Your Red Wings review and Wild Preview all in one..

Here's the review part - it sucked.

Hawks came out in the third and gave away 3 goals in the opening 10 minutes only to (thankfully) tie it with a two man advantage. They were lucky to get the one point out of the game since they let the game get away from them after outplaying Detroit for most of the game.

The Hawks failed again in the shootout - I don't know what happened with Kane but last year he was almost automatic in the shootout but hasn't put one in yet this year.

Sopel still sucks but Havlat continues to play great - including another pretty goal in the second.

As was mentioned in the comments in the last post - there were a lot of "Lets go red wings" chants going on. While they were constantly shouted down with the "detroit sucks" response it was a very unwelcome sound to hear the Wings fans be so loud. In my section there was an entire row of them sitting behind me. However, since none of them actually were wearing any Wings gear, and couldn't even bother to wear anything red, I have to say I'm thinking they were nothing more than fair-weather fans coming out since the Wings won the cup. Fair enough, but they probably won't be back unless the wings repeat - which they could very well do.

So now the preview:

The biggest news for this game is obviously the changes made. Hendry and Hjalmarsson have been sent down - Barker is called up. They aren't losing much since Hendry's only impact on stats has been 4 PIM and -1. I can't say he's really stood out in any of the games. Hjalmarsson was only able to play in one game so far before being injured.

Barker meanwhile has stepped up and has 5 points in 7 games down in Rockford.

The Wild have yet to lose in regulation and only one OT loss but like the Hawks they've been shakey in the 3rd period lately. The Hawks will need stay strong and not have as many mistakes late in the game. Otherwise, they've actually been playing pretty well. They've looked bad, but they still have points in the last 6 games.

The game tonight is on Versus too - so I guess that counts as "nationally-televised" but how much of the nation really gets Versus is still up to some debate.

Also, Pensblog is gambling on the game, but they took the Wild to win. Check it out if you want an explanation on how to bet on hockey. Lets hope they end up losing some money tonight.