Are you ready? It’s Wednesday Night Rivalry Time featuring the Detroit Red Wings and their crosstown rivals, the Los Angeles Kings of California. How are they rivals, you may be asking yourself. Think about it, guy: the names rhyme. Wings and Kings. Some of the greatest rivalries in sports have been bred from the fiery hatred of how similar two names sound. The Jets and Mets. Michigan and Michigan State. Anze Kopitar and sleep. I don’t yet have a full grasp on what rhyming is, but boy do I know rivalries. And Detroit-L.A. certainly is one.
The Kings are like the Wings in many ways: Great possession team. American starting goalie. Bad power play. Coach with a frightening face. There’s more, but it’s 1am and nobody is reading this.
Rivalry bullets:
- Johan Franzen was back in the lineup after missing 7 games. He played 15:44 and recorded one shot + a post. He’s an interesting fella.
- Brendan Smith was back in the lineup after missing 11 games. But it looked for a minute that he’d be right back out after Dustin Penner took what was either a not-so-sneaky dirty run at him, or very clumsily ran into him while making head contact. Whatever the case, nobody in stripes noticed it.
- I had a ball watching you all complain about the Sharks broadcasters calling the game for NBCSN while my friends Ken and Mick relayed the game to me in my Michigan home. Move here, you guys. It’s great. The state is shaped like a mitten! Crazy. #PureMichigan
- (The only downfall of that being that every time the Wings face Rob Scuderi, Ken Daniels feels the need to remind of the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals.)
- (And the Bernstein commercials.)
- (And the Little Caesar’s commercials.)
- (And Little Caesar’s in general.)
- The 1st period resembled classic, good old-fashioned Red Wings hockey. The puck spent the majority of the time in the Kings’ end, and the Wings finished the period with a 13-5 edge in shots. Fast puck movement, quick decision-making, and Kyle Quincey scoring a goal scorer’s goal. Quincey purposely fired the puck three feet wide into the top of Jonathan Bernier’s glove so that it would pop up in the air and behind the goalie for a goal. I find it hilarious that Quincey couldn’t score a goal without having it technically blocked first.
- Bernier seemed very averse to controlling the puck. This is a side-effect from when the Kings were housebreaking him as a rookie, and they put hot sauce on the puck so he wouldn’t chew it. Odd strategy by them but true fact nonetheless.
- How somebody named Slava Voynov isn’t a mid-90s Red Wing is beyond me.
- Pavel Datsyuk took two penalties (IN THE SAME GAME). Not only that, both were while the Wings were already on the penalty kill. The very definition of weird, look it up.
- The second penalty came following an unimaginably dumb roughing call on sniper Kyle Quincey. This, plus the Datsyuk penalty, put momentum in L.A.’s favor and they capitalized with a goal. I’m more mad about this than I was with any of the officiating, which was questionable. At least you can control yourself from foolishly throwing a guy to the ice.
- Current blogging record: 1-3-2. I’m not recapping tomorrow’s game.
Opinion! I do not think the Red Wings lost because of officiating, and if you do I think you are silly. Let’s discuss socially.
