Scores and analysis as of 5/10

Jason Bedard

 

            The Western Conference Finals began last Thursday resulting in a 4-1 victory by Detroit.  The game was a lot closer the score shows.  Dallas was in the game except they made careless mistakes that resulted in a big loss.  They face-off again on Saturday and hopefully the Stars can redeem themselves.

           

            As the puck dropped in Detroit Thursday night the top seeded Wings immediately went to work as usual.  There is a reason why they are the best in the league and if you give them anything they will capitalize on every chance they get.  That is exactly what the Dallas Stars did in Game 1.  The Stars had a total of seven penalties which cost them big time and pretty much lost them the game.  Three out of the four goals Detroit scored were a power-play goal that says something.  It shows that the Stars need to stay out of the box and not give the Detroit anything if they want to keep these games close.  It was Detroit all game right from the beginning.  Within the first five minutes of the game Brian Rafalski put the puck behind goaltender Marty Turco.  Then later on that period on the power-play again Johan Franzen scored and out the Wings up 2-0 going into the first intermission.

            It was pretty much the same story in the second period of play as well.  Thomas Holdstrom scored early in the period on another power-play.  Not many people realized this but Captain Nickolas Lindstrom had two great assists in this game one on the first goal and one on the third goal.  Lindstrom is a great captain not only does he score goals but he is also capable of making his team better by the many assists he got did in Game 1 and forget the fact that he is the leader of the best team in the NHL.  The rest of the scoring came late in the period one from Valtteri Filppula and the other from Brendan Morrow from Dallas.  Something for Detroit to notice was the goals weren’t scored from their super-stars Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterburg, other players are starting to step up and contribute which is really good to see if you are a Wings fan.  The third period was uneventful the only exciting events were a few penalties.

            Watching the game I noticed that Dallas was skating with Detroit they were just shooting themselves in the foot by getting all those penalties.  No doubt in my mind Dallas could win a few games in this series if they play smart and keep themselves out of the box.  Also it was good to see that the Stars never gave up, the last goal that was scored in that game was by Brendan Morrow with less than three minutes to go in the second period.  This goal also shows that they can score against the Wings maybe with a little momentum shift and the home crowd behind them something will happen.  Towards the end of the game there was a lot of rough and chippy play.  Meaning I don’t think this series will end very pretty.  My prediction is the Wings will win this series in the end but it will be closer than the first game showed.