I had a terrible day at work today. My newish computer, the one they gave me in August while taking away my prefectly fine and not-so-slow computer, died on me while I was rebooting because it was acting slow. Apparently I may have lost all my stuff on it as well, which stinks. (Backup? On that pitiful amount of space they give us over the server? My PSDs run up to 50mb each!) Luckily I'm well ahead on the project, so it's no problem for my schedule, but I spent my entire day doing nothing while the IT guy went running around trying to figure out what to do and how to fix it. Actually, I took a nap (which helped me kill time and paid off later for my own hockey game). Eventually he gave me a temporary computer, which didn't allow me to install anything and didn't even have the right photoshop on it. Didn't matter anyway since I couldn't install our homebrew programs since I was locked out. Sigh...
I bought myself a classic Doctor Who DVD to cheer myself up. Tomb of the Cybermen, all found and complete. I love Patrick Troughton. (Well, I loved Peter Davison more, but the 2nd Doc is so much fun). That sort of cheered me up.
But what really made my day was getting into my car and switching over the radio to CJAD later after hockey just in time to catch Super Pleky score on the powerplay! And the guys I played with said "oh it's probably 3-0 Detroit, with a goal by O'Byrne". Ha! Ye of little faith.
My prediction for this game was a 2-1 shootout victory, but I guess we can't measure teams via preseason eh? Actually, I figured since we've had so many shootouts, what's one more? Also Detroit looses more in overtime/shootout games. This is the 3rd regulation loss for Detroit EVER this season. And don't regard TSN's headline. Habs didn't steal this. They worked hard, they played hard, they played SMART and they played the Wings right into their own forecheck-less neutral zone variation trap. They also finally learned how to bounce pucks off defensemen for deflections into nets, which was how Fruit Punch opened the scoring by deflecting it off Lidstrom. ConkBlock was all over the place. But they didn't look tired. They looked like the usual hockey robots of Detroit. And hey, they said the Bruins would be tired when they beat the boys 6-1.
The downer was that Price lost out his shutout bid, but them's the brakes. O'Byrne, who rebounded after that terrible Monday with a good effort, pyloned up in the 3rd period after just handing it lightly to Franzen, who totally danced in and around him right up to a picture perfect shot. Needless to say, the kid was BENCHED for the rest of that one. Actually Carbo may want to keep him benched for every third period when we're trying to hold on to a suitable winning lead. Third period was shutdown defense time, where the boys had to deal with one and a half penalties at the start, and patiently awaited their opportunities. Oddly enough Habs outshot the Wings for the first two periods. Just the third combined the powerplays and defensive play, the shots tipped in Detroit's favor. (More +30 shots for Pricey)!
Casualties: Alex Tanguay from a 1st period hit by Brad Stuart. Said his neck was bugging him. Sounds like he got whiplashed. Kostopoulos took his spot on the Koivu/Higgins line. (Worked well enough for Master Higgins to get a goal)!
All in all, excellent effort. It was a step up from how they played against the Islanders, but with an better result. Wings have the number 1 powerplay, and didn't get anything on it. (Habs converted 1). Sergei is also back to hitting people with his gritty checks.
On my drive home, I smiled as I heard the Carey Chant and Go Habs Go pour out of my speakers. Habs fans are everywhere! We've invaded! To quote a certain tin man: "You will be like us!"
No comments:
Post a Comment