Wings Turn Hall Of Fame Game Into Amateur Hour

By Adam W Parks

Saturday, November 7, 2009 Redwings 1 @ Maple Leafs 5

Saturday's game against the Toronto Maple Leafs scarcely offers reason to write about. Detroit played its worst game of the season, worse than the 6-2 fiasco in Buffalo due to the swirling circumstances inside the Air Canada Centre. The magnitude of this awful defeat was heightened as the NHL spotlight shown bright on the game with the Hall of Fame ceremony before the drop of the puck. The Wings should be embarrassed by their performance in front of so many hockey legends including former Wings Ted Lindsay, coach Scotty Bowman and former Captain Steve Yzerman.

Class, Class, Class/A 2002 Flashback

Nobody better exemplified toughness, determination, and leadership better than Stevie Y. Never the biggest nor fastest skater ever on the ice, Yzerman had a will to win that was incomparable. During the pregame ceremony he received the loudest ovation of the entire 2009 Hall of Fame Class, a group that includes two other members of Detroit's 2002 Stanley Cup team: Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille. The trio will join Igor Larionov in the Hall on Monday, and sure-to-be future inductees from that championship roster include the likes of Chris Chelios, Nicklas Lidstrom, Dominik Hasek, Brendan Shanahan, Sergei Fedorov, and possibly Pavel Datsyuk (rookie season). If ever there was a guarantee on a Stanley Cup, outside of the Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers teams of the 1980s, this team was a sure-bet. It made for a nice moment before the game against Toronto to see a sort of reunion between the inductees, Bowman, and current Wings still on the Wings roster...too bad the festivities did not end there.

Original What?

As with the Boston Bruins, Montreal Canadians, and New York Rangers, Toronto will only face Detroit once this season. The only current Original Six rivalry that the Wings truly participate in is with the Chicago Blackhawks, and barring a Stanley Cup matchup against any of the Eastern Conference foes, that will remain the same for the foreseeable future. How is it possible that the NHL scheduling has come to this? League Commissioner Gary Bettman has spent too much time and resources trying to revolutionize the league, attempting to create new rivalries while stalling and all but killing old, historical rivalries. Will the Nashville Predators or Columbus Blue Jackets ever have as rich of a rivalry with the Wings as the Maple Leafs or Canadians do, or used too at least?

The way the 82-game NHL schedule works out is each team plays 24 games within its division: 12 at home, 12 on the road, and six against each team. 40 more games are played against the other teams within the conference: two home and two away per opponent. This leaves 18 games to play left. Every team plays just one game, either a home or an away matchup, against every team in the other conference, leaving three extra games to randomly schedule within the conference.

So, the Wings go up against the Hawks a minimum of six times in a season. That's okay, but they also play the Predators and the Blue Jackets six times. They matchup against the Phoenix Coyotes and the Minnesota Wild four times per year. The only real, relatively new rivals for the Wings are the Colorado Avalanche and the Anaheim Ducks. The Avs rivalry has fizzled over the years, but it was once the most intense in all of sports due to its violent nature, and the rivalry with the Ducks was born out of several long, physical playoff series. Neither arose due to regular season matchups.

The NHL is the second oldest professional sports league in North America behind Major League Baseball, and to not properly honor the history of the Original Six in modern days is a travesty. Imagine if the Yankees and Red Sox only met for just one three-game series per season. For newer and future generations of hockey fans, the Original Six will carry very little relevance if the scheduling system remains the same; a shame on the game and its commissioner for allowing to happen.

And Finally, Here Comes the Inevitable

So anyway, enough stalling, there was a game on Saturday, and it was U-G-L-Y with no alibi for the Wings. Just about all that momentum of the three-game win streak was washed away into Lake Ontario. Chris Osgood lost most of the credibility he built up after only allowing two goals in the last nine periods of hockey. Is this too drastic of an assessment? Perhaps. But the Wings had some decent rest coming into this game, having not played since Thursday. The Leafs played the night before in North Carolina against the Hurricanes and have the second least points in the NHL. The Wings were showing signs of chemistry and improvement and were just one point away from the Hawks and Jackets for the lead in the Central Division. A Columbus victory Saturday puts them at the top with 20 points, while the Wings (17) remain behind the Hawks (18). Yeah, it is just one game, whatever, but this is not going to be a season that the Wings can afford to give up points against teams they should defeat, and to do so in such an ugly way is just plain pathetic.

Griffin Eggs

A Non-Deserved Promotion-Patrick Eaves was out of the lineup due to a bruised foot from a blocked shot against the Sharks on Thursday. Ville Leino received the bump up to the effective, fast, and hard-working Darren Helm line along with Kris Draper. Not to pick on Leino too much because nobody came to play against the Leafs, but he failed to get a shot on goal and registered a minus-2 rating on the night. Draper finished minus-3 and Helm minus-2, but each had two shots.

Nugs and Notes

A Lone Bright Spot-To take any positives out of this game is a difficult task, but Dan Cleary got off of #99. Cleary scored his 100th goal of his career, the only goal for Detroit, and his first in 12 games going back to October 3rd in Sweden. Hopefully he will loosen up and get his scoring going because...

Lost Willy-Jason Williams is out eight weeks with a broken leg. Great. Williams had been grabbing some important minutes skating on the second line with Henrik Zetterberg and also working the power play. Expect to see a call-up from Grand Rapids before the Wings' game in Columbus on Wednesday.

Peace.