A shortened bench

The Freep reports that the five Swedish Wings will be participating in celebrations in Stockholm and will not be back in time for tomorrow night's game in San Jose. They will be back for the Anaheim game the following night, however. Filling in for Samuelsson, Lidstrom, Kronwall, Zetterberg and Holmstrom will be Jamie Rivers, Mark Mowers, Brett Lebda and Tomas Kopecky, who was called up from Grand Rapids. They're all capable players but they can't quite fill the holes left by the Swedes. According to A2Y, all of the other Olympian Red Wings have returned, except Pavel Datsyuk, who is having some issues relating to travel (and so, I've read, is Evgeni Nabokov, the Sharks' goalie.) TSN reports that players who have not returned could face loss in pay for the number of days they are gone. The NHL expects all Olympians to return no later than tonight and have not made any allowances for the Swedish players, despite the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation reportedly making a special request for an exception. I don't mind our guys going to a celebration in Stockholm; they earned the right to kick back a little bit and bask in their nation's glory. Still, tomorrow's game against the Sharks isn't a blow-off match and the Wings may be hard pressed to pull out a win with such a depleted roster. I expect the Swedes to be ready to play (they have nothing if they don't have momentum now) when they get back because this is the most important stretch of the season. Let's hope the final standings don't come down to two points. The point will be moot if the Swede-less Wings just win tomorrow night but that remains to be seen. Maybe we ought to blame the security at the Games for keeping those guys away. Helene St. James reports that the team wanted to hop right on the plane and fly to Stockholm last night but the airport was closed for security reasons and so it didn't work out. Also, IwoCPO has a depressing outlook on what may be the results of Sweden's triumph here. And, I just noticed mLive.com has a more standard Red Wings blog to complement Ansar Khan's blog-like thing. Looks like it's been around for a few months. Welcome anyway, George Malik!