It’s another installment of Quick Hits around the NHL — the St. Patty’s Day edition. This post also has some other non-NHL news including the OHL and Michigan basketball and hockey.
- The Wings host the Philadelphia Flyers tonight at Joe Louis Arena. If you have tickets to the game, be sure to arrive early if you want $3 12-ounce beer between 6-7 p.m. Pretzels will also be $1 throughout the evening.
- Red Wings playoff tickets go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. There will be a limited number of $30 tickets available for purchase courtesy of DRW sponsors, Tim Horton’s and FSDetroit.
- GM Ken Holland and CEO of Ilitch Holdings, Chris Ilitch, donated a 2008 Stanley Cup ring to the Hockey Hall of Fame for its Stanley Cup Championship Tribute display. Once the display has been replaced, the ring will move to another display featuring past Stanley Cup champion artifacts.
- The Wings’ held a 50/50 raffle contest on December 30th in a game against the Chicago Blackhawks. The winning ticket has yet to be claimed and the Wings are trying to find the winner with the raffle ticket number of 014056 to claim his or her prize of $2,653.50.
The back-to-back road trip over the weekend was a great one for Wings’ fans as we saw Detroit playing at the top of its game, which is a wonderful sign as the postseason draws closer. IwoCPO at Abel to Yzerman posts his thoughts about the road trip in a recent blog post. - Sunday’s win gave Detroit its ninth consecutive season of 100-plus points, setting a league record. The record sparked a couple of articles about the Wings dominance in the league both on ESPN.com and NHL.com.
- Jerry Green wrote a column for The Detroit News about fighting in the NHL (he’s a fan of fighting).
- On Saturday, New Jersey Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur matched Patrick Roy’s record of 551 all-time wins. I eagerly look forward to hearing that Brodeur broke Roy’s record, yes I still cannot stand that man. James Mirtle has a post comparing the two goalies on From The Rink. John Fischer has more at In Lou We Trust, one of our SBN hockey counterparts.
- Goaltender Chris Osgood gives his opinion on the fans’ worries about Windsor Spitfires goaltender Andrew Engelage, who has a sparkling 46-4 record in the OHL and strong stats to back that up.
- Speaking of the OHL, the Plymouth Whalers (a team I interned for two seasons ago during their OHL championship season) earned the fourth seed in the West and will face the Sarnia Sting in the opening round of the playoffs. It marks the 18th consecutive season that the Whalers have made it into the OHL playoffs, which is the longest active streak in the league. Games 1 and 3 will be played at Compuware Arena in Plymouth, Mich., with both games slated to start at 7:05 p.m. on March 21 (Sat) and March 24 (Tues) respectively.
- As many of you know, I am a student at the University of Michigan so I have to mention that the Wolverines made it to the NCAA tournament for men’s basketball for the first time in 11 years. MGoBlue.com has an interesting look at head coach John Beilein’s day on Selection Sunday.
- Michigan hockey swept Western Michigan this past weekend to advance to the CCHA semifinals for the 20th consecutive season. MGoBlog has more on the games and what it means for the NCAA tournament. /
