Winged Wheel Warriors Rack Up Another Road Kill

[HFNHL Red Wings]

While the Wings home record has been mediocre at 12-12-5, last nights 1-0 shutout over the Capitals improved the team’s road record to 19-7-4. That translates to a .700 road record and guarantees Detroit will receive it’s $3M GM Motor Company award.
Word out of Detroit is that team management may donate that money back to the city given the current crisis in the local economy.

Ironically the road victory resulted in Detroit leap frogging over Minnesota and Chicago in the standings to 4th place and positioning themselves for possible home ice (dis)advantage in the play-offs.

Much of the recent success has to be attributed to Sean Burke who improved his record with the Wings to 5-1-1 with last night’s shutout and has a respectable .911 save percentage.

Other game notes:
The lone goal scored in last night’s game from Chris Kunitz who was playing in his first ever HFNHL game having replaced the injured Gary Roberts

Darcy Verot hit the century mark last night … in penalty minutes.

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[Ohio Jones]

Congrats to the Wings on their road dominance this year! And glad I could help with the jump in the standings, thanks to a 2-1 overtime victory over Dryden's still tenacious Blackhawks, who have had my number most of the year.

Columbus marked a potential windfall last night as well, with goalie Martin Brodeur finally reaching .910 save percentage to go with a gaa of 2.13. Despite some mid-season waffling, Brodeur is still sponsored by Tim Horton's and Home Depot, which mean if he can keep his gaa at 2.20 or lower, and his save% at .910 or higher, the teams earns a whopping $6 million (minimum of 40 games played required).

I was momentarily tempted to bench Brodeur (who has 50 games played) for the remainder of the regular season to ensure we collected on those bonuses, but remembered we have two other bonuses to collect along the way, for attendance and home-ice advantage in the first round. Something tells me Marty has a role to play in us ensuring that we earn those other bonuses as well!

May be easier said than done, as I'm hosting the second part of our home-and-home with Chicago tongiht, and down the stretch have tough games against Detroit (4 more times!), Washington and St. Louis twice each, and singles against the Isles, Sabres and Devils in the East, and the Sharks, Wild and Blackhawks (not counting tonight) in the West.

That's 15 games against +.500 teams out of 23 remaining on my sched.

Hmm... maybe I should have backed out of Brodeur's endorsements after all...

 

[HFNHL Red Wings]

Well, if it's any consolation my Wings, the Blues and I think the Blackhawks (in other words all your Central division rivals) have similarly tough schedules down the home stretch.

I've got 13 games vs. +500 teams ...
4 vs. Jackets (2 home, 2 away)
3 vs. Blues (1 home, 2 away)
1 each vs Blackhawks, Ducks, Bruins, Flyers, Oilers, and Capitals (3 home, 3 away)

 

[Dr.Sens(e)]

wow, does our division ever get a similar schedule...

For the Blues, 14 games remain against .500+ clubs, with 11 of them against the three divison rivals:
Wings - 3 games
Jackets - 2 games
Hawks - 6 games (no joke!)
Caps - 2 game
Sharks - 1 game

 

[HFNHL Red Wings]

Hmm ... this doesn't bode well if the teams in the other diviions have easier sched's (I'll look later). We'll beat up on one another while they move up.

Douglas can you start Leighton in net for our 4 contests