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.
Dear NBC and NHL:I'll begin with a simple question. Do either of you actually like hockey? I think I can answer for NBC (a.k.a. "Nothing But Conan"), because it is clear the network would rather break out in a deadly skin rash than show the Stanley Cup finals on a weeknight.
There was the puck, just sitting there, after all that, after all the blood and guts spilled on the night, after the exhausting 45 previous shots, after the Blackhawks' tying goal that forced overtime, after the banging and swiping and pushing and groaning on every Detroit puck Chicago's Cristobal Huet somehow managed to repel - heck, he stopped the last shot of regulation by flipping up his leg while lying on his stomach! - after all that, are you kidding? The puck just there? Inches from the goal? An open net? All Darren Helm had to do was swing?
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.
