Such a great night, and such a nice long recap. Then, trying to fact-check ONE (!) final thing, I accidentally click a bookmark on my toolbar and get sent to a new page. Unfortunately, the new blog doesn't have my much-needed idiot filter (aka auto-save), so when I click off the page, I lose everything. I'm so heart-broken that you're just going to have to deal with bullet form of the points I wanted to bring up. Sorry. Note to self: start drafting posts in Word or something.

• It was a full week in between goals for Detroit that a) counted and b) weren't scored by Drew Miller. The win is just the cherry on top of that.
• Wings were lazy in the first, but hats off to the Abdelkader line for being the only line who looked like they wanted to score. May was great (and somehow ended up on Datsyuk's wing -- I was convinced Babcock did not want to win), but Abdelkader really took his game to a new level tonight.
• It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Darren Helm was upset with how snake-bitten he is, but a professional hockey player has got have a better backhand than Helm did in the third. To make matters worse, he basically fired the rebound straight up in the air, still staring at an open net. Kris Draper was heard saying, "maybe I'm not such a bad finisher after all," and Todd Bertuzzi said "what was that all about?"
• Anyone surprised by Bertuzzi's shootout move sorely disappoints me. That's patented, vintage Bertuzzi. He burned Detroit on that at least five times while he was a Canuck. I've probably seen him score on that two dozen times in his career. It's his bread and butter. Props to him for having a much better effort than he'd had recently, and for making the most of (what I hope will be) a rare shootout opportunity.
• Howard was huge tonight. And shockingly, now that he's got a few under his belt, he's actually a competent shootout goalie. Even though it's a recipe for disaster, I wonder if the Wings would ever consider putting him in cold over Osgood for a shootout. I'm a big Osgood fan, but he's seems to struggle in the shootout, and really any non-playoff breakaway situation.
• Barely noticed Ville Leino. I said I wouldn't miss Hudler because I expected Leino would put up points. He's not a good enough all-around player to not put up points. Patience is running thin.
• Speaking of hockey players who don't really play hockey, six Red Wings played more minutes individually than Meech/Lebda did combined. That's sad. Makes you wonder what Detroit's plan is with Kindl. What better time than now to give him a fwe games, given that Kronwall's a month away and Lilja's breakthrough didn't really change
  
• What was lost in all my whining about Detroit's losing and having goals called back was that Jonathan Ericsson is playing really solid hockey now, virtually mistake-free of the past few weeks. He played a team-high 28:20 tonight. The fact that you probably didn't know that means he's keeping it simple and making his minutes count. To put that into perspective, only five times all season he played more than 20 minutes, and he was near 30 tonight. Let's hope he was just a slow starter.
• This win was big for two reasons. First, Hossa's back in Chicago and they were red hot to begin with. If Detroit doesn't start winning now, kiss the division goodbye. But in the short-term, a regulation loss for Detroit would have given them sole possession of the Central's cellar. Detroit's not a team that's going to sulk over their position in the standings, but that distinction definitely wouldn't help their confidence. Good for them for getting a little breathing room.

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