If your Mother’s Day get-togethers were anything like mine, one member would bring up the Saturday night Red Wings game and immediately the anger would build in the room. Of course, most attendees likely stayed up to nearly 1 a.m. with the hopes of spending Sunday discussing their plans for Game Six.
For Red Wings fans, it will be tough to let the results settle based on the tremendous gap in penalties between the two teams. What happened on the ice is truly indescribable, now instead of a third straight Cup final appearance, the Wings will spend the summer asking questions and pondering their future.
For conspiracy theorists this was a field day. “Bettman wants Crosby to take on the big market Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Finals.” “More eyes are glued to television sets if a team is on a power play vs. 5-on-5 hockey.” “Bettman wants to see the Red Wings fail, especially after seeing his own Coyotes get beaten in the first round.”
The credit should truly be given to a better team that had a better series than the Red Wings. We should all remember that it was the Wings that were the no. 5 seed and the underdog in this series. They had been mere points from the bottom of the entire Western Conference around the season’s halfway point, and it took quite a bit for this older club to play deep into the spring, year-after-year.
With initial rumors swirling around Nicklas Lidstrom’s future with the team, the feeling is that there are many similarities to when Steve Yzerman officially retired from the team. Walking off the ice in Edmonton’s Rexall Place was a difficult sight. Red Wings fans hope that Nicklas changes his mind, especially after a series where all that went wrong – did for Lidstrom. He may not be a young, sharp defender, but Lidstrom can still hold his own for a team with a lot of potential returning in 2010-11.