The Red Wings are reminding us why its so hard to repeat in hockey, the brutality of the regular season and playoffs is so taxing that no championship team has even made it out of the first round since, well, the Red Wings did (wining back to back 10 years ago). The injury bug has already reared its ugly face...taking Brian Rafalski out for most of the Anaheim series. Losing an all-star defenseman who is great on the powerplay and necessary on the penalty kill against a physical team like Anaheim could have spelled disaster.....depth won, wings won, and Rafalski came back.
But the injury bug never really went away. Lidstrom and Datsyuk both missed game 4 in chicago (a 6-1 wings win), and Osgood had to leave after two periods. Sure...not too many teams could loose a finalist for best defenseman (Lidstrom's seventh overall, and 4th in a row), a three-time stanley cup winning goalie, and a finalist for regular season MVP and still win a western conference finals road game. The Wing's depth helped them compensate for their losses and beat a chicago team that was dealing with their own injuries. But its less clear if the Wing'ss depth is enough to put away the series and win another cup. At this point the Wings have the talent to beat anybody, and I would say enough remaining talent to compensate for the injuries...but everyone in the D would just be a bit more comfortable if we were rolling with whole arsenal.
Osgood was fine at practice today, Lidstrom and Datsyuk didn't hit the ice.
"both teams played hard...good night and god bless"
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