Hang me out to dry like some panties on a whore here!

I went out to the bar with some friends to catch the game tonight - let's just say my couple beers beforehand weren't enough. About partway through the first I wanted to make a drinking game wherein the only rule was a drink every time the referees made a terrible phantom call. Alas, I had to drive us all home, and if I'd really gone with that plan I probably wouldn't have been able to remove my car from its horrible parallel park job at all - and my wallet might have suffered a pretty good deal as well. So instead, I ordered asiago cheese dip with sun-dried tomatoes and artichokes and ate a chip every time the game made me want to cry. I think I gained five pounds (but my liver's saying thank you).

I imagine this is Draper and Warrener working together to see what sort of interesting penalty calls the refs can come up with.

I suppose I should be worried right now - and I suppose at the very least my smugness after the first two games has been rubbed out. Maybe it's the fact that I think I caught the Plague somewhere in the past few days or maybe (worrisomely) I'm just no longer suprised by the Wings Senatorsian ability to choke in the playoffs, or maybe I'm just going a little crazy, but I am surprisingly unrattled by this very much becoming a series again.

Still, Jordi, it's time for a new ritual - shirtless Ethan Moreau was good fun, but he's failing us - and Roli certainly didn't work at all, boo. Maybe fantasizing really isn't the same as dreaming?

I think this conversation with my long-standing Devils (I know, I know, right? He's in Toronto, too; such bad taste.) fan friend sums the evening up:

Chapel: You've gotta be so pissed right now

Me: I am strangely numb.

Chapel: I mean, fucking Ottawa for one

Me: oh okay yeah that one I'm just pissed about

Chapel: Calgary though

Chapel: Scary

Scary indeed. So Saturday it is. What do we have going for us? They're not outplaying us in Calgary the painful way we outplayed them in Detroit. Even so, between now and game five, something needs to be done about our waning abilities (read: the way we seem to suck) on the PP - and the PK for that matter. I'm also with everyone else who's mentioned it in pulling Samuelsson for Hudler. We've lost both games since the kid's been scratched, and while he hasn't exactly been a huge force, nor is anyone really expecting him to be (I should hope not, at 5'9"), he gets in there and makes things happen - and two games without him hasn't made us look so great, eh?

Oh and Ilya Bryzgalov says ON THE NET FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. I think a large portion of this was looping in my brain for at least 30 minutes of tonight's game. It happened out loud at least once.

PS I stopped hating Langkow after the rational part of my brain forced me to realize he didn't hurt Hemmer on purpose - but the hate is back, and possibly festering. Speaking of players I hate though, Ron Maclean has earned my eternal love for tonight's crack at my Most Hated Player Derek Boogaard, and you can catch it over at Double Dion. And you most certainly should - oh, Calgary, you and your uh, livestock owning fans. (Does this mean I can blame him for tonight's game?)