Flippin' Awesome...Mostly.

The Red Wings avoided arbitration with center Valtteri Filppula (his hearing was scheduled for Friday), signing him to a 5 year, $15 million contract this afternoon. This is great news, as the Finn racked up 19 goals and 17 assists in 78 games last season and is only 24 years old. Filppula filed for arbitration at the beginning of the month after rumors began flying around that he might receive an offer sheet, which the Wings may have been hard-pressed to match, having only around $4 million in wiggle room at the time - a move that relieved many fans, confident that a deal would be reached, as it meant Fil would be sticking around one way or another, and was out of offer-sheet reach.

In and of itself, with no concern for where the deal puts the Wings with regard to the salary cap, the deal is a great one. Fil is expected to be a 30 goal scorer in the near future, and given his success on a line with Mikael Samuelsson and Johan Franzen, and the talent he's also shown playing with Pavel Datsyuk, who he may get time with next season if the Marian Hossa signing splits up Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, that's not unlikely. Of Filppula, Holland says,

"We love everything about him because he's a complete player with great character, and we think he can get even better. He plays hard, he plays hurt. He's got great speed and talent along with versatility because he can play left wing or centre.

The contract makes Filppula the highest-paid Red Wing forward after Datsyuk and Hossa, which shows how much faith the Wings are putting in the kid's potential. Given his performance last season, despite various slows in production throughout the year, and in the playoffs where he played through a groin injury, it seems the organization's expectations are well founded. After all, who remembers this goal? Pretty good for a kid who looks much too pretty to play hockey.

On the downside, Fil commanding $3 million pushes the Wings right up against the salary cap. The team has yet to resign defenseman Chris Chelios (whose deal was expected to wait until after Fil was resigned), forwards Darren McCarty and Aaron Downey (both of whom the Wings are now interested in signing only to two-way deals), and defense prospect Kyle Quincey - and this is where things start to get dicey. With only $977,667 left in cap space, the Wings will have to make a move before the season starts. The team will carry ten defensemen into the preseason, as Holland states that they're most likely not to make a trade until it is over, only one of whom is not required to clear waivers (Jon Ericsson).

The likeliest trade candidates, therefore, are recently resigned defensemen Andreas Lilja, Brett Lebda, and Quincey, once his contract has been settled. While none of these would be horrendous losses to the Wings, it would of course be nicer to keep them. Personally I find myself worrying over the future of Quincey, NPI's favorite Grand Rapids Griffin, given that despite his performance in the 06-07 playoffs, Ericsson has leapfrogged him as the number one defensive prospect in 07-08. Of the defensive logjam, Holland told the media,

"We'll have to make a decision based on the 23-man roster, the salary cap and age. We'll have to be prepared to trade some players. I would expect there would be interest in some of our players.''

Ominous words, and an even more ominous little letter 's' on the end of 'player' there - scary. You almost never want to see players moved, especially players with potential, but if Wings fans have learned anything through these past couple seasons, it should be to trust Ken Holland to make the right decision and get it done. Until he does, here's to painful waiting and hoping for the best - and congratulations to Val Filppula on signing a great contract and staying with a great team for the next five years.

Like a Fish Out of Water (Wings 5, Sharks 1)

Since the playoffs this past season the Sharks and the Wings have had this interesting brand of rivalry brewing, making for some really fun to watch, interesting, and generally close games. Tonight's mostly fit the bill on those first two points but missed the third by quite a bit.

The game started on a high note, as this afternoon Kris Draper signed a three-year contract extension that will wind up him up presumably retiring as a Red Wing. Considering his fourteen years of efforts and the start he's had to this season, I'm thrilled to see it.

Dominik Hasek was out with an "irritated hip", so Chris Osgood was in net, though he was slated to get the start tonight regardless. Jimmy Howard has been called up to back him up through the western Canada road trip, but Hasek will be traveling with the team as well, so hopefully it's only a minor setback. Osgood continued to look great tonight and had the crowd chanting his name.

Valtteri Filppula finally broke out, scoring not only the Wings' first goal of the game (a backhanded flip similar to his first NHL goal ever) but also added an assist to Andreas Lilja's goal, the second of the game. It was great not only to see him rack up some points, but also to listen to the announcers gush over him. At one point he lost his helmet and they went on about the fans getting a kick out of "watching that Finnish blonde hair in the wind". Later they referred to him as "Fine Finnish Filppula" - and on a more serious note, Mickey Redmond declared him the young Red Wing he thought was most likely remain with the team for a long time.

The Wings not only came out strong tonight, but also looked disciplined, taking far less penalties than they have been as of late. Aaron Downey was impressive again, in a similar vein, goading Rob Davison into instigating a fight - the Wings game recap proclaims that the two "threw more shots during their fight than San Jose managed to sent at the net through 40 minutes." Probably true, as the Sharks really started to deflate as the game progressed. At the beginning of the third, the Henrik Zetterberg/Pavel Datsyuk/Tomas Holmstrom line had more shots on net (9) than the entire Sharks roster (6).

Speaking of, Holmstrom scored the third game of the night, and Zetterberg continued his point streak, now at 11 games, by notching the fourth goal of the night. He would have had two, but the second was waived off, as Holmstrom who is currently the most penalized player in the league with 12 minors and 4 goals called off at his expense (enough to provoke the announcers to suggest the Holmstrom Hat Trick - a goal, an assist, and a goal called off). By that point in the game the Wings were clearly dominating and had so much momentum that it looked like most of the players on the ice were just laughing about the call-off. Datsyuk wasn't left out of the fun - the flashy Russian has apparently earned himself the moniker "Houdini", which he certainly proved tonight. His pass that set up Zetterberg's goal involved drawing three men to him and deking the puck around of them, and later on he slipped between Mike Grier and another Shark so quickly that the two actually bowled each other over while Datsyuk skated harmlessly away. Only the young Marc-Eduoard Vlasic, known as "Pickles", had any real luck holding him back, stopping what could have been a nice breakway for Datsyuk early on.

After the first four goals, the Sharks pulled goalie Evgeni Nabokov, whose evening did nothing to improve his already suffering stats against the Red Wings, and put in backup Dimitri Patzold who is, weirdly enough, from the exact same city as Nabokov. I only wish I were from a place named Kamenogorskorsk. The move did did little for the Sharks though, as Kirk Maltby scored on the Wings first shot against him.

The Sharks did manage to ruin the shut out when Alexei Semenov's shot from the point made it past Osgood, but it was the only success story for the Sharks all night. The Wings outshot them 39-11 and their goal differential is now an astonishing 138 - the highest in the league and the only in triple digits.

Other news...

• The Oilers took a win over the Stars last night with help from Ales Hemsky, who tallied two goals. I was at the bar catching the Sox game, but I received no less than five text messages about it - thanks you guys and everyone else! He also picked up the win for the team in the shootout despite actually losing control of the puck at the last second. When asked about it later, he swears he didn't do it on purpose and that while it was ugly, "I'll take it!" The game also marked Ladislav Smid's return to the NHL.

• Speaking of Oilers, or ex-Oilers, Ryan Smyth scored 23 seconds into overtime to win the game in Calgary for the Avalanche. The colors still look terribly wrong, but it's nice to see him back in Alberta.

• Ex-Wing Danny Markov finally signed a contract - with Dynamo Russia. It's believed to be a two year, $4 million contract with an out-clause for next summer, which is less than he might have been able to receive here in the states.

Duck Season Officially Open

WINGS CRUSH DUCKS 5-0
Series 2-1 in Wings' favor
(What on earth was I on when this said Sharks? Remind me not to post at 3am)

First off, is that Valtteri Filppula using one of those sticks that Datsyuk's stirred up so much noise about? I haven't noticed it in the games - has anyone else? It's too late for me to feel like looking up pictures and checking right now, but I couldn't help but see at least that he was carrying one in these celebration pictures tonight.

On to the game - that was the kind of thing you don't expect to see in the playoffs. Especially by the time you hit the WCF. In a beautiful 5-0 effort by Hasek and the Wings, we moved up 2-1 for the series and showed that we can not only take a beating, we can dish one out like the best of them.

The Wings' offensive effort was brilliant, especially compared to the past couple games where it would have really been nice to see a little more. Babcock shuffled the line around a bit (and also gave Tomas Kopecky a chance to play, after being out injured since December 19th) and it looks to have worked like a charm - not only that, but once again our potential for scoring depth made a great showing. Franzen broke out with the first goal, followed up with a nice shot by Homer - a wristshot and not the sort of goal we're used to seeing from him, which only made it more satisfying - a tip in in front of the net by Bertuzzi, another Holmstrom goal, and finally to top off the evening, my other rookie Filppula stepped up and knocked one in to bump us up to five. Not to mention the statistic when you factor in assists - of the 18 members of tonight's roster, 10 notched points.

The Ducks, on the other hand, couldn't seem to stay out of the box, which really hurt their offensive chances - I'll admit, Pronger raging at the referees made me a little bit happy.

Make that face all you want, Prongs, it didn't get you your pants back and it won't make the refs take pity on you either.

He and Baby Nieds took a really nasty shot at Holmstrom, knocking him down and sending him back to the lockerroom with two cuts on his forehead. It looked worrisome for a bit, but luckily Homer was back in the third period. I'm skeptical on the call - Niedermayer got a five minute penalty for boarding and a game misconduct, but Pronger, that jerkbag, walked away with nothing.

As for goaltending, Dominik Hasek was brilliant in net tonight, notching him yet another playoff shutout. He made several excellent stops and even using some of his patented wandering out of the net, successfully poking the puck away from a couple different Ducks. The announcers commented that he must have been getting bored - and rightfully so; the Ducks were outshot 13-2 in the second.

J.S. Giguere, on the other hand, looked a bit shaky at the beginning, and (much to my delight) was pulled in the second, allowing Ilya Bryzgalov another shot at playoff glory.

Sure they weren't as cute as Luongo and Sabourin, but what can you expect from Ducks.

Unfortunately, he let in the first shot that was taken on him (though to his credit I don't quite know how the Ducks let Valtteri Filppula get quite so far into the zone to begin with). He didn't look bad, however, which made me happy. Duck hatred I may have, but I really do have a soft spot for Bryz and I'm not the only one:

Me: Okay Ilya like, spins. when he gets back up and they're moving the puck away he just sort of makes little circles and it's really adorable.
Elly: Ilya does this cute shoulder roll thing....so cute.

And there's even a Facebook group dedicated to his Score interview. The poor guy, this must feel like flashbacks to last year's WCF - I can just picture him sitting there in net, muttering to himself about closing the door. (To note, I really wish there were more Knob Hockey happening this year).

Now we just have to wait and see if the Wings can keep this up again in Anaheim Thursday - I have faith!

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Speaking of goalies I have odd attachments to, tomorrow could be Ty Conklin's last game of the season - by the looks of things, the poor guy isn't even getting to suit up and stop some pucks during practice over in Buffalo.

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Having finally been home for a playoff game, I took a bunch of pictures and was finally able to have something to submit to the Japers' Rink View From Your Playoff Seats project - they were nice enough to feature my favorite on their page, so I wanted to take a minute to pimp the project in general for anyone who hasn't heard about it yet.

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Finally in a quick Tigers update just because this is getting called our biggest win yet and I can't help but be happy over it, the boys took on the Red Sox in Boston tonight and upset them 7-2. Verlander had a strong evening, pitching for 7 2/3 innings and and my boy Magglio Ordonez lit up the stadium with a home run that brought in three. Go Tigers!