Coyotes @ Red Wings: The Live-Blog

Pre-Game Skate:  Did you know you can glean many useful and interesting Items of Note merely by looking at the standings?  It's true.  For example, did you know that only one team in the National Hockey League (Boston, 11) has played fewer games than Detroit?  And that the Wings have 5 games in hand on Chicago?  (Which is actually quite a lot in case you didn't know.)

This is the Wings 13th game of the season and, in a scheduling oddity, this is the only game on the NHL schedule tonight.

In a second scheduling oddity, this is the 3rd time Detroit has played Phoenix already, and if they lose tonight, the Coyotes will have won the season series against the Red Wings.  Phoenix scored three first-period goals against Detroit just over a week ago, on October 28th, and beat the Wings 4-2.  It was a fifty-foot wrister that made it 3-0 for the Coyotes in the 1st and it was that goal that cost Chris Osgood as Detroit got back to within a goal at 3-2 before Phoenix iced it with an empty netter.  Here's how we saw it at the time:

8:00pm:  Osgood is razzed as he makes an easy save. That's because he just gave up an easy goal. A 50-foot wrister by Lauri Korpkoski, shorthanded, the kind of shot that frankly I should have stopped and it's 3-0 Phoenix on the goal at 11:56. It's sad to hear the fans boo and ridicule Osgood. The guy has done a lot for this franchise, and just the season before last, he was one save away from winning the Stanley Cup for this town. You'd think that would be worth something, but he his is getting his rear end booed at home. It's awful.

7:43pm  This just in...DETROIT 1, PHOENIX 0.  Brian Rafalski's slapshot from the line was five feet wide but it caromed off the end boards right to Dan Cleary (the PA guy called him "Danny", is that how he likes it?) and he was right there to slam it by startled Coyotes goalie Ilya Bryzgalov. Detroit is 5-0-1 when scoring first this year.

7:55pm:  Tonight is the night that Wings President Jimmy Devallano is being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.  I was at the press conference when he was named Wings GM back in the early 80's when Detroit was AWFUL.  Jimmy D's major contributions to hockey are these:  He invented the European player (see: Petr Klima, Sergei Fedorov and Nicklas Lidstrom et. al.) and he drafted Steve Yzerman with the 4th overall pick in the 1983 draft.  Srsly.  3 teams--the North Stars, the Whalers and the Islanders--passed on Stevie Y.  Devallano came to Detroit from the Islanders where he was Bill Torry's assistant GM when that team was winning the four straight Stanley Cups and whatnot.  About 20 seats to my left tonight is Ken Morrow who won all 4 of those Cups on the the Island.  The first of them came just a couple of months after Kenny's US Olympic team beat the damn Russians and won the Olympic Gold Medal in 1980.  You've heard of the "Miracle on Ice"?  Ken Morrow lived it.  He was the assistant coach on a team I did play-by-play for about 20 years ago and we've been pals ever since.  He's one of the nicest guys in hockey.

8:13pm:  At 19:05 the Coyotes tie it as Martin Hanzal bangs a rebound past Jimmy Howard.  DETROIT 1, PHOENIX 1.  The period ends.

8:22  Live-blogging hockey is hard!  We'll try to get caught up here in the intermission.  I was talking about Devallano going into The Hall tonight.  I'm already in, and have been for about 7 years now.  I am not making this up.  When my book, The Gods of Olympia Stadium came out The Hockey News gave it a nice review and I got a letter from the Hall of Fame shortly thereafter asking if I'd donate a copy to their library.  So I did. So my book is in the Hockey Hall of Fame and as far as I'm concerned, that means I'm in the Hockey Hall of Fame, too.  So there. 

Not that this means a lot.  Scotty Bowman once asked me about then-Wings broadcaster Bruce Martyn. "Is he any good?"  "Scotty," I said, "he's in the Hall of Fame!"  "That doesn't mean anything," Scotty said.  "After all, I'm in the Hall."

8:31pm  The teams straggle back out onto the ice.  How is Detroit not exhausted?  This is their 4th game in 6 nights--the last 3 on the road in Western Canada.  Anyway, back with the middle twenty right after this...

8:36pm  Here's a little something for you to watch during the next commercial break! 

Clever boys.  Very clever boys.

8:47pm:  PHOENIX 2, DETROIT 1.  Keith Yandle fires a shot high into the net past Howard from the left circle at 7:31.  Not much more to say about that.  It was a simple play and a simple goal and now the Wings--outshot this period 10-3--trail the hockey game 2-1.

8:59pm:  The Wings have had the last 6 shots on goal and are on the power play, still down 2-1 with 6:00 to go in the second period.  That is all.

9:09pm  The second period is over: PHOENIX 2, DETROIT 1.  Shots were 13-12 Phoenix in the period, 25-22, Detroit in the game.  This is only the 3rd time this season the Wings have trailed after 40 minutes.  They are 0-2-0 in that situation to date.

9:20pm:  I think I'm getting a headache.  I long for the old days when in the intermission they'd announce upcoming events at the Olympia and play a little organ music and the game would start again.  They are blasting some rock song right now ("You Shook Me All Night Long"--I think it's about sex) and they never, ever let up.  Not for a minute.  And it is SO DAMN LOUD!  Hockey games now are like standing next to a running jet engine for about three hours. I am not ruling out making ear plugs a part of the sportscasting gear I take to every game. Now it's "Detroit Rock City" by Kiss.  Hey, I saw Kiss at Cobo about an eon ago.  Good show, good times...

9:35pm:  13:26 to go still 2-1 Phoenix.  The Wings have had some good chances here in the 3rd, but you know...
I just found out I'm picking the 3 Stars Saturday night when Colorado is here.  I may drop by the two morning skates on game day (only somebody who doesn't know hockey calls them "skate-arounds") and let the boys know that, yes, I can be bought.  And somewhat cheaply, at that.

9:40pm:  And we're tied.  DETROIT 2, PHOENIX 2.  A shot from the left point by Lidstrom goes in.  We were arguing about whether Johan Franzen, standing in front of the Coyotes goal, had tipped it.  I said he did, the scorer said he did not.  The scorer wins.  It's the 2nd of the season for Lidstrom and it comes at 7:24.

9:51pm  Gee, it getting on towards ten o'clock and we still have 4:40 to go in regulation.  Not to mention overtime and a shootout if it comes to that.  Kids have got school tomorrow, etc.  Still 2-2.  Detroit killed penalty to Justin Abdelkader shortly after Lidstrom's goal tied this thing.

9:56pm: Scottie Upshall just hit the crossbar like I've never seen before and I'll tell you kiddies, I've been coming to NHL games since, like, 1968.  Upshall's slapper hit the bar so hard and so clean that it caromed all the way back into the Phoenix zone, travelling 100 feet, at least, in the air.  The damndest thing I've ever seen, when it comes to hitting the post/crossbar.

10:00  On to overtime.  Detroit is 1-1 in overtime.  Phoenix is 0-4.  This means one of two things:  they are due, or they suck at overtime.

10:05  The Wings win in overtime as easy as 1-2-3.  That was the time of the goal, 1:23.  It was a deflection out in front by Henrik Zetterberg on a shot from the top of the left circle by Ruslan Salei while a delayed penalty was being called on the Coyotes and the Wings had the extra man on.  Final score:  DETROIT 3, PHOENIX 2 (OT).  Detroit is 9-3-1, 19 points, 1 back of division-leading St. Louis.  Because they are second in the division, the Red Wings remain in 4th-place in the Western Conference (the top 3 positions go to the division leaders, as you know.)  The Wings are 5-1-1 at home and Edmonton, last in the West, will be here Thursday night.  We'll talk again then.