The Anaheim Mighty Goons

The Red Wings managed to edge out Anaheim last night despite the Mighty Ducks (don't care that they changed their name) best efforts to turn the game into a rugby scrum.

Here's the video of the hit:



The wings looked a little shaky/rusty in the third period, as it seemed like they spent most of the time trying to get the puck out of their own zone, but strong play in front of the net by the Wings ended up being the key to the game--not a real shock.

So after one game it seems like you have two teams with very different strategies.

The "Mighty" Goons goal is to whine to the media as much as possible in hopes of catching the ear of the officials. If you watched the broadcast last night, all you heard was how Carlyle kept complaining about how the Wings "steal faceoffs" and "interfere with goalies." I'm sure that we'll all be hearing it about how the Wing's only won game 1 because they were cheating.

Now typically, you here those kind of complaints when it comes playoff time, especially the whole Holmstrom-interferes-with-our-goalie-talk, but when you hear that kind of talk from a team of goons, a team that was one of the most penalized teams in hockey, it comes off a little bit hippocritical.

Game Summary:



Clearly the Red Wings strategy is to drive the puck at the net, and have the wingers screen the goalie even in breakaways (as evidenced by Lidstrom's 2nd goal). This comes as no surprise to anyone who has been watching them at all this year. The only difficulty I see for the Wings is that they have to figure out some way of making up for the loss of Rafalski, both on the offensive end and the defensive end.

Here's the Ericcson-Perry brawl