Power outage: Wings beat Lightning, 3-0.

It's one of those times when I'm not sure how to begin. If you only saw the score, you'd think we'd be thrilled. Further, a couple of milestones were reached tonight: Jimmy Howard earned his first NHL shutout, and Mike Babcock earned his 300th career win.

But when Henrik Zetterberg went down on the ice during the first period, I knew that no matter what the outcome of the game would be, it might not necessarily matter in light of this shitty occurrence. Now we play the game we know so well, the waiting game, until we know for sure how serious the issue is and how long it will take until he returns. Sigh.

A few quick thoughts:

1. Because of the situation with Zetterberg, I didn't really feel like writing this post, but our team's performance tonight warranted recognition of their effort.

2. The three Wings' goals scored tonight were the three most beautiful plays we've seen from the team this season, especially the first goal by Drew Miller, who scored first against the team who let him go so recently. Revenge is sweet, and scoring a goal that fantastic is even sweeter. Todd Bertuzzi scored next on a magnificent pass from my boy Tomas Holmstrom, and Patrick Eaves scored the final goal of the game during a 4-on-4 situation after coming straight from the bench into play.

3. Ville Leino(!) had some great moments tonight, particularly in the first several minutes of the game. Alas, nothing came of it, so I don't particularly care. Score a goal or two, and we'll talk. (Yeah, yeah--I saw his fancy spinaround on the ice during the third period. It was gorgeous. Maybe he'd honor Finland with a gold in men's singles. I wonder how he feels about triple axels.)

4. Watching the three goals scored tonight, especially Miller's, was bittersweet because it made me think how spoiled we are as Wings fans; we used to see these kinds of plays so much more often.

5. Mattias Ohlund is dead to me. Yeah, I know it was a clean hit. Don't particularly care about that, either.

6. The penalty kill looked stellar tonight, once again. I mentioned this in my recap of the Coyotes' game, but it's worth a mention once again: Considering the shitty circumstances, it's easy to forget how much our penalty kill has improved over the end of last year's playoffs through the beginning of this season. This is something to feel good about, especially in light of all the problems we've faced this season.

7. Brian Rafalski's pass to Drew Miller, resulting in an assist on Miller's goal, was a thing of beauty. This kind of 100-foot pass is more of Lidstrom's or Osgood's thing, but Rafalski did it with ease.

8. Per Brian: It's a testament to our coach's ability how well we've been able to hold it together--especially tonight with our future captain and leading playmaker being taken out of the game while we only had a one-goal lead. In addition, I think the fact that the team has managed to stay afloat also says a lot about something we've known all along, but hasn't gotten tested nearly as much as it has this year, which is that the locker room vibe and chemistry our team has with one another has to be very, very strong and optimistic.

***

Update per FSD postgame: Mike Babcock says Zetterberg's injury is to his left shoulder, and he'll be getting an MRI tomorrow. Don't think we're going to top that tonight.

Lightning @ Wings tonight.

I know I referenced this in my post the other day, but I'm a huge fan of recycling my own lame jokes in an attempt to get people to validate my existence with their attention. Gear down...

Tonight, we're playing Gonads andthe Lightning:



You're welcome, Brian.

I'm not even going to pretend--I don't give a flying fuck about this team. At all. To put it into perspective:

Things I Care the Least About in My Life
1. Fidelity issues of famous athletes

2. Corona (seriously, who DRINKS that stuff?!)

3. Anything Joe Lieberman has to say

4. Any reality show that involves dancing

5. My bad reputation

6. Taking down Christmas decorations in my workspace any time before March

7. Aliens (sorry, Brian)

8. Being able to understand tip jars while sober

9. Tampa Bay Lightning

10. Any and all programming on Headline News

So there you have it, Tampa Bay G&L. You rank right between my inability to comprehend the fine art of a really kickass drunken activity and the trainwreck that is Nancy Grace. You should feel pretty pumped about that.

Thoughts I Will Inevitably Have During the Game
1. The name "Antero Nittymaki" will make me think of sushi, and I will want some, stat. I kinda want some now, and it's 10:00 in the morning. Sigh. It's going to be a loooong day.

2. The name "Martin St. Louis" will make me wonder what I always do when I see a last name involving "St.", which is, "Does he count the 'S' in 'St.', the 'L' in 'Louis', or both letters in his initials?" I wonder what it's like to have more than three initials. One of my suitemates in my first year of college was a girl who--no joke--had three middle names and a hyphenated last name, one of which involved a "D" and an apostrophe and then the rest of the name, like "D'Angelo". So, in actuality, this girl's initials were E.C.R.E.D.A.D. Insanity.

3. Why doesn't Vincent Lecavalier play for a better team?

4. Alex Tanguay does not, does not, does not equal Alex Tangueray.

5. Mattias Ohlund has one of my current favorite names in hockey, but only because of that bombass umlaut over the "O".

6. I'm really happy we took Drew Miller off their hands.

Let's. Go. Wings.

***

Before we get to the item that's really the heart and soul of all TSO game previews, I want to give you all a reminder that if we can convince a certain someone to release a certain video that a certain me has in her possession, then we could be watching a video of someone near and dear to our hearts. Just saying.

Enjoy: