With things a little busy for me, this has been the first chance I’ve had to blog in quite some time. It’s been a busy couple of weeks recently, between school projects and all. Plus now I have a job as well — I started as a Sandwich Artist at my local Subway on Friday.
However, things in Detroit sports (as always) keep coming, and the bloggers simply cannot type fast enough to cover it all. Last week the Red Wings were eliminated from the playoffs by the Anaheim Ducks. A big menace to the Wings, JS Giguere once again sealed their fate. Despite out-shooting the Ducks time-and-time again, the Wings simply could not breech the Anaheim wall standing between the pipes. Following the conference finals, Jean-Sebastian had a stingy goals against average of 1.87 and a save percentage over 93% — both of these stats are good enough to carry his team. With such a high level of difficulty for opposing offenses against these Ducks, it does not take much from Anaheim’s offense to take the game. The Wings had a 2-1 lead in the series before the west coast squad took game four 5-3 to even up the series despite Detroit out-shooting the Ducks 39-22. In game five, the Wings once again won the shots war by a wide margin, 37-26, but lost the game 2-1 and gave Anaheim the series lead in overtime. In game six, the shots were even, and the Red Wings’ third period rally came up short. Though Detroit scored three goals in the final period, it was not enough to top the Ducks, who took the series with a 4-3 victory. Once again, Hockeytown has fallen at the hands of a goaltender who relentlessly turned away shot after shot, chance after chance. The Red Wings’ own goalie, Dominik Hasek, will make a decision regarding retirement in the coming weeks. At age 42, he actually had a great playoff line, going 10-8 with a 1.79 GAA and a 92.3% save percentage; however it seemed like in between his stellar efforts were games in which he was simply over-matched by his counterpart. It will be interesting to see how Detroit addresses their need in the crease during the offseason to be sure.
Now for a little aftermath. The Wings did see a quiet elimination from the playoffs — though their disappearance from this year’s suitors for the Stanley Cup was mentioned to me by a handful of friends, most seemed either completely unaware or indifferent to the results of this year’s playoffs. It is quite possible that Hockeytown is dead. As far as I am aware, the Red Wings did not sell-out Joe Louis Arena one time these playoffs; though, the team did come close several times. With ticket prices on the rise, the economy slumping, and TV coverage on channels unheard of by most and only available to cable subscribers, it’s no wonder interest in hockey has disappeared. I caught all of the games I could, but my exposure to playoff hockey was limited by time constraints and time zone conflicts. After all, being sleep deprived as it is, the last thing I should be doing is staying up until the late hours to watch a hockey game that started at 9pm. A loss in interest is not simply present here in Michigan, but also nationwide. The NHL was completely thrown under the bus and humiliated by NBC’s decision to cut coverage of an overtime elimination game between the Sabres and Senators in order to air pointless pre-race coverage for the Preakness. The race had not yet arrived, the NHL still had 20 minutes left to finish their game, yet NBC pulled the plug, delegating the remainder of the critical matchup to Versus. It’s something that seems to be all too common, as teams battle for the Stanley Cup, it’s hard to even notice the NHL Playoffs still exist. Despite building a better and far more entertaining product, the NHL is struggling to build interest. I leave with a question: If a hockey team wins the Stanley Cup on a channel no one watches, will they make a sound?
