Time to find my good luck squirrel....

Chelsea died against Bordeaux. They tied 1-1. They just came out so flat and got themselves so many yellow cards. *wails* Stupid Chelsea pulled a Habs move and went to sleep! So now Chelsea has to win against... Cluj, I think they have to play next, and Bordeaux has to lose to Roma. There is no reason why that shouldnt happen.... right? Right. Poor Cech. He was the whole team for most of the game. And then Bordeaux gets a corner kick and Chelsea fall asleep and the ball goes in. *wails again* Liverpool won 1-0 against Marseille. I didn't see any of it because my stupid TV stations all decided to play the same game! How stupid is that? Anyway, I think Gerrard scored for Liverpool so at least that's that (okay, so I wanted Torres to score but I always want Torres to score).

Habs vs Red Wings tonight. This promises to be a disaster for the poor Habbies. I'm just hoping that they'll at least come out try their best instead of coming out and dying. I think I should go find my good luck squirrel now.... I named one of the squirrels that comes around my house Hab (what? He didn't look like an Andrei or an Alexei. His sister got named Carey *g*). Maybe I should find him and hope that he brings 'em good luck. Okay, so it didn't work in the playoffs (in his defense, he was just a baby at the time) and he's been shirking on his good luck charmish duties in the last few games but we shall see what happens! I just have to go looking around in all the trees now for him....

Later: Now do that again! Habs win 3-1 over Red Wings

I couldn't find the lucky squirrel but it turns out I didn't need him anyway. The Habs decided to surprise me by actually winning in regulation time over the Wings. I'm quite surprised by this whole outcome. Look, I know that there will be those who will say that the Detroit didn't come out with their best game and if they had then the score would probably be 5-0 in the Wings's favor. Fine. I accept that. Kind of. The Red Wings did indeed appear to come out somewhat flat tonight. But that is totally beside the point. The point is that for the first time in a long time the Habs actually looked like a team instead of a bunch of talented guys who all can't work together for some reason. On top of that they looked like a team that was ready to pull together and work really hard to not get blanked by the Wings. They had something to prove after that loss to the Islanders. And they proved their point: You snooze you lose. I mean that. I don't know what was going on with Detroit but if they were looking for a win after that little episode in Vancouver, they should have done better. I was really impressed with how the Habs did tonight. I seriously don't care if the Wings were the worst team in the league. What matters is how the Habs came out tonight and performed.

I was actually happy with how the first period went. 0-0 meant that the Habs hadn't been demolished by the Wings right away. I thought the Habs' defense looked pretty alive and perky (perky? I thought only Roger Federer could be perky!) tonight. Which is good. Especially when you're playing Detroit. Price made a really risky save as.... some Red Wing guy got an almost breakaway. Price skated way out of the net and pushed the puck away. Don't want to imagine what would have happened if that had gone awry.

Obviously the second period was fantastic. Do I care that two of the goals were helped in by the Wings themselves? Hardly. Goals like that - and worse! - happen. We should be happy that one of 'em was on the power-play. And that we actually got three. I was just sitting there amazed that they were actually able to keep the puck in Detroit's end for that long. Very nice.

We can pretty much forget about the third period but I'll pretend that the offense didn't do anything because they were more concerned about making sure that Detroit didn't score. Which they did actually... but at leas they were limited to one goal. It was a really nice goal by Franzen who outmanoeuverd O'Byrne and a couple of other players to get a shot past Price. Totally not O'Byrne's fault. Franzen is definitely one of Detroit's best players even if he gets over shadowed by people like Hossa and Zetterberg. And he showed everyone why tonight.

I was not impressed with the refs tonight. I thought they missed a lot of stuff on both sides. And no, I'm not just talking about Brad Stuart flattening Tanguay (I did say "both sides", yes?). There quite a bit of tripping by the Canadiens among other things and there was quite a bit of passing with the hand on both sides. At least Detroit has nice ice.

So now what? Well, unlike the last time they played really well and then promptly died, I'm just praying to the hockey gods that the Habs will keep this great display up and beat Washington (did I mention that Ovechkin got himself a hat-trick tonight? Seems he's woken up) and Buffalo (who beat the Bruins tonight).

Oh and Penguins beat the Islanders 5-3. While it sounds like the Penguins decimated their opponents they really only woke up in the middle of the third period to beat the Islanders. Someone should remind the Penguins that you are allowed to score earlier in the game.