Dear Winging It In Slumtown, maybe next time you're going to write a smug, brother-in-arms piece to the Blackhawks fans and talk about how you two should rub your dicks together and talk about how you're both better than the Blues, you might want to wait until after the game is played.
Just some advice from us to you.
And while I'm sure you guys are taking solace in how your players didn't goon it up and start a bunch of post-whistle scrums or resort to cheap-shotting the Blues' goalie, I'd just like to remind you to watch the replay of the game: your little angels in red did more than a fair share of the meaningless goonery and scrum-starting.
Apropos of Detroit, let's wrap this up with bullets:
- So, Brian Elliott is the Blues starter. Let's agree to not say it too loudly, because the competition is still driving Jaroslav Halak to play as hard as he can, but really, come on. Elliott is now 11-2-0 on the season. His GAA is 1.56 and his save percentage is 94.4%. He makes all the saves he's supposed to make and a lot of saves he's not supposed to make. He's got successive starts against Chicago and Detroit and the good money says Halak starts against the struggling Ducks and Elliott goes against the better Sharks on Saturday.
- Referees tend to suck both ways and I usually think that anyone who thinks their team gets screwed over by refs more than any other team is more of a homer than even me, but on Saturday we all felt like we got jobbed by the refs, especially on the Carcillo third-man-in non-ejection and Jonny Toes non-roughing. Well, so does Kerry Fraser. Tonight, I have no idea how David Perron gets a goalie interference and Jimmy-Jam Howard gets nothing for his pouncing on Perron.
- Patrik Berglund's goal? Awesome. Let's hope it is also confidence-inspiring:
- Alexander Steen's goal? For him, NBD:
- Finally, the Blues got the win because they did what they do when they are at their best: they played with speed, moved the puck, possessed the puck and played tenacious defense, especially against the Wings' best offensive players. It's still not an every shift, every game mentality for this team yet, but Hitchcock's influence is there. When it becomes routine, the Blues will be a threat to win every night.
I'll leave the comments to you all to point out the other highlights and to the Red Wing fans who will surely show up to troll the comments. Hopefully, we'll get another one like the Blackhawk fan who showed up to talk trash, got banned, begged to be unbanned and then went to the Hawks site to say what a terrible site this one is. Oh, Chicago, you make the internet what we all hate.
Ducks on Thursday, Let's Go Blues.