Wings go to Chicago

Work's been busy, so I haven't posted in a couple days. Allow me to catch up a little.

I ended up watching the Wings OT win in game 6 with my dad, still not having much hope of taking game 7 in Anaheim. This is a fun & frustrating Wings team. They had one goal where Wings' defenseman Brendan Smith skated into a ricochet and accidentally knocked in the Ducks' first goal. The second goal is on Wings C Valteri Filpula, who was carrying the puck & blindly passed it behind his own net to Emerson Etem (plays for the other team).

These kinds of breakdowns in the defensive zone cannot happen if the Wings are going to have a chance against Chicago in this series. Repeat, CANNOT happen. Blackhawks G Corey Crawford is lights out & goals will be at a premium for the Wings. They can't afford to give up easy ones.

Regardless, the Wings found a way to win game 6. I missed game 7 because it started at 10pm and I get up around 5:30am for my morning run. Here are the highlights:

Nice shorthanded breakaway goal by Abdelkader. Ericsson watches a goal go in off his skate. The good and bad with this team.

Anyway, on to the Blackhawks. The Wings' traditional rivals, although there's less recent history with them than, say San Jose. Still, no time like the present, right? This will be the last conference post-season meeting between the 2 teams since Detroit is changing conferences next year. NHL.com broke down the matchups, but here are the Cliff Notes:

• Chicago features 2 all-world forwards in Toews and Kane, neither of which scored a goal in the last series. If they stay cold this series then Detroit probably wins, but that isn't likely
• Chicago has a solid group of defensemen that don't score a lot of points but do a good job of keeping the other team from scoring

I'd say the goalie spot is a wash. Crawford's stats are better, but so is his defense. Most of Howard's goals have come off defensive breakdowns. I don't watch enough hockey to say for certain whether Datsyuk and Zetterberg are better than Toews and Kane or not. If you factor in the fact that the Wings' Euro-Twins are probably the 2 best defensive forwards in hockey (and you should DEFINITELY factor that in), then it's pretty close to a wash. With Hossa & Sharp, Chicago has a great 2nd set of forwards. I think Abdelkader is the wildcard, in that if he can stay out of the penalty box, Chicago is in trouble. If he starts racking up power plays for the 'hawks, Detroit is done.

The NBA coaches voted on the All-Rookie 1st and 2nd teams... somehow Drummond didn't make the 1st team, despite being 4th in ROY voting. WHAT? The coaches apparently went to ESPN NBA stats, filtered by rookies and sorted by points per game, because that's how the order of the voting went. The top 5 scoring rookies made the 1st team, the next five made the 2nd team. Why are the coaches voting on this again? They maybe get 1 or 2 looks at each guy, and really have better things to do that study tape and figure out which 10 rookies are the best in which order.

Lions rookie camp was last weekend. Titus Young needs Jesus, and the Lions' 2011 draft class has been pretty bad so far.