Did you guys and gals see that? The third period was not stressful. That's the first time in like... forever. No stress. Just finishing. Sixty minutes. Absolutely wonderful. Writing in fragments.

That was easily one of the most complete efforts from the team this year, and definitely one over the past couple months. They looked good in all three periods, even in the 3rd when the Wild defensemen were really pinching hard. They got a couple breaks, every goal they scored counted (I was worried on Miller's), what more could you ask for?

How about some bullet points?

• I haven't been too hard on Henrik Zetterberg, but after watching him tonight I wish I was a little harsher. He was a completely different player tonight. Larry Murphy worded it perfectly (shocking, eh?) after the game. He's playing like a top 50 player in the league, but he needs to play like a top ten player.
• Speaking of which, there are only two, maybe three players I'd take over the Pavel Datsyuk that's shown up for Detroit over the past ten games or so. It's a crime that people are talking about him not deserving the Selke this year -- just because his point production is down.
• I really think, if healthy, Johan Franzen is a 50 goal scorer. Maybe I just forgot about it because we went 50+ games without him, but I feel like as he gains confidence he's really not afraid to try the fancy moves that he displayed all game long tonight. Of course, this is a lot easier to write than it is to do. I just think if he played 82 games, he could pot 50.
• Not a whole lot of talk about Nick Lidstrom lately, eh? I'm glad the $13.4 million Detroit has invested in their top pairing is finally starting to click on a regular basis and look like the most dangerous pairing out there, offensively, once again.
• Now that the star players are starting to show up, it would be nice to know what Dan Cleary and Todd Bertuzzi are doing out there.
• Tomas Holmstrom has been playing really well off the puck. He's always been one of, if not the, best puck retriever in the league just getting out into the corner and getting it back to the point. But I noticed both last game and tonight that he's taking shots from the high slot area too, probably because that's just about the only place that he won't get called for goalie interference. But I can't say that for sure, you never know.
• It's getting to the point where I'm actually thrilled the Wings go shorthanded because they've been putting on a penalty kill cliche clinic. By that I mean, all that stuff you always hear a good PK needs (sticks in the passing lane, sacrifice your body, clear the front of the net, use the glass), Detroit's penalty kill has been doing.
• I think the only other player I'd like to see give a little bit more is Niklas Kronwall. He doesn't seem to be holding onto the puck as long as he's capable of.
• Battle of the Miller brothers on Saturday, bring it on.

A bit of Griffins/prospects news to hold you over before the game tonight. Which is a big one, if you hadn't heard.

The trade that I missed covering due to it being announced a while after the deadline -- while I was in the hospital, was Detroit trading Griffins' defenseman Andy Delmore to Calgary for Riley Armstrong. That is the brother of Atlanta's Colby, for the record.

Both the Delmore and Kris Newbury moves happened for two reasons. For starters, Grand Rapids getting Ryan Oulahen back from injury, and getting Brad May from Detroit left them with too many veteran players, as AHL teams can only hold so many. Secondly, Grand Rapids is well out of a playoff spot... so why not move a few AHL veterans for younger players that are at the very least long shots of players who could make an impact for the future? It also opens up more ice time for Detroit's prospects.

On individual levels, both Delmore and Newbury were failures. Newbury was an agitator, but also a bit of a hot head who I saw take countless retaliation penalties when he had drawn a call. 144 PIM total, not great. And Delmore was formerly the winner of the Eddie Shore Trophy, for best defenseman in the AHL. He wasn't playing like that at all. He should have been a top pairing guy but was 4th among Grand Rapids defensemen in points, behind Doug Janik (who is more of a two-way guy), Jakub Kindl, and the resurgent Logan Pyett. Both were shipped out for wingers who are known more for toughness and hard work, opening up more ice time for the younger Pyett/Kindl, Mursak, and Tatar.

Today, Detroit re-assigned prospect Evan McGrath to Syracuse. That's still the AHL, Columbus' affiliate team. He was the odd man out of the lineup since Grand Rapids had added so many forwards recently: Armstrong, Owens, May, Oulahen, Abdelkader, etc. Also the addition of a guy like Tollefsen makes the blueline more crowded, meaning Griffins' goon Paul Crosty will be playing more forward. McGrath is a 4th year pro and he's not having a great season.

He was formerly an 100+ point scorer in the OHL. Going into his draft year, he was considered a likely 1st round pick. A bad year let him slip to the 5th round, where Detroit scooped him up. He finished his OHL career strong, but struggled when he got to the professional level. His rookie AHL season wasn't great, and he had to spend some time in the AHL. However, he re-invented his game as more of a two-way player who could play in all situations, and his next two seasons were actually pretty good. I thought he could make a push either this year or next for an NHL job on the 4th line, and he looked really good in pre-season action.

Unfortunately, that didn't amount to anything. I still believed he could be an NHL player on another roster, but he's had a poor season in the AHL this year. Last year he centered the Griffins' most productive line with Francis Pare and Francis Lemieux, but this year he was relegated to 3rd/4th line duty. He has only 19 points in 57 games, and he's a team worst -18.

This is pretty much a way of cutting McGrath loose early. He's far too good to go down to the ECHL, so loaning him out to another AHL team is the logical option. He only signed a one-year deal this offseason, and it was looking very unlikely that he'd get another deal. At least this way he can try to earn more ice time and maybe make an impression on another NHL club. But who knows -- Grand Rapids has contracted the injury bug a few times this season, and Detroit's free to re-assign him at their leisure.

Always a sad day when a prospect I once had hope for finally gets cut loose, even if you could pretty much see it coming.

Huet is why I'm not afraid of Chicago. Nabokov is why I'm not afraid of San Jose. Bring on the 8th seed.

• I don't think Todd Bertuzzi did a thing right in the first period. He wasn't making stupid plays -- no penalties or blind passes thankfully, but he waited too long when he should have shot, he shot when he should have passed, he just looked all kinds of out of sync.
• However, Bertuzzi was the team's best player in the second period. He made an impact every time he touched the puck.
• Congrats to the two dozen or so people I have in mind that are secretly happy he got hurt. If you're all right, I'm sure the Wings will start scoring in bunches and they'll stop blowing leads without such a terrible liability on the ice. Ugh. It looked pretty bad.
• I like Jimmy Howard.
• I'm finally seeing some of the Brian Rafalski I saw wearing the red, white, and blue two weeks ago. He's surprisingly competent defensively.
• On that note, Brad Stuart has been very quiet lately, which means he's doing his job. Not sure where this notion that he's tired is coming from.
• I was going to say that I hoped Johan Franzen enjoyed his day off. Then I realized that this game was at the United Center, home to over 50% of Franzen's injuries. Smart thinking by him to play smaller than Patrick Kane and make sure he stays healthy.
• I can't help but notice that Nick Lidstrom greatly outperformed supposed "better" defensemen in Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook. Guess I'm just a homer though.
• I called Bertuzzi and Dan Cleary out for being invisible the other day, but I forgot the guy who's been so invisible that I forgot he was invisible: Drew Miller. I like him much better in the checking/energy role, opposed to one of Valtteri Filppula's wingers. If you've got those two together on a line, you're going to need an incredible finisher to make it useful.
• As tempting as it might be to bring up a guy like Brad May in place of Bertuzzi, I really hope they look at Mattias Ritola, or even Jan Mursak or Tomas Tatar. Just a pipe dream though, it'll probably be may. UPDATE: Painkillers are too strong, I completely forgot about Justin Abdelkader. They better call him up over May.

Huge game on Tuesday. Hope the 2nd period Wings team shows up, ideally with a healthy Bertuzzi.

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.

Blockbuster minor league swaps... aw yeah.

TSN's Gord Miller just reported that Detroit traded Griffins' forward Kris Newbury to the New York Rangers for Jordan Owens, per Darren Dreger's Twitter.

Wings fans should remember Newbury... who had a few game stint with the team earlier in the year, taking a penalty on his first shift, scoring on his second shift, and taking another penalty on his third shift. Griffins fans should be thrilled because Newbury takes awful penalties and he's a menace with the puck -- I was never too impressed by his game, considering they always put him on a scoring line. To his credit, he's tough to play against, but it's not very often he draws a penalty without retaliating.

And Owens... yeah, I got nothing. He was a good scorer in the OHL before turning pro, but so far hasn't done anything in the AHL. The only scouting report I can find is he's a good skater that works hard.

The reasoning behind this deal is simple: AHL veteran limit. AHL teams can only carry a set amount of veteran players (based on AHL games played) on their roster. Grand Rapids has been close to the limit for some time, and now they've added Brad May. Also, former captain Ryan Oulahen was finally waived this week and appears close to finally returning after a ridiculously gruesome hip injury that kept him out of the lineup for 11 months. Those two players will definitely put Grand Rapids over their veteran limit. Owens hasn't played that number of games yet.

See ya, Kris. We hardly knew ya.

LATER IN THE DAY UPDATE: Just cruising around and I noticed that Owens is also under contract for next season, per CapGeek. It probably doesn't mean anything, but it does mean Detroit has to like him at least somewhat if they're already going to guarantee him a spot for next year. Whether they just like him for AHL depth or think he has some upside remains to be seen.

I meant to do this earlier in the day, but I had a pretty full schedule. However, the Red Wings are playing today (!) and I just wanted to write a bit before the game to a) kill time and b) get all the freshest and latest news out there for anyone who thinks I took the Olympics off!

THE OLYMPICS

Very, very good from a Red Wings perspective. I wrote before the tournament about the things I wanted to see to consider it a successful tournament. Here's the checklist:

• NO INJURIES -- Accomplished 100%.
• The United States does not embarrass themselves after the recent progress they've made internationally. -- The United States should be proud of the progress they made on the world stage. Their performance is going to do the most good for the sport in this country since the 1980 games. Great team.
• Sergei Kolosov and Ole-Kristian Tollefsen prove themselves by not looking out of place against NHL talent. -- Kolosov looked pretty good, Belarus held their own against certain teams. Tollefsen, on the other hand, looked a little slow and wild positionally at times, and his personal "highlight" came on a dangerous hit on Lubos Bartecko. (Warning: the video is really bloody, though apparently Bartecko only suffered a concussion.)
• Pavel Datsyuk gets a boost by playing with Ovechkin/Semin/Kovalchuk and plays every game post-break like the five or so games he did before break. -- Datsyuk wasn't at all as productive offensively as he could have been. The Russians were a definite disappointment, losing to Slovakia and then falling apart against Canada. Datsyuk's redeeming point comes in that he was matched up against Sidney Crosby in the Canada game. In a 7-3 loss, Crosby was off the scoresheet and Datsyuk was a +1.
• Johan Franzen gets red hot and hits the ground running after break. -- One goal isn't productive, but Franzen was shooting like crazy. He also played competitive games against some of the best in the world, so there's definitely a good chance he can go on some kind of tear now that he's back.
• Rafalski and his weak immune system don't contract some strange disease to spread to his teammates from the Olympic village. -- So far so good. Not only did he not get violently ill, he played excellent defense, huge minutes, and was named the best defenseman of the tournament. On second thought, maybe he did contract some disease -- maybe this one would be good to spread to his teammates.
• Valtteri Filppula makes a significant impact for Finland. -- He had three goals, two of them empty net. He played a good amount of minutes and looked really good. He usually does that with Detroit though, and just doesn't score the points you think someone of his skill should.
• Canada dominates (until the gold medal game). -- Canada beat Germany and Norway pretty easily, but they lost to the United States and Switzerland took them to the shootout. Yzerman and Babcock got a lot of heat before that, but thankfully Evgeni Nabokov is terrible, so Canada had a pretty easy path to the gold medal game.
• Ryan Miller dominates, but at least one person suggests that maybe Jimmah should have been a USA backup instead of Tim Thomas or Jonathan Quick. -- Nothing on the latter, but Miller basically proved what I've been saying all season -- he's the best goalie in the world.
• Sidney Crosby has a terrible tournament. -- Well, although the media wouldn't dare say it today, Crosby wasn't great. As in, he didn't dominate. He scored two huge goals for Canada which is all anyone's talking about -- but I barely noticed him in any game I watched. You'd think one of Team Canada's leaders would just have more of an impact on a shift to shift basis.
• Sweden takes bronze. -- Team Sweden was a bit of a disappointment, third biggest disappointment behind Russia and Miikka Kiprusoff.
• Corey Perry passes off an easy play for a fancy one, Rafalski submarines him, steals the puck, streaks down the wing and puts a shot right under the bar to give the States a 6-5 overtime win in the gold medal game. -- Well, the gold medal game did go to overtime, and Perry certainly made enough mistakes to where this was possible, but it didn't happen. A lot of people weren't happy with Perry's play though, so at least we have that to parade around for four years.
• People blame Perry and not Yzerman/Babcock. -- Funny how it works. Barely beat Switzerland, beat the States, and struggle to score for 20 minutes against Germany and you're the stupidest people ever. But beat Russia (again, thanks to Nabokov first and foremost), Slovakia (how did Tomas Kopecky send them to the semifinals again?), and eek out an ugly win over the US (ugly based on the fact that this game was even, while Canada dominated the first) and all of a sudden you're geniuses. Oh, bless the little hearts of the Canadian media.

THE RESULT

Bitter. I didn't fully expect the United States to medal -- hopes weren't too high after 2006. If you told me they'd win silver before the Olympics, I'd be pretty happy. Of course, like Jack Johnson said after the game, you win for gold and bronze, but you lose for silver. So it doesn't taste too great. Overall, it was a sensational tournament. There was a time when hockey-haters would bring up that Games 1 and 2 of the 2007 Stanley Cup Finals (which were on Versus) was beat out in ratings by the final table in the World Series of Poker. Well, now you have this to fight back with: The game yesterday beat every World Series game since 2004 in the ratings, in addition to every NBA Finals and NCAA Final Four game since 1998. Does that mean that hockey is the second most popular sport in America now? Nope, but it's a giant -- and frankly, unexpected -- step in the right direction for the little sport that could.

But the question that everyone, and roughly 100 people on Twitter and Facebook said at the same time thinking it was an original thought is: Of all people, why did it have to be Crosby? I hate Crosby like every other pureblooded American (or even non-Canadian), but I don't hate that he won it. I hate that he's getting all the credit. My main problem with him scoring that goal is that the NHL marketed the Olympics for well over a year in that it was going to be a showdown between Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. Ovechkin was very noticeable for Russia, but Crosby was just merely "good" for Canada. Giving him credit for scoring such a large goal is one thing -- completely deserved, and well done. But that doesn't suddenly mean he had an amazing tournament.

To a lesser extent, since people aren't hailing him as a god now, I don't think Zach Parise had a great tournament for the Americans either. He scored one of the biggest goals in the history of the country, sure, and he had two (lucky) goals against Switzerland, but he wasn't the offensive leader that the US needed him to be, I barely noticed him in either game against Canada. So please, both countries, let's watch the games a little more closely from now on.

And that concludes that for the next four years; now the Wings:

HEALTH

I'm not going to throw a party because you never know what'll happen, what with Dan Cleary getting hit in practice this weekend, Tomas Holmstrom being partially made of glass, and Brian Rafalski having to play in two different cities on back-to-back days, there's a very distinct possibility that the Wings could ice their best possible lineup this time for the first time in over two years. I say two years for two reasons -- one, Andreas Lilja needs to be part of that lineup for it to count and two, last season, the Wings buried quality players like Darren Helm in the minors until playoff time. This is full strength, people. Unfortunately, that doesn't always lead to instant chemistry.

MEBDEECH

Two reasons I bring up the singular, shapeshifting entity that is the combination of both Derek Meech and Brett Lebda. For starters -- what the heck, guys? A month ago, Holmstrom is hobbled because of a shot from Lebda, and now this weekend Meech has mowed down Cleary. What have the Wings done to earn such terrible treatment from their teammates? More importantly, how can Lebda and Meech shoot that hard in practice but never look at all capable of scoring in a real NHL game?

The second reason I bring the shapeshifter up is because of the trade deadline. These two, along with maybe Jason Williams are the most likely Wings to get traded, though they don't have to do anything once Kirk Maltby is placed on LTIR. I don't think either will be moved, but the decision is coming shockingly fast -- the trade deadline is Wednesday. In past years, I've outlined targets based on what the rumor mill says for Detroit might be looking for, but this year they might not be looking for anything besides a draft pick. It's not a great idea to move either defenseman right now because we don't know how Lilja will hold up after getting back into the grind of a real schedule, plus Kronwall's health is a question and Ericsson's decision making is an even bigger question. Might need them down the road.

What I was thinking about doing instead is maybe a little bit of a live blog here on trade deadline day. I'd open it up around 11-12 when the first couple of trades leak in and keep it up until 4-5 when the trades stop. The deadline's at 3, but that's just when trades have to be into the NHL offices, every year there's still a good spike of moves until 3:30 at least, with a few stragglers coming close to 5. If anyone would be interested in this let me know, that way I can start trying now to figure out how to set up one of those "Cover-it-Live" chats so I can have it fully functional by Wednesday.

MALTBY

There was a little misquote from somewhere that said Maltby wouldn't be having surgery, but then an hour later he changed his mind, and he will have surgery on his shoulder. The last episode of The Obstructed View debated whether or not this is conspiracy or just good timing. I'd like to believe it's good timing, but I don't buy that for a second. Obviously I don't think you could find a real doctor to do surgery on a shoulder that's not hurting, but I 150% believe he could play through this if he wanted to, and this is surgery he would have otherwise had in the offseason (or maybe even when his playing days are over). I think Detroit's really pulling a fast one here -- there's no way the timing is just that good.

MAY

The big story leading into the break was that Detroit finally waived Brad May. He had ten days to decide whether or not to retire or to play in the AHL, where he's never played a game. He's made the decision to finish the year with the Griffins. Let's face it, the Griffins couldn't get any worse right now, so maybe May will give them the scoring punch that they... hah, I can't even say it.

AWESOME

A friend of mine from high school interviewed me for a local online publication from Novi, my non-collegiate home. He wrote a pretty neat article in my opinion, so if you're interested in the Q&A I did with him, be sure to check it out. I could get used to this free publicity thing, thanks Alex!

Half an hour until puck drop. I sure do hope Andreas Lilja lives up to the image of a competent #6 defenseman that I've been building him up as since he got hurt, otherwise I'm going to be very disappointed.

It all comes down to this. USA vs. Canada. David vs. Goliath. The blogger vs. the blog namesake. Friendships will be torn, families will be split, and I'll be having a great time watching what's going to be an awesome game.

The much anticipated rematch is coming tomorrow afternoon. To nobody's surprise, Canada is already talking some serious trash. I'll admit, I didn't want this. Beating Canada makes them angry, and they have the talent where they should be running the train on everyone.

But they almost lost to Slovakia last night. Inches away from overtime.

Switzerland took them to a shootout.

They couldn't even score on Thomas Greiss for like half a game.

I remember what happened last time Canada was sure they were going to win.

Yikes.

Does a game with a bunch of 19 year olds played have anything to do with tomorrow? Nope. But it does highlight a nice little trend of Canada looking past the United States. Canada figures there's just no way they can lose twice. I think there is a way, and it comes from the hard work and strong system that the Americans have been playing over the past few years, opposed to Canada who just throws the best five players on the ice and hopes for the best. Sorry Canada, but every game you've played has been a close one against a terrible team or a near forfeit because Russia made the mistake (the same one San Jose makes) of thinking that Evgeni Nabokov is anything close to a clutch goalie. No close games yet. Well, one. A loss to America.

Any way we can get Al Michaels to call this game?

'MERICA

Things have been pretty dead here (can you tell?) but I expect they'll pick back up. It seems I've contracted something. Something unrelated to whatever it is that held me to half a voice all day today. Olympic fever.

First off, breaking news: NBC sucks. Here's a short recap of why:

• My cable service, which we'll call ACE Communications, because that's what it is, shows me that the Olympics are on USA, CNBC, and MSNBC in addition to NBC. It says so right in the guide. What reasons would the guide have to lie?
• Desperate for international hockey, I turn on the first women's game on the second day of the Games, and I'm instead "treated" to a movie called Eight Below, which has more dogs in it than people. I figure this is the fine work of ACE, who average about one repair trip per month our to my apartment to fix frequent outages.
• This happens every time I try to watch any Olympics on NBC owned stations (still get them on NBC though), so I work up some anger and call ACE.
• A person who's been trained to read lines of a sheet of paper tells me that NBC was asking for too much money so that's why they're not going to show the Olympics here. She tells me if I have a complaint I can leave a message with her manager, who is in a meeting.
• I leave a very curt message involving me asking for him to recommend me a better service and/or discount my bill, because if a cable company could decline paying for content then I was going to decline to pay for those channels. It made sense in my head.
• Manager doesn't return my call, I get the SAME woman who says the SAME thing, complete with the manager in a meeting bit.
• I leave an angrier message letting Mr. Manager know that I appreciated him ducking my calls.
• He finally calls me back, laying on the BS right away that he tried to call me back but I didn't answer or have voicemail, which is just untrue. This earned my trust.
• I'm furious with ACE, but the manager was actually honest with me. I only half-believe it because of the voicemail business, but here's the deal. To show the Olympics, NBC has cable companies on a certain contract. They don't pro-rate that contract, so they would have back billed ACE to January 2009, when the contract started. I'm not entirely sure how that stuff works, but it seemed honest and it seems feasible.
• When he told me that even though it would have cost him any profit for over a year, he's gotten enough complaints to where he regrets making that decision (and singled out being a hockey fan as why he regrets it) I chose to forgive him. Because I'm a great guy like that.
• Hence, my anger returned to NBC, aided by recent decisions to screw over Conan and bump hockey for ice dancing.

To make a long story short, don't live in the middle of nowhere. This story and many more will be available in the novel I plan to publish after I graduate, entitled "Why West Michigan Blows: A Tale of Uncivilized Beasts." Sorry, but it's true.

Needless to say, after this I wasn't too pumped about having to watch the Olympics via terrible online streams. I didn't expect I would watch much of it at all. I did find a way to get access to NBCOlympics.com which has actually been nice, but I missed almost all preliminary action dealing with this cable business.

Of all teams, it was Switzerland against Norway that got me jacked again for the Olympics. A hat trick by Tore Vikingstad (you can't make this up, folks) and a really strong game from "that guy Detroit might be interested in" Mats Zuccarello Aasen really set the stage for me. I even went back and watched a couple games through NBC's pretty neat-o archive feature. Now I'm completely hooked, despite NBC's best efforts to hold me down. I don't plan on missing a game for the rest of the tournament.

And part of that has to do with the States. What a game. I'd like to rip into NBC a little more, but their decision speaks for itself. They showed ice dancing. Meanwhile, one of the most entertaining games in Olympic history was going down on MSNBC, to near record ratings. An 8.2 rating. Compare that to MSNBC's 8.23 that they put up on election night. Americans don't care about hockey? Great call by the NBC executives. Ice dancing got great ratings, but there's no way that hockey game wouldn't have killed. That's all anyone was talking about today. Ryan Miller was even the top trending topic worldwide on Twitter last night. That means that more people in the world (on Twitter) were talking about that game than anything else. But yeah, ice dancing.

Meanwhile, Canada's been playing the blame game all day. Martin Brodeur has undone all the praise he earned in the past calendar year with all those wins and shutouts records. If you believe media and message board types, Brodeur is now past his prime, overrated, what have you, and clearly Roberto Luongo, who has never won anything of value, would have been able to win that game. Funny that Marc-Andre Fleury, a proven winner, doesn't come up. Others, like Joe Thornton and Scott Niedermayer are getting roasted for being players non-deserving of Olympic spots by fans and media people -- 98% of which had both players on the team heading into the tournament.

So the blame falls on Steve Yzerman and Mike Babcock, like I predicted it would if anything went wrong in Canada. Despite the fact that the US has two, maybe three players who would even make Canada, Yzerman has "officially" picked the wrong group. This group can't win. They barely beat Switzerland and they lost to the States. Even though they outplayed them for the entire game and the Americans only got by with some sensational goaltending and some great efforts from the grinders. The other thing that people are saying today is that this game is not a huge upset (I agree), because the US has great talent too. But where exactly was that talent last night? Patrick Kane was somewhat visible, but where were Zach Parise and Paul Stastny? This effort goes to the grinders.

Babcock's getting blasted for not just starting Brodeur, but not pulling him quickly enough. This is something that's gotta be hilarious to Red Wings fans as there are some parallels to the Chris Osgood situation. Without getting into that, I find it hilarious that all Brodeur's accolades and accomplishments only earned him to Brian Rafalski goals before the majority of Canada decided he should be on the bench. How do you, as a coach, make the decision to pull arguably the greatest goalie of all time after just two goals?

But this is Canada, this is what they do every international tournament. In my mind, they lost because of Brodeur's performance, but also because they were not getting to loose pucks and rebounds -- the Americans won too many battles in their own zone. You can play what ifs all day, but really, what difference would one or two roster changes have made? Your best players have to be your best players. Niedermayer sucked, Chris Pronger sucked and was benched in the 3rd, and Sidney Crosby was pretty invisible outside of his goal. Not terrible for sure -- but I watch Russia and I know that Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin are their best players. From watching that Canada game, I'd have to say Jonathan Toews, Drew Doughty, and Rick Nash were the best.

A great effort from the Americans though. Who is this sick looking bald guy and why is he so much better than the Brian Rafalski that's shown up in Detroit this season? Not just scoring clutch goals either -- this Rafalski is playing great hockey in his own zone and is logging crucial minutes when the game is on the line. Hopefully it leads to something more after the break. Ryan Kesler, always a guy I've liked despite hating the Canucks, scored by far the best empty net goal I'll ever see. Off of Corey Perry. Couldn't have been any better.

It's a Millericle.

Four games on tap tomorrow, four games that I intend on watching. Can't wait.

Considering we went into the break with games against San Jose and red hot Ottawa, taking three out of four points is pretty good. Really good, in fact, when you consider the Wings actually mounted some comebacks leading up to the break instead of just blowing leads, and then beat an Ottawa team that had lost once in something like 13 games. Sorry, not beat, but dominated.

Naturally, any momentum built by this is destroyed because Detroit's best players are about to go up to Vancouver, risking injury, and frankly, Detroit's playoff spot for a chance at national glory.

Good things:

• Andreas Lilja and Patrick Eaves will be back after break.
• Tomas Holmstrom is not going. It must be a bummer to get removed from the team, but he clearly has not been healthy.
• Jimmy Howard is going to get some much needed rest -- yep, you better believe he's carrying the load into the playoffs.
• Jonathan Ericsson will have some time to better learn how to play defense.

Now, what happens here the next two weeks? Who knows. I don't really have a plan to cover the Olympics. I don't want to dedicate myself to force coverage on the United States, but if they're doing well I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about them. There's a couple interesting players on each team, like the Griffins' Sergei Kolosov (Belarus) and the recently acquired Ole-Kristian Tollefsen (Norway), not to mention Norway's Mats Zuccarello Aasen, who Detroit has been rumored to be scouting. I'll probably keep tabs on their progress at well. A lot of blogs have set out to cover the progress of the rest of the Wings, so I'll figure I'll let them do that and sit back and relax.

Anyway, the country's attention will now turn to the team the man on top here assembled, and I'm at a total loss who to root for. I'm all about the United States, but they only have Brian Rafalski, who I'm lukewarm at best to. If Canada wins, accolades and superlatives will be dripped all over Mike Babcock and Steve Yzerman, which is always a ton of fun to read. From a Wings perspective, Sweden makes the most sense to root for, but Canada losing on home ice is a virtual guarantee for a few articles blasting Yzerman's decisions, even though the only one he's really at fault for is putting Corey Perry on the team and giving the 'C' to Scott "Captain Hook" Niedermayer. The ideal situation, in my mind: