Tuesday in Review

It’s been a busy day for the Red Wings, with a retirement, an injury and a loss in about a six-hour span. Let’s get going then…

Maltby
Veteran forward Kirk Maltby announced his retirement at a 5:30 press conference at Joe Louis Arena. Rather than accept assignment to the Grand Rapids Griffins, he’ll move into the Detroit front office to replace Pat Verbeek as one of the team’s three pro scouts.

I haven’t exactly hidden the fact that I think Maltby could have retired a year or two ago but I think you have to respect everything he’s done for this team. Four Stanley Cups is not something to take lightly. Best of luck to Malts in his new career.

Rafalski
Where the hell did this come from? Brian Rafalski leaves practice early on Monday and now he’s out for a month?

Rafalski had his knee scoped this afternoon and will miss three to four weeks. The timeline seems to be the only bad news, thankfully, as the procedure went off without a hitch and, as GM Ken Holland put it, “They cleaned out some loose particles.”

With Jonathan Ericsson still nursing his injured back, Doug Janik was called up to play against Colorado. Kris Draper was placed on short-term injured reserve to make room for Janik; I’m not entirely certain why Rafalski wasn’t.

Colorado 5, Detroit 4 (SO)
We get to tonight’s game, in which the Red Wings played like a team that had a lot going on off the ice.

On the plus side, it looks like every forward line is clicking. There’s some great passing going on out there and it’s leading to goals. Datsyuk’s goal, one of Franzen’s, Eaves’… All preceded by at least one nice pass.

On the negative side, several things. The team looked sloppy and tired. They did a bad job of breaking up Avalanche passes, leading to Colorado getting a ton of scoring chances. The exception being the five-minute OT period, where I thought the Wings dominated.

I’m not going to throw him under the bus for the loss but Jimmy Howard did not look fantastic to me. He was great in the shootout but I think one or two of the regulation goals he might want back.

Detroit’s shooters in the shootout put on some nice moves but couldn’t finish. Lots of posts, but if you can’t score a single goal on six shots it’s gonna be embarrassing.