Czarnik Is Good

A few quick things as we head into the weekend:

Max Pacioretty was invited to the NHL Draft Combine.

The USA U-17 team swept Alpena in the NAHL playoffs. Robbie Czarnik currently leads the NAHL playoffs with 5 goals and 6 points. Our other commit on the team, David Wohlberg is second with 5 points.

Detroit Bad Boys points out that the Pistons have recalled Amir Johnson to the big club. Given that the Pistons have clinched the East's #1 seed, seems reasonable that Amir is coming up to play in the Show, and not ride the pine. He's been extremely impressive in his limited minutes thusfar (When he got extended playing time he scored like 19 points and didn't miss a shot). As someone who has been on the Amir Johnson bandwagon going all the way back to his first Summer League game as a Piston, I'm geeked.

Bruce MacLeod of the Macomb Daily has a Red Wings blog now. He's got some great stuff in there. Did you know that game one against the Flames brought about Detroit's biggest "hit" total of the season? Do you know what percentage of faceoffs each of our centers has won against Calgary's centers over the last two seasons? This is the stuff that people like me want to know during the playoffs. Love it!

Great performance by the Wings yesterday. It's so huge that Pavel Datsyuk got that goal out of the way early on. Hopefully now that that monkey is off his back, he'll play like we know he can. Kipper played outstanding--the Wings really could've scored 7 or 8 in that game--but Hasek was equally good, just with less shots against him. Dom gives this team a chance.

Very impressive performance...it was especially nice to see the Wings hitting like that, even without Bertuzzi in the lineup. This isn't the same Calgary team from 2004. I can't believe how piss-poor they played defensively.

The other thing that was great to see was Zetterberg looking like he hasn't missed a beat, despite missing 19 straight games. Couldn't even tell he had been gone. That's huge for our chances.

I'm not very happy with the NHL right now. A couple of weeks ago, I shelled out $50 for the remainder of the season + playoffs of Center Ice. Then what happens? Versus picks up every damn Detroit game so Center Ice can't show it. They aren't showing a single Red Wings playoff game according to the schedule. Unbelievable. So I had to upgrade my dish package to the highest one, just so I can get the Wings games on Versus that I should've be getting on Center Ice.