Please note: Since I'm all slinged up and drugged out, game recaps will probably be mostly bullet point based.

Before the game, Chris McCosky (quietly becoming a pretty decent beat writer, even though it's more fashionable to just complain about these guys not doing their job), got this comment from Mike Babcock: ""If you think Helmer's here as a goal scorer, he's not. He's never going to be a guy, probably in his whole career, that we're counting on to score goals. We're counting on him for energy and penalty killing and he's done a great job there. Helmer's been fantastic. He's basically set the work ethic here. We need more guys working as hard as Helmer works."

Boom, roasted.

• I'm not sure how much I like that comment to begin with. I don't think Helm's ever not going to be the real life incarnate of Luis Mendoza, but this is a big game player who's going to score some big goals for the team. I don't think I would ever want him playing on the second line, but 15-ish goals resulting from pure hard work and the occasional nice deke is completely reasonable. He's got 10 now and he's only 22. I think Babcock was a little too blunt there.
• But I do agree with "hard work" and that was the theme of the night from both Darren Helm and Pavel Datsyuk. Not only was Datsyuk's goal beautiful to watch, but the timing could not be any better. A goal with that kind of persistence and hard work set that table for what was a pretty complete effort. To be certain, Nashville looked like they didn't even belong on the ice with Detroit.
• Solid bounce back performance from Jimmy Howard, and that's why he's still your starter. I didn't end up watching the Vancouver game, but I did see the highlights. Jimmy looked pretty bad, but Chris Osgood let up that brutal Mikael Samuelsson goal. Howard's done a great job -- especially for a rookie goalie -- at bouncing back this season. He didn't have too heavy of a workload, but he definitely looked confident. The glove snap on the Steve Sullivan breakaway was proof of that.
• Andreas Lilja is looking pretty steady. The occasional turnover and awkward fall, but he's moving on up. Sixteen minutes played the past two nights, that's pretty big for a guy just coming back. And it's a ton more than they ever get out of Mebdeech.
• He didn't play bad, but whenever Datsyuk has a game like that I wonder what this team would be like if Henrik Zetterberg could have that same kind of impact on the same night.
• Jason Williams, Dan Cleary, and Todd Bertuzzi all did a whole lot of nothing. And no, Bertuzzi did not shoot away from the net, he was pokechecked. C'mon, at least rag on him for the stupid penalty, let's not make stuff up -- I'm finally acknowledging his poor play over the past month since he's not even really generating chances anymore.
• It's nice to send a message to Jonathan Ericsson, but I'd rather see someone who has a slim chance at doing great things than Brett Lebda.
• Finally, this was the first time in a long time Detroit had an absolutely "we have to win this game" and they showed up, more or less for the entire game too. We're in a good place right now and we can do absolutely magical things if we keep this going against Calgary on Tuesday.

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