Dear readers,

Greetings. I just wanted to let you all know that I'm the worst blogger ever. As I mention just about every post now, I've been busy with school and it seems as though every Wings game is on a night that I have quite a bit to do. But I wrote like half a post before Game 7, then I stopped. I don't know what happened.

Between you and me, it was hard to stay motivated. That series was frustrating. All credit to Phoenix, because that was their game plan: weather the storm and capitalize on your chances. It seemed like the story of the season for Detroit. They got outworked all series long but still held on to steal a few games because they could get by on talent alone. There's just no way to win a series on talent alone, so I had a bad feeling in the last two games that they might fall apart. The effort level in Game 6 blew my mind -- I don't think it's good that this team has to be on the ropes to bring their A-game. More on that later.

But guess what, dear reader? I'm done with school now. The focus is now hockey. Let's get started.

Howard's Haters

Phenomenal bounce back performance by Jimmy Howard. Maybe I had Chris Osgood pegged wrong -- he is a good mentor for Jimmy. Twice this series a fair amount of people started to doubt Howard's ability -- twice he bounced back with a strong performance. That's definitely an Osgood trait, at least in the playoffs. His attitude was perfect coming into this game. I wasn't a huge fan of him just calling all of Phoenix's Game 6 goals "lucky," but clearly, he honestly felt that way and he didn't dwell on any of what were some pretty weak goals. The goal he did let up was pretty weak, but it was a smart play by Vern Fiddler, even if he did hit the puck before it actually hit the ice.

Overall, I think it was a great first playoff series for him. Like I said back in November when everyone else had turned against Howard, he's a rookie goalie, and there are ups and downs. I don't by that garbage of "there are no rookies in the playoffs." This is a guy with no playoff experience -- a playoff rookie. He's going to learn the hard way a couple of different lessons. Hopefully he was able to learn them in this series and we'll see him go on a bit of a hot streak headed into the next round. At the very least, his haters should have picked up on the fact that he's going to rebound if he has a bad performance.

All Hail Pavel

Pavel Datsyuk carried the team on his back in Game 7. I felt he was pretty strong all series, but I saw some people getting on his performance in some of the Wings' losses. I didn't see that. He looked dangerous every time he had the puck, but definitely not in any game more than last night. Best player on the ice. Good news going into a series against a team with a little more star power in San Jose.

Although Datsyuk stole the show in Game 7, it was Henrik Zetterberg who was the MVP of the series. He put on such a performance that I'm honestly more angry at him for not bringing this every game in the regular season. But it's the playoffs, and people step up. Good to see that Conn Smythe Z is in full force.

These Players Suck

I hope Johan Franzen enjoyed his series off and is ready to start the playoffs next round. Darren Helm had a terrible series and I feel like nobody's talking about it. He had trouble clearing the puck all series on the PK. He had one of the worst shifts I've ever seen in Game 6, then followed that up by failing to clear the puck twice on his first shift of the game last night. I'm also filing a missing player report for Danny Cleary and Niklas Kronwall.

I don't think Brad Stuart had nearly as bad of a series as people say. That's what I don't like about defensive defensemen -- they make one mistake like the first goal of Game 6, and all of a sudden they had a bad series. Then he scores a breakaway goal, and he had a good game? Stuart's game is not about offense, people. He was responsible for a couple of goals but I think for most of the series he was breaking up odd-man rushes since Kronwall got caught deep and missed a ton of hits, over and over again.

Not as much as the East

If Montreal wins tonight, Pittsburgh basically advances to the Stanley Cup Finals. Seriously. Montreal, Boston, and Philadelphia? These teams didn't even look like they wanted to be in the playoffs a month ago. And they knock out all the supposed contenders? What a joke. At least the contenders in the West got the job done, if they have any strength to stand when they're done beating up on each other.

More later

Series preview on San Jose coming soon.