Minnesota Wild (at) Detroit Red Wings: The Liveblog

Pre-Game Skate: We expect a low-scoring game tonight as the Wings and Wild get together for the first of their 4 regular season games. Why? The Wings have allowed 40 goals this season (2.50/game). Only 2 teams in the Eastern Conference have permitted fewer,and Minnesota, with 39 (2.29/game) is one of them. (The other is Los Angeles, also 39, also (2.29/game).


Detroit is 8-1-1 (.850) at home, the Wild are 3-3-1 (.500) on the road. The Wings have won 7 of their last 8 overall and on pace right now for a 128-point season. This would be a pretty good year, according to the “2010-11 NHL Guide and Record Book":
MOST POINTS, ONE SEASON:
132 – Montreal Canadiens, 1976-77. 60W-8L-12T. 80GP
131 – Detroit Red Wings, 1995-96. 62W-13L-7T. 82GP
129 – Montreal Canadiens, 1977-78. 59W-10L-11T. 80GP

7:47pm:  We are underway.  At 6:13 Henrik Zetterberg goes off, 2 minutes for cheating.  It costs Detroit.  Brent Burns scores a power play goal on a 60-foot wrister from the right point through a screen.  At 8:16 it's DETROIT 0, MINNESOTA 1.

8:05pm:  Detroit's short again.  Justin Abdelkader was found guilty of hooking at 16:57.  The Wings have outshot Minnesota 8-6 but surprise Wild starter Jose Theodore (pr: joh-SAY Thee-uh-dohr), and we say he's a surprise starter because Minnesota's first-string goalie Niklas Backstrom has a goals-against average of 1.73--4th-best in the NHL--has stopped every Wings shot so far.  Theodore sports a goals-against of 3.02, and is tonight appearing in his 4th game of the season. The Wild have played 17.  Whatever reasoning went into the decision to not start his #1 goalie against one of the best teams in the League, it's working out well for Minnesota coach Todd Richards, so far.  After one period: DETROIT 0, MINNESOTA 1.

8:33pm: Cal Clutterbuck just fired one in from the corner to the left of Detroit goalie Jimmy Howard.  It looked to me like Howard's skate was hard to the post like it is supposed to be on a shot like that but it went in anyway and when that happens, the goalie looks bad, always.  I think what happened (because it has happened to this Beer League goalie) is that Clutterbuck's shot was hard enough that it moved Howard's skate an inch or so.  The puck, for the record, is an inch tall.  If its on its side, just a fraction more than an inch is room enough for it to go in (it's physics!) and I think that's what just happened.  The time of the goal was 1:25.  The score now is: DETROIT 0, MINNESOTA 2.

8:39PM:  A note on names: The Tigers today signed pitcher Alberto Alburquerque.  This may be our new favorite name in all of Organized Ball.  Meanwhile, the man with our favorite name in all of hockey, Minnesota's #4, Clayton Stoner, is a healthy scratch in tonight's game.

8:45pm:  Detroit did not get a power play in the first period but now, midway through the second, they have a two-man advantage.  This would be a good time for the fellows to get back into this game.

8:48pm:  It didn't happen.  The Wings actually got better chances after the first penalty expired, on the 5-on-4 rather than the 5-on-3 in other words, but they didn't get anything by.  Detroit has the edge in shots, 18-10.  Minnesota continues to have the edge in goals, 2-0.  8:06 left in the middle twenty.

8:51pm:  Detroit gets another chance here with the man advantage.  While they are on the power play, we will mention that Dan Cleary has scored in 6 straight games--the longest current streak of its kind in the entire National League.  We mentioned a couple of nights ago Cleary still has a ways to go to catch Steve Yzerman, who hold the Detroit club record with goals in 9 straight.  We were wondering about the NHL record, and if you were too, you will never guess.  No, really, you will NEVER guess:
LONGEST CONSECUTIVE GOAL-SCORING STREAK:
16 Games – Punch Broadbent, Ottawa, 1921-22. 27G
Way to go, Punch!  27 goals in 16 games?  Not unimpressive.  Man, we didn't even know ice had been invented in 1922!

9:00pm:  Shots on Goal: Detroit 26, Minnesota 10.  This demonstrates that Shots on Goal is a useless statistic.

9:03pm: On their 27th shot, the Wings finally score.  Darren Helm took a cross-crease backhand pass from Abdelkader to get his 1st of the season with 0:34 left in the period.  How fortuitous.  The Wings are back in the game after 2, and after a period in which they outshot the Wild 18-3.  The score after two periods:  DETROIT 1, MINNESOTA 2.

9:26pm:  On their 29th shot, Johan Franzen ties the game.  It looked like a "nothing" play, and the replay showed that it was.  Franzen was trying to pass in front to Tomas Holmstrom (in real time it looked like Homer had re-directed the pass home, in fact that's what I jotted down in my notes) but the pass hit Wild defenseman Greg Zanon in the hip before it got to Holmstrom and caromed past Theodore to tie the game just 2:17 into the 3rd.  DETROIT 2, MINNNESOTA 2.

9:32pm:  Make it 3-2, Detroit.  Patrick Eaves shot from close range and then banged the puck away from Theodore who was trying to cover in the crease.  Once he had it, Eaves went around behind the net and forced a wrap-around just over the goal line and in.  Theodore, feeling cheated, claiming he had it covered before Eaves took it away, demanded a review but the goal stood.  It's the 3rd of the year for Eaves and it comes at 4:55. And now that Detroit leads for the first time in the game, Shots on Goal is meaningful stat, again.  Detroit has a huge edge at this point, 35-12.

9:39pm:  I have connection, sort of, to Richards, the Wild coach.  His brother Travis played for Grand Rapids the entire time I was the play-by-play man for that minor league team.  At the same time, Todd was a defenseman for Orlando.  They had one of the better team names in hockey in my opinion--the Solar Bears.  Their logo was a sun-glasses wearing Polar Bear.  And there is one thing they can never take away from that Bear: Orlando won the last championship, the last Turner Cup, in International Hockey League history.  The league, which had begun in the early 1950's, went out of business in 2000, with Orlando holding the championship trophy.  I wonder who has it now.  One year the Indianapolis Ice won it and promptly lost it at the end-of-season party.  It was missing, rumor has it, for several weeks.  The Ice organization, it is further rumored, was pretty concerned about all of this.  But, eventually, it turned up.  A fan had taken it home, so the story goes.