Preseason Game 4: Killer Hands, Bert

The Lidstrom-led Wings played another split squad preseason game on Sunday, this time against the visiting Blackhawks. The "white" squad from training camp played for the Wings in a game that was a tale of two sides. The Wings' offense looked to be in regular season form, but the defense was shaky at best and downright scary at times.

Detroit 1 Chi 0; 7:35 in 1st period- PPG Filppula from Lidstrom and Zetterberg


Chicago's set up in a box on the penalty kill. There's nothing exceptional to note yet.

Lidstrom starts with the puck near the left side of the blue line. As he slides towards the middle, the Chicago defender moves with him. The Wings' other defenseman moves down the right side boards, baiting his defender into sliding down with him. This movement of Chicago players has opened up a huge area of open ice (red box above).

Lidstrom passes to Filppula on his left, who walks the puck into the open area in the slot. Franzen does an excellent job of screening the goalie, who can't see Filppula's rising wrister.

Detroit 2 Chi 0; 19:13 in 1st period- Zetterberg from Franzen and Filppula

A great breakout pass through the neutral zone is for naught as the puck is just out of Filppula's reach. The puck bounces off the left side boards, and Filppula is able to corral it around the blueline.

Filppula uses a spinning backhand pass to get the puck to Franzen, who's entering the offensive zone with speed along the left side. Two strides into the zone he's created an irreversible amount of separation between himself and four Chicago defenders.

Gotta love alternate angles. You can see here that the Chicago player is able to get his stick on the ice in front of Franzen's shot. The puck hits the stick and bounces straight up, eventually landing behind the net to the goaltender's left.

Franzen is able to regain control of the puck and finds a streaking Henrik Zetterberg near the goal (Z's the one on the right side that looks like a ghost. Very seasonally appropriate). Z puts one just under the crossbar on the far side of the net for the goal.

Detroit 2 Chi 1; 7:32 in 2nd period- SHG Pirri unassisted

The puck is stripped from the Wing carrying into the zone, and Franzen isn't able to pick it up. Instead, Pirri gets ahold of it, turns, and sprints up the left side.

This goal doesn't lend itself to analysis. The Wings defenders backcheck and are in good position, but Pirri's slapshot beats Howard high short side for the goal.

Detroit 3 Chi 1; 8:55 in 2nd period- PPG Lidstrom from White & Filppula

The Wings move the puck to Lidstrom off the faceoff. Lidstrom passes to White before the Chicago defender can stretch his stick out far enough to cut off the passing lane. Note that the defender is facing Lidstrom prior to the pass.

Ian White makes a tremendous pass fake towards the low slot area. This pulls Chicago's center (#16) down low, leaving lots of space for Lidstrom to operate in. White reads this and passes back to Lidstrom.

Lidstrom one times it and beats the goalie high glove side. You can tell from the screen cap that things didn't really work out for #16 in white.

Detroit 3 Chi 2; 16:01 in 2nd period- Hayes from Smith & Pirri

Chicago gets the puck off a Detroit turnover in the neutral zone. At this point the Wings are in a good defensive position. Both Chicago skaters are being covered by one of the Wings' D-men.

Kindl skates hard towards Smith and gets embarrassed when Smith stops hard. Abdelkader comes down to help but Smith stickhandles around him. That leaves 2 Wings defenders completely out of position, and an unchecked Chicago player open in the left faceoff circle. Smith easily gets the cross ice pass off to Hayes.

The player circled in the screencap is Ericsson. He's done a good job of sticking with his man throughout the play, but at this point he's so far off the the goaltender's right that he can't recover in time to do anything about Hayes having the puck. Hayes goes backhand-forehand-backhand, enough to bait Conklin into dropping to the ice and exposing the top of the net. Hayes shoots high and scores.

Detroit 3 Chi 3; 9:33 in 3rd period- Pirri from Hayes

Brendan Smith brings the puck out from behind the net, but a Chicago player gets a stick on it right before Smith can make his clearing pass. It's hard to see in the screencap, but that's what's happening in the red bubble. This is a Wings turnover dangerously deep in their own zone.

There's a little bit of puck luck involved here, as somehow the puck ends up directly on a Chicago player's stick. Now there's a 2 on 1 directly in front of the net, leaving plenty of room for Hayes to pass to Pirri.

Commodore covers this really well. He stays square to the shooter, so I don't place any blame on him for the goal. Pirri snaps one from the slot and beats Conklin to tie the game.

The game ended up going through an overtime period and into the shootout. Here's how the shootout went:

Franzen- save Pirri- goal Bertuzzi- goal Frolik- save Zetterberg- goal Saad- save Bertuzzi's goal was a thing of beauty. Looks a lot like the move Pavel used on Bryzgalov against Phoenix in round 1 of last season's playoffs. If you haven't seen it, you've got to watch the video here. The Good Valtteri Filppula- Flip was a tremendous offensive weapon in this game. His passes were sharp and he generated not only numerous scoring chances, but was rewarded with a multipoint game. It's nice to see him exhibiting the skill that we've heard about and, at times, seen for the past few years. Moving him to the wing may have been a stroke of genius by Mike Babcock. The Bad The Wings' breakout passes- Too many times the Wings not only watched their breakouts fall about, but saw them turn into quality scoring chances for the Hawks. I'm sure they'll work out the kinks here but turnovers were an issue in this game.

Preseason Game 3: This Is As Close To A Doubleheader As You Get In Hockey

The Wings brought home the "red" portion of the training camp roster to face the Flyers at the Joe on Friday night. Headlined by Datsyuk and Howard, the Wings dropped the game 3-1. It's worth noting that "headlined by..." in the previous sentence really just refers to the biggest names on the roster, as I don't exactly think Jimmy headlined anything by giving up 3 goals on 22 shots. Then again, hard to tell as there was no video available for this game either.

Recaps are available from TSN, the Wing's official site, and ESPN (they've got some photos and a nicely designed box score as well).

The Wings play the Blackhawks at the Joe on Sunday at 5 PM. The game will be televised on NHL Network and Fox Sports Detroit, so I imagine I'll be able to screen cap some highlights on Monday.

Preseason Game 2: London Calling

I know the title's corny, but the Wings haven't played there since 1993 and so I probably won't be able to use it again for quite a while. Opportunity knocked.

The Wings won their first preseason contest of the season with the other part of the split-squad (the "white" team from training camp, featuring Lidstrom and Zetterberg) that didn't travel to Pitt. As I alluded to earlier, the game took place in London, Ont. because....I dunno, it just did. I haven't been able top find any video of it, so instead you can find recaps here from ESPN (they've got the AP story that every other site picked up) and TSN. I noticed after linking to this that TSN has some video, but it doesn't have every goal and it isn't exactly screen-cappable.

An idiot threw a banana on the ice while new Flyer Wayne Simmonds was taking his turn in the shootout, and instead of going through the details I'll just say that I condemn what happened and refer you to articles at the Wing's official site and TSN.

And so it begins

Summer is officially over. I have to wipe condensation off of my windshield every morning before leaving for work, the Pumpkin Spice Latte has returned to Starbucks, and, best of all, hockey's back.

Granted, it's not exactly hockey at it's highest level, but I'll take a split-squad game any day if it means that it gives the guys at NHL Home Ice Radio something to talk about and makes them stop playing "Best of...the NHL Awards" recap shows.

The Wings traveled to Pittsburgh on Wednesday night with half of their team in tow and took on a Sidney Crosby-less Penguins squad, so basically it was a split-squad game for both teams. Evgeni Malkin made his first start for Pittsburgh after suffering a season-ending knee injury last February. He looked to be back in shape, and some articles are already suggesting that he's back to Art Ross Trophy form which, like, whoa premature.

Pitt 1 Det 0; 11:40 in 1st period- Kunitz from Malkin

The play starts to break down when Kronwall sends a cross-ice pass that's just past Eaves' stick. The puck ricochettes off the boards to Malkin. Eaves' forward momentum has brought him past Malkin, and he has to turn and come back to try and forecheck. Malkin has all the time he needs to send a tape-to-tape feed across the ice to a trailing Kunitz.

This is pretty clearly a broken play. There's no chance for the Wings to employ any strategy on the forecheck, not with Kronwall trapped behind the net, Eaves in poor position to defend, and Stuart alone on an island in the slot having to cover the trailing man and the low winger.

Kunitz gets the puck and skates around Stuart's outstretched stick. He wrists one that appears to hit Howard's shoulder and go in, but it's hard to tell from this camera angle.

Pitt 1 Det 1; 13:54 in 1st period- Kronwall from Datsyuk & Stuart

I love the way this plays out so very very much. If this happens the rest of the year, then we're in better shape than I thought and Pavel's on his way to a very solid point total.

We start with the Penguins in a solid defensive position. They've got both defensemen back and a forward in the neutral zone, so there's no real chance of an odd man rush here. Datsyuk is carrying the puck along the right side and is met near the blue line by Richard Park. Datsyuk skates through the stick check of Park, keeps control of the puck, and makes his move near the top of the faceoff circle.

Datsyuk has two options here; option one is forcing a pass to a well-covered Patrick Eaves. Option two is dropping the puck back for the trailing man into that giant red box in the photo above.

Datsyuk makes the smart choice and drops the puck to Nicklas Kronwall. Kronwall has the puck and he has plenty of space to get off a shot. One of Pittsburgh's defenders is in the corner covering Datsyuk, the backchecking forward has just entered the Pittsburgh defensive zone and can't get to Kronwall in time, and the defender in front of Kronwall is far enough away that Kronner will be able to shoot before he has to worry about the defender making a play on the puck.

Kronwall picks top corner glove side and unleashes a great wrister that beats Fleury for the goal. I love everything about this play. Datsyuk draws defenders in and opens up space for other players, and defenders jump up into the rush to take advantage of easy opportunities. Therein lies the beauty of Datsyuk; he opens up space that allows our offensive defensemen to thrive.

Pitt 2 Detroit 1; 10:58 in 2nd period- Malkin from Sneep & Martin
A quick disclaimer: this type of goal is bound to happen in the preseason. You've got a group of Red Wing that likely will be spending the season learning their craft in Grand Rapids, and they're trying to slow down Pittsburgh's top line and top D-pair. Meh.

A Wings player (I think it's Lashoff but can't quite see the number) steps up on Pittburgh's D-man, who easily sauer passes one ahead for Malkin. You can tell from the screenshot that Malkin's going to have plenty of room to move along the right side boards as Ryan Johnson is behind him and Fabian Brunnstrom is too far to the left (which like, duh he's a LW) and has his own defensive responsibilities to worry about.

Enter Garnet Exelby. He's got his stick behind him, trying to take away Malkin's pass to the center and keep him along the right side boards. He does this, but it doesn't end well.

This is the exact moment at which it's over for Exelby. Malkin uses some kind of swim move to push past Exelby and from here on out it's just a footrace.

See that red box along the bottom? Jimmy's got that locked up. See that red box up top? Not so much. The yellow circle is the puck. Guess where it's headed. Exelby's stick has been all over the place on the play and he doesn't stick check here, instead resorting to a good ol' fashioned shove from behind. Too bad the puck's already in the air. Nothing left to screencap here; it's a Pittsburgh goal.

Pitt 3 Detroit 1; 13:25 in 2nd period; Niskanen from Morrow & Asham

Not a whole lot to talk about on this goal. Pittsburgh's on the power play, they win the draw, move the puck to Niskanen, and a hard slap shot from the blue line finds its way past a well-screened Jimmy Howard.

The Wings defenders are barely able to get out of their faceoff formation before Niskanen has gotten the shot off.

The defender didn't do a good job of clearing the front of the net, and it costs on this goal.

Pitt 3 Detroit 2; 2:48 in 3rd period- Hudler from Exelby & Datsyuk

Maybe I'm giving him too much credit but Pavel impresses again on this play. He creates the opportunity that leads to the tip-in because of the respect (and sometimes ill-advised moves) he draws from defenders.

Pittsburgh's set up well defensively. It looks to me like they're playing zone defense. Datsyuk moves through the middle and behind Letang's zone, made possible because Letang is focused on Hudler and the puck.

Hudler sneaks the puck under Letang's stick to Datsyuk, who's going to turn with it and walk back up the left-side boards.

Here's Pittsburgh's first mistake. It seems like Letang should move back towards the net and let Datsyuk move up along the boards as he's got help up high in the zone. Instead, he turns and gives chase to Datsyuk. This is going to bunch three Pittsburgh defenders up high.

There ya have it. Three Penguins above the faceoff circles. Pay attention to Hudler on the right side. He's all alone behind the defenders. All the Wings need to do is work the puck down low and they've got a scoring opportunity. Datsyuk passes to Exelby at the blue line, and Exelby takes an awkward chop at the puck...

Remember what I said about Hudler? That's him with the stick out and on the ice (woot fundamentals), about to get a tip.

And that one's behind Fleury. Just for fun, take a look at who's in front of the net. Even in the preseason, he's making life miserable for opposing netminders. Gotta love it.

Hard to get a good read on anything after this game. There were mistakes on both sides, but what really surprised me was Pittsburgh's third goal. I'd classify it as a soft one, as there wasn't anything terribly unusual on the play (erm, other than the fact that the puck ended up in the back of the net).

The Good

• Pavel Datsyuk- he consistently altered plays and moved defenders around, often drawing them out of position. If he's not the most talented player in the league right now than I don't know who is.
• Jiri Hudler- Despite saying that he doesn't feel like he has to prove himself in camp, he does and it's showing. It's not just that he scored the last goal, but that he made smart plays with the puck and found open areas of the ice. That's what a top six forward does, and that's how he played.

The Bad

• Jimmy Howard- While he may have been hung out to dry a few times, he was consistently beaten high. He wasn't terrible but I wouldn't say he was solid either.
• Garnet Exelby- I know he picked up an assist on the last Detroit goal, but that doesn't save him from being on the wrong side of the list. His defensive play on the Malkin goal (or lack thereof) was concerning. He's got to learn to use his stick effectively, as trying to shove elite players off the puck isn't going to cut it in the NHL.