Postgame: Red Wings @ Canucks – 12/21

I’ll try to keep my thoughts quick ’cause it’s late enough as it is.

The Wings deserved to lose this one. Their defense sucked (by Detroit standards) and every Vancouver goal can be traced back to someone not doing their job.

This loss falls squarely on the Red Wings. I hope no one is ridiculous enough to try to blame the refs for it.

That said… I don’t even know what to say about the third period sequence leading up to Alexander Edler’s shorthanded goal for the Canucks.

Niklas Kronwall certainly left his feet to hit Ryan Kesler but the hit was in this awkward way such that Kronwall went rear-first into Kesler’s chest. It was by no means a head shot, he targeted the body, he just did it with a lower part of his own body and left his feet to get that part high enough. I don’t know why he’d hit like that, seems like a shoulder would be better. Maybe it’s his interpretation of a hip check and the art is so lost that Kronner can’t even do it right? So I call it clean but ugly.

I’m shocked that Kesler got a roughing penalty after the hit. I don’t like that he tried to go after Kronwall for it (since the hit was relatively clean) but it seems like the officials typically let after the whistle junk like that go. I complain about it not being called all the time so I don’t mind that it was called, but it’s certainly not consistent with what we usually see.

Alexander Edler’s shorthanded goal, Vancouver’s fourth goal of the night. Yeah, that one.

We’ve seen time and time again that a goal can be wiped out for “incidental contact” (just ask Tomas Holmstrom about that one). If we say that Jannik Hansen was directed into Jimmy Howard by Henrik Zetterberg, that’s where incidental contact comes in. Hansen couldn’t stop, ran into Howard, not his fault, no goal. Instead, we have a Canucks goal scored with Howard being sat on. I honestly do not understand how one night that goal is allowed to stand and on another night the slightest contact at the edge of the crease wipes out a goal.

That’s all I’ve got. No formal recap tonight, I’m going to bed.