Johnson came in in a planned relief stint midway through the game to give Fleury a rest and get some ice time for Brent. He promptly gave up the tying goal, as Fleury left with a 2-1 lead.

I've heard the same thing. To be honest the Wings have some good young D-men coming up. Quincy was a good pickup but if Stewy leaves they'll need another top 4 D-man to replace him. If Lidstrom retires they'll need two. IMO Lidstrom will be back for one more year unless the Wings hoist the cup this year. Hopefully the Stuart situation will be resolved so we only need to replace on top 4 D-man at a time.

I agree, looked intentional on replay. Live, not so much, but in the replay you can see him change the angle of his leg.

:-):-)

Holy horse shoe up the a$% for Edmonton. 3 in a row!

If they can get some veteran D-man help and a good goalie, they should be in the mix soon.

Yeah wow rolls eyes. Guess they will just keep getting number one picks. There should be a limit it seems.


Geeked for the start tonight. I think the two nasty first round series are going to be pens philly and kings canucks. Pens Philly is getting the pub for the potential, but I think Kings Canucks could be much worse.

Kings a dirty team and the canucks have been known to bite, pull hair, (cant pass the oportunity to mention) dive, and love to do $hit after the whistle. I think this series could get very nasty. The Kings have no problem boarding star players. In fact I will be shocked if they dont board a canuck in this series given their recent play. Hopefully the sisters:-) have learned dont turn into the boards when they see someone coming like in the past. I think the Canucks take the series but not without some injuries.

A lot of people saying Hawks over Yotes and I think they have the skill advantage if everyone shows up. Problem is solving Smith.

Preds I think can take the wings. I give them the goalie andvantage. Both teams are skillbut the preds speed I say wins.

Looking at this first round I have no ability to pick teams without prejudice. So I'm making no picks other than the Wings in 6 and Jimmy Howard stands on his head :-)

Oh and the Caps in 7 because that is my playoff team in that fantasy hockey playoff pool. Holtby for Conn Smythe trophy (for as long as the Wings win the cup though :-))

Pretty sure there is, I seem to recall reading no team can select 1st in 4 consecutive drafts but I can't find that reference so I might be imagining it.

I don't really see Vancouver-LA becoming a dirty series with lots of injuries. I think both teams are smart enough to realize that either of their potential opponents in the 2nd round are going to be very tough teams to face and I think you'll see that prevent a lot of stupidity for fear of injury hurting you in the future. I'm expecting to see a pretty boring and very defensive series.

Funny, everyone on NHL on XM is picking the Yotes. I don't see it.

Everyone there (14 of 16) is picking Nashville over Detroit. I think the Wings will be in it, and I pick them to win it.

Sharks-Blues could be the big upset. Elliott is day-to-day, I am not sold on Halak, and the Sharks have been to the dance before.

I pick the Canucks to beat Quick and LA, but would love to be wrong.

I can see why a lot would pick the Yotes Tom. The goalie is red red hot. They have balanced scoring. As I said earlier they have the goalie advantage. If he steals a game or two then thats likely the series. I want the Hawks though so I cant pick against them.

As for Wings Preds they are really deep with recent moves and they have the goalie advantage. I think Peca steals a couple games and the series.

The Sharks Blues is tough if they can split the first two the blues youth and inexperience I think creeps in and sticks get gripped. As a whole though I just dont see the Sharks getting it done. While I know they stepped up at the end of the season when they had two, I just have seen them go ice cold to often this year.

Geoff I really think you are hoping it doesnt get nasty, but I am hoping it does :-) and can see it. You have to look at both teams recent history. I cant see it not happening looking at last years playoffs and this season.

Berry Effing Melrose just predicted my Canucks will get beat by LA, suck it BM!

No quit in the Flyers tonight. Gotta love playoff hockey!

Truer words have never been spoken! GO FLYERS!

Wow... I am spent and it's only game 1.:-)

Great Pens-Flyers game, a lot of character shown by Philly.

Two lucky goals by the Preds to beat the Wings 3-2, I am still not convinced.

Pathetic showing by the Canucks as a team, but at least Luongo was brilliant. Kings definitely deserved that win, played like they wanted it much more. Hopefully the league has a chat with the ref's about making calls when they're out of position, 2 very blatant errors tonite between the Briere offside and Kesler hand pass.

That Briere offsides was brutal.

The Dustins (Penner and Brown) are my heroes of the day. :-)

Bitz gets a game I think. Replay shows targeted head with elbow.
Was a chippy game. I expect more in game two.

That offsides call was bad in the philly game.

I agree Preds goals two were odd, but the Preds speed created the first odd goal. Won the race and got the lucky redirect. Did not like Weber slamming Zs head into the glass at end of game. Wonder if anything will come out of that.

Ya, there was no question about that call. The Kesler hand pass was kind of understandable but having two badly missed calls on the first night of the playoffs should be enough for the league to have a quiet word with all the officials.

Carter's soccer redirection to Penner was unreal.

Bitz should get a game for that hit, but he may get away with time served given that the LA player was so low Bitz would have had to lift his elbow to avoid him.

That was a bad call, no doubt.

Another non-call in that game that I didn't hear a very good explanation of was why the icing was waved off that ultimately led to the Pens third goal. My market had our local announcers (NBC Sports was blacked out). Did the NBC guys explain what happened with that?

He's pridicted the Wings would lose all 4 cup finals they've won recently: 97, 98, 2002, 2008. Wings won those series': 4-0, 4-0, 4-1, and 4-2 respectively. He's a DB. No offense Tom.