The Curse of 10 (Stars 3, Wings 1)

How many times in the past few years have the Wings gotten to a 9 game winning streak? And yet 10 always seems to be inexplicably out of our reach. So maybe we should have expected it.

In general, the Stars outplayed the Red Wings last night. They the game for good reason - unfortunately for them there's going to be no one talking about the effort they finally mustered up and the hockey they finally got it in their heads to play. Because everyone is talking about Tomas' Holmstrom's rear end.

In an absolute debacle of a call, Kelly Sutherland, the center ice official, waved off a Pavel Datsyuk goal - which would have been the first of the game - on an interference call, claiming that Holmstrom was in the crease.

You tell me where the interference is.

When pressed to explain, the league conceded that his skates were outside of the blue paint, but that the call had been made because his backside was "hanging over the crease." ("I don't think that's a rule," says Henrik Zetterberg. Me either.) As if that weren't bad enough, the other excuse floating around is that it was a makeup call for a missed interference call on Homer in Game 1. Completely embarrassing. The idea of a perfectly legit goal being called off as basically an "oops we got it wrong" is disgusting. (Matt Saler [On the Wings] has a great post about this.) Congratulations, NHL, after making me think you had it in you to do something right (the fines assessed to Mike Ribeiro and Chris Osgood after Game 2) you go and spoil it with nonsense like this.

It's true you can't say that goal was the gamebreaker, but scoring the first goal in four straight games is quite the demoralizer. The Dallas Stars were playing great hockey last night, but there's no doubt in my mind that that call energized them, that they took something from it and went on to play better hockey, while it seemed to stick with the Wings in a much more negative manner. In some ways you can't blame them, but in others, things like this happen, and you can't use it as an excuse for not playing up to the necessary level.

Still, I have to say, most of last night's game is summed up by Datsyuk's reaction to his goal being waved off - "That's bullshit." (How great is his reaction there, actually? Not just the words, but the exasperated "whatever" screw-you hand wave? You can almost see him rolling his eyes despite the grainy Youtube quality. Pavel knows how inane that call was.)

And that's really unfortunate, because the Stars did play the better game, and they should be recognized for it - it's very unfortunate that they (hopefully!) won't have a win that isn't sullied by shoddy officiating and bush league "makeup" calls.

Podcasting again!

I once again guested on Finny (Girl with a Puck) and Connie's (A Queen Among Kings) "I'm Not a Puck Bunny" podcast, with Sherry (Scarlett Ice) and Cat (Untypical Girls). This week we spent a good portion of the time talking about this Dallas/Detroit series with reactions from both sides as well as the recent Fabian Brunnstrom sweepstakes, so plenty of things of interest for Detroit fans! As always you can check out this and every week's episode at http://imnotapuckbunny.podbean.com.