Game Seven Not What I Paid For

It’s the morning after and you know what p*sses me off most? Not that the Red Wings lost. It’s sports, you can’t win every year, it absolutely sucks but it happens.

The thing that p*sses me off is that I paid premium dollars for a game that the Wings treated like a regular season game in January. They showed absolutely no urgency. They played the game as if they could lose and say, “Eh, we’ll get ’em next time.”

After all the talk from Mike Babcock and Kris Draper about winning one for the people of Michigan because we need something to feel good about it, the team showed that it was just talk. While we may need something to feel good about, they didn’t feel the need to put in any effort.

Okay, that’s a bit of hyperbole. The first 20 minutes were fine and the last six minutes were impressive but by my math that adds up to 26 minutes of a 60 minute game.

The funny thing is I didn’t think the Penguins played that great of a game. They didn’t get a lot of really good chances but they did get to pucks along the boards and do the little things. With Detroit unwilling to fight for those pucks, all they had to do was get to them.

The Wings lost those battles, they dumped the puck in from the blue line on power plays and then didn’t go get it, they didn’t hold the puck in the Pittsburgh zone when they finally did get in there. It’s hard to win a game with a puck control offense when you’re not controlling the puck.

All year they had success playing their game but then when it came down to the last game of the year they didn’t bother to play it. They switched from something that had won all season to something entirely different and somehow expected a good result?

I haven’t seen any press on the game yet. Haven’t watched any news, listened to any radio or read any articles, but I see a headline quoting Nicklas Lidstrom as saying, “It’s hard losing the way we did tonight.”

I’m sorry, Nick, but you’re dead wrong. As proven, it’s really damned easy to lose the way you did. Maybe you guys should have realized that a bit sooner.