Wings tie Wild 1-1

It was a goaltending battle between Hasek and Roloson which featured a Pavel Datsyuk penalty shot, and many huge scoring chances. The Wings played a pretty good game against the Wild, especially considering it was the second game in two nights. Coach Dave Lewis had pretty much decided that Yzerman would sit out to rest his knee, but the Captain decided that the team needed him with all the holes in the lineup already due to injuries. So he wrote himself into the lineup, and came up big with just under 8 minutes left in the 3rd, tying the game at 1 and picking up his team-leading ninth goal. Thus far, Yzerman has clearly been the team MVP this season, picking up the slack when his teammates seem sluggish. His consistent play has been one of the few guarentees for the Wings in this stretch of the season. When Pavel Datsyuk drew the penalty shot, all Wings fans thought of his breakaway goal on Turco that featured an incredible puck-on-a-string fake right. Unfortunately, all Wings fans AND Roloson thought of this move, because when Datsyuk tried it again in his penalty shot, Roloson seemed like he was almost waiting at the point where Pavel shot it. Dave Lewis said

"The problem with that move is that every goaltender in North America saw it more than once. Pavel will have to come up with something else."

The Wings are now in a good position to take command of the West, just after it seemed like they were fighting for 8th seed status. It's certainly been an odd start of the 2003-2004 season though, with new teams leading each division, and super-powers like the Avs and Wings and Ottawa temporarily shell-shocked. The key word is temporarily though, because this cannot last. I sense the Wings breaking out of this funk, and I can't see the Avs and Ottawa not doing the same certain or later.