet to see anything about Hossa, which is a surprise to me.

Also surprised about Hossa.  We know his groin was injured at some point, but don’t know if it was fully healed by Game 7 or what.  We can agree though that almost throughout the playoffs we never saw the kind of acceleration we’d come to expect from Hossa (who was with the Wings for a full season, not less than 20 regular season games).  We never saw that explosion through the neutral zone.  He wasn’t the same player.  Blame that on the pressure of the postseason if you’re cynical.  But if it was just the yips, we’d have still seen the energy and it just wasn’t there consistently.

A Tuesday without the Stanley Cup. Strange.  I’m sure that once I’ve lived through 25 or 30 more of these I’ll be kind of numb to the fact that Stanley’s elsewhere.

Ya think?  Nah.  Me either.  Thankfully, as a Wing fan, I’ve spent far fewer Cupless Tuesdays than our peers around the league. 

And, thankfully, according to Vegas....my Tuesdays in less than a year will be a lot better than this one.

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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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