The Fifth Liners

Today the Olympic Ice Hockey rosters for the upcoming Sochi 2014 games have been officially confirmed, after much speculation surrounding them there has been some interesting selections made and no doubt this will spark furious debate among hockey fans, let's take a look at the main contenders. Canada  The 25 man Canadian squad certainly isn't lacking in depth, and this year they will be the team to beat and 11 of 2010 Gold Medal team will make a return journey! The defensive selection is one I highly commend as they have mixed youth of players like PK Subban along with defensive quality like Jay Bouwmeester. The St Louis pairing of JB along with Pietrangelo could well be a wise selection! Offensively the star count is ridiculously high with Crosby, Toews, Perry, Stamkos and Kunitz among others being featured and Canada will rely on this goal power to see them through! There are few surprise selections with Marc-Andre Fleury missing out in favour of Roberto Luongo and the ...

Some games are pretty, some are boring, and some are just tight. This was definitely the latter. The past few weeks have been tough for Detroit. Since defeating the Colorado Avalanche way back on the 17th, the team has lost at the hands (gloves?) of the Coyotes, Sharks, Senators and Rangers. Taking two overtime points from a possible eight. The Vancouver Canucks on the other hand have won four of their last five games, and despite a close loss to Washington are performing well under new coach John Tortorella.  Detroit's Luke Glendening is fast becoming a regular in the Wings' squad, what with the team's inability to remain injury free. Meanwhile Johan Franzen and Mikael Samuelsson were scratched for the game. The tight first period brought more penalties than goals, Vancouver's Dan Hamhuis was given a minor for holding Niklas Kronwall. Kronwall returned the favour five minutes later and was boxed for slashing Hamhuis. Vancouver was the first team to break...

Musings, observations and general stuff.  Daniel Alfredsson seems to have found his happy place, the veteran forward picked up his first Detroit goal this week and has also grabbed plenty of assists. Alfredsson has nine points so far. Only Datsyuk and Zetterberg have more. Niklas Kronwall's concussion is a real concern. Widely regarded as the cornerstone of the Red Wings' PK unit, it's hard to tell who will step up if he doesn't return soon. Detroit's blueliners haven't been spectacular recently but backup goalie Jonas Gustavsson is playing out of his skin. Last season may have been forgettable for Gustavsson but so far he's .922 for the season. Jimmy Howard is expected back for tonight's game against Phoenix. The goalie has been sat out since bruising his hand in the warm up against Boston.  Darren Helm is expected to be back soon, which is probably bad news for Luke Glendening who was brought up from the Calder Cup winning Grand Ra...

The Colorado Avalanche have been on fire recently. So far this season Patrick Roy's men have won all six of their games. Mostly down to Semyon Varlamov's heroics between the posts. The Detroit Red Wings are also in a good place. Having got over their slightly shaky start, the team is settling in to life with Daniel Alfredsson and life without Valtteri Filppula. Expectations for the Red Wings' visit to the Pepsi Center were high for both teams. Mike Babcock's men are desperate not to repeat last season's chase for a playoff spot while the Avs need to prove that they're serious contenders. The Avalanche got off to a bad start when Cody McLeod was assessed a game misconduct and a boarding major penalty after his push on Niklas Kronwall left the big Swede with concussion and cuts. Kronwall was stretchered off the ice but not taken to hospital. The resulting powerplay allowed Henrik Zetterberg to set up Johan Franzen who then put the first goal on th...

At the start of the fifth game of the season, the Detroit Red Wings were 2/4 and hadn't scored a single powerplay goal. Sure they'd done pretty well on the penalty kill, fending off some serious five on three attacks, but after ten attempts, had not been able to take man advantage and grab some goals. That changed last night when the Red Wings welcomed the Struggling Philadelphia Flyers to the Joe Louis Arena.  Detroit didn't take long to open the scoring when Todd Bertuzzi , promoted to the first line, scored a great wrap-around after Michael Raffl went to the box for hooking. Raffl had been called up to deal with the Flyers' injury woes. The second period brought more goals and more penalties. Luke Schenn 's trip to the box allowed Niklas Kronwall the chance to remind us he's not just there to flatten the opposition. The big Swede opened his scoring account for the season.  Erik Gustafsson immediately decided to emulate his fellow countryman ...

My brain melted a little bit yesterday when I saw the news that Daniel Alfredsson had left the Ottawa Senators to move to the Detroit Red Wings . We've discussed on this  here blog  what the Gothenburg native would do when his contract came to an end. Although at the time the speculation was that he'd probably retire. Of course as part of the Detroit faithful, I'm pleased with the signing, although there are echoes of Mike Modano's final NHL season. While Modano lifted the Stanley Cup with the Dallas Stars, Alfredsson has never lifted the cup and despite playing over 1000 games with the Sens, he's only been to the final once.  Hence why he's made the move to the Joe instead of hanging up his skates for good. Alfredsson wants his shot at getting his name engraved on Lord Stanley's Cup. The 1 year deal is worth 5.5 million. Like Daniel Alfredsson, Stephen Weiss  has also spent his whole NHL career at a single club. The 30 year old has been at t...

The Ottawa Senators might be starting the new season with a new captain. Daniel Alfredsson officially becomes a free agent on July fifth this year.  According to the Ottawa Sun, Alfredsson needs more time to decide if he's he's going to hang his skates up for the last time. The 40 year old right winger has been with the Sens since he was picked 133rd overall in the 1994 draft. 

The Pittsburgh Penguins have successfully seen off the Ottawa Senators to advance to the Eastern Conference final. Game three saw the only dip in the Pen's performance when Ottawa thoroughly outplayed Pittsburgh to take their first win of the series but Dan Bylsma was able to inspire his team to take two convincing wins. The first was on Wednesday when the Penguins came out of the game with the win after James Neal , Chris Kunitz, Jarome Iginla, Pascal Dupuis and Sidney Crosby all found the net. Milan Michalek , Kyle Turris and Daniel Alfredsson netted for the Senators but it was wasn't enough. The Pens finished the game winning 7-3. Last night the action shifted back to the Consul Energy Center for game five. Pittsburgh controlled the game with Brendan Morrow 's controversial goal opening the game. James Neal and Kris Letang then put the game at 3-0. Milan Michalek was on hand to grab a goal for the Sens but Evgeni Malkin and James Neal responded with ...

It took a double overtime period to give the Ottawa Senators a vital 2 - 1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins! This result has put them truly back in the hunt. At first it appeared this would be another straight forward game for the Pens as Tyler Kennedy put them in front during the first period. But thanks to the heroics of Ottawa goalie Craig Anderson and Pittsburgh stopper Tomas Vokoun any further scoring was prevented. But with only seconds remaining of the third period, Senators Captain Daniel Alfredsson slotted the puck past Vokoun to push the game to overtime! In overtime, the first period remained scoreless due to some more excellent goal-tending and it was until mid way through the second overtime period that Colin Greening scored to earn Ottawa victory in game 3 and break Pittsburgh's hearts! It appears will not be as straight forward a series as we expect and Pens should prepare for things to get tense! Mike's edit. Just watched the game and my first questio...