How many members in your family, your close family, the family that comes to birthday parties or Christmas Eve celebrations? Ten? Twenty? I bet it's fewer than 40. How about your friends - your close friends, the ones who call when you're sick, the ones who share vacations? How many? I bet it's fewer than 40.How about your church, your synagogue, your mosque - people you know there, you shake hands with, you well-wish? Twenty? Thirty? Again, fewer than 40, right?
After every Red Wings' score, Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury has a habit of skating to the corner to try to get his anger out. Saturday night, there were a lot of quick trips. The Wings would score, Fleury would skate to the corner - and into a sea of Wings fans cheering and banging the glass. Finding no relief, he'd curl back to his net. He did this after the first, the second, the third and the fourth Detroit goals. Finally, after the fifth, he took a longer skate - all the way to his bench, clomping through the door, and headed down the tunnel, done for the night.
PITTSBURGH - Uh-oh. This is not good. I don't want to say signs are ominous, but if the Red Wings passed a fortune teller right now, they would hide their palms in their pockets. The stars came out for the Penguins on Thursday night, and it is officially no longer last year anymore. Last year, the Stanley Cup finals were never tied. Last year, the only team with a chance to win in six was the Wings. Last year, Sidney Crosby seemed a lot younger, and Evgeni Malkin seemed like just one man, instead of the five he looked like in Game 4 - here, there, everywhere.
There's a buzz that Pavel Datsyuk might return to the ice tonight. Good. He can bring an oxygen tank for Henrik Zetterberg.No one has felt Datsyuk's absence more than Zetterberg, who is left to be 1) the blanket over Sidney Crosby, 2) the magic man of playmaking, 3) an integral part of the power play and penalty kill and 4) the inspirational youthful leader in the locker room. After that, he cures world hunger.I'm surprised he hasn't changed it to Zzzzzzzzetterberg."Hey," he said, laughing Wednesday, "I'm just happy to get the ice time."
Once upon a time, General Motors stood strong and mighty, the world at its feet. Today, the world prevails, and GM is on its knees. Bankrupt. Can't pay its bills. The filing Monday was just a formalization of what we already knew, the way a coffin formalizes a funeral. But something we once believed in, looked up to, even nestled inside of, is gone today and will never be the same.
The two flashiest players in these Stanley Cup finals are conspicuous by their absence. But only one of them, Pavel Datsyuk, is in street clothes. The other one is actually wearing skates, although compared to the way he usually plays, you'd never know it.
"Are you keeping up with this Jon and Kate thing?" my colleague asked. No, I said. "Everyone's talking about it. It's huge!" Huge is not the same as important. "But it's a reality show!" Particularly true with reality shows. "You gotta watch! It's unbelievable!" No. Sadly. It's very believable. Reality TV has now done what we once feared robots would do. It has created its own world, with its own rules, and now is infecting the very society that created it.
That's the way the puckie bounces   around here.What? You never heard of the famous shoot-it-off-the-boards-and-let-it-trickle-off-the back-of-the-goaltender shot? We use it all the time in Detroit. None of us was surprised when Brad Stuart scored the first goal of the Stanley Cup finals with that old chestnut.What? You never heard of the shoot-it-off-the-boards-and-backhand-it-lightly-so-it-scrapes-off-the-goalie's-leg maneuver? Of course Johan Franzen scored the second goal that way. We have fifth-graders who know that move.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
