For starters, since I'm not up for making a separate post, Gazette Online's Jeff Johnson is spreading the word that Sergei Kolosov was named to Belarus' Olympic team. As you might recall, the word on the street was that Belarus bypassed him, but was going to send Dave Lewis out to personally scout Kolosov and decide whether or not he should make the club. I haven't seen it anywhere else, but as that source covers the Cedar Rapids team Kolosov used to play for, you figure they probably have a tie to him. Good for Sergei, and it will be great for Detroit to see how he fairs against NHL competition. Kolosov draws comparisons to Andreas Lilja and has come a long way in his short AHL career.

Onto the Wings of today -- they lost in a shootout. Gotta start putting a shortcut on my keyboard to type that. It's probably my fault. I ripped Dallas for getting so many loser points, but since then, Detroit's been racking them up and are now within one of Dallas. Whoops. To be fair, Detroit is just much, much better than Dallas.

Honestly, I'm not disappointed with today's performance. They got outshot pretty badly, but I felt like they really reigned in the stupid mistakes and gift-wrapped turnovers. Not entirely void of that, but a step in the right direction.

It was just the offense that couldn't get it going. Contrary to what NBC kept saying about how much of a statement Pittsburgh was making in holding Detroit to so few shots, a little background research (which NBC didn't have time for because they needed a third Sidney Crosby piece to fill out their intermission) would have shown that Detroit's struggled to put the puck on the net lately.

Jimmy Howard will be one of the first people to tell you that. Something like 250 more saves today. Pretty standard, average game from him. I wonder who the starter is.

"It's great, isn't it? It's called goaltending," coach Mike Babcock said. "He battled and gave us a chance."

I ran across that tonight via The Triple Deke, via The Ansar. Babcock is just so cryptic sometimes.

The best news today was that Niklas Kronwall isn't injured. It looked bad and worse during the replay, but it doesn't sound like he'll miss any time. I really have no idea what to make of these things anymore, but we'll see what happens on Tuesday.

It's funny when one play can really set the tone for what people take out of a game (see Todd Bertuzzi for more information). I don't think there's a better example of this than today when Valtteri Filppula missed that open net. That was a terrible, inexcusable miss. But Filppula was great other than that. I feel like since he's come back from his injury he's been quicker and more creative than ever. The finish might not ever come, but I'll take this Filppula any day. Great game from him, but I feel like people are focusing too much on the miss. Could be worse though, imagine how bad Todd would be getting that if it were him. Bert didn't even have a scoring chance today.

On the note of players coming back, I think it's about time we should be seeing Henrik Zetterberg and Dan Cleary step up. Pavel Datsyuk has really taken the reigns and was the best player on the ice today, but Zetterberg was on the inconsistent side, but now awful. Cleary has been pretty invisible lately. I'm wondering where his speed has been lately. I don't remember him carrying the puck much at all lately. That's usually a sign that someone's injured.

San Jose on Tuesday. Sounds like Tomas Holmstrom should be back, since he was close for this game. Hopefully we can give Jimmy a night off; say, less than 40 shots.