One tenth of a second.
Do you know what can happen in a tenth of a second? Very little. It’s that fast. Darren Helm on a shorthanded breakaway fast. Blink of an eye fast. Nashville subtly hooking a Red Wing player fast.
At the end of the second period in today’s game between the Predators and Red Wings with the Wings on the power play, Johan Franzen appeared to tie the game, but unfortunately it was a tenth of a second too late. There was some hesitation by Pavel Datsyuk seconds before that that might have altered the course of the play, but we’ll never know. The Wings entered the third period down a goal instead of tied, and as much as they tried, they could not get the equalizer.
Despite a gigantic advantage in shots and puck possession in the third period, an odd-man rush by the Preds resulted in an insurance goal that proved to be absolutely huge. Henrik Zetterberg got the Wings within 1 on a late power play, but it wasn’t enough and the Wings relinquished home ice advantage by losing to the Nashville Predators 3-2.
There’s a lot of anger from this game. Some of it is directed at the team, some to the refs. Bullets after the jump.
- There was a concern about ice conditions before the game due to a concert by a terrible band from an awesome country, but full credit to Al Sobotka and crew for making the ice ready for today.
- Home ice advantage?
- A shitty call leads to a power play goal against. With Miller getting pushed into Rinne, he gets called, but Kostitsyn can push Stuart into Howard and there’s no call. The refereeing throughout these entire playoffs has been terrible, not because of the calls being made, but because of the total lack of consistency.
- Think faceoffs are important? Wings were 45% on the draw today, with Justin Abdelkader the only Wing with a positive percentage in the Predators’ zone.
- Once again the power play had a chance to get the Wings back in the game, but failed. They scored on a 6-on-4 late in the game with the score 3-1, but there were ample opportunities to get the Wings some momentum, but most of them involved the Wings just standing around and taking predictable shots. The Wings gave up their first PPG against, but overall the PK was outstanding, including killing off the 4th 5-on-3 the Predators have enjoyed in this series.
- Yep, Jordin Tootoo sure has changed the way he plays the game. Instead of running goalies he sucker punches players in the back of the head.
- Brad Stuart is terrible. He was on the ice for all 3 Predator goals against tonight, and was absolutely undressed by Kevin “In and Out” Klein for the all-important 2-0 goal. With the Griffins season being over, I’m ready for Brendan Smith to experience playoff hockey.
- I will hire someone to go in the Red Wings dressing room and punch Johan Franzen in the face before the start of every game. Anything to get him going. However, I was glad to see that he wasn’t going to let David Legwand get away with grabbing him from the Predators’ bench. Sure there was a spear, but Legwand wasn’t hurt, so no harm no foul.
- But seriously, Franzen was all over the place today. He was engaged physically, but the Mule lived up to his nickname by acting as smart as one. The spear on Legwand was just a dumb play.
- Everytime I think I’ve seen Pavel Datsyuk do everything, he does something like what he did on his goal. That seemed to really wake him up, and he dominated the game after that. For his efforts, he earned Player of the Game.
- Whenever this season is over and we look back at this team, I think we’re all going to scratch our heads and wonder just what this team “was”. The business-like approach the Wings take to everything they do is great, but look what happened in Game 2 when they were angry; they came out and took it to the Predators, resulting in a lead and a win. Today was more of the same old, same old; start slow, fall behind, play a fantastic third period but by then it’s too late. I feel like I could take any game recap from the last few months and just change the team names and it would be relevant.
