Leelanau Sports Guy’s World at sportspig.com

Paul Swaney, Stadium Journey Co-Founder sent me a link to his review of Wuerfel Park, home of the Traverse City Beach Bums. I’ve always enjoyed myself when attending a game and agree with much of what he says here. I wasn’t thrilled when they went to the turf, and it’s definitely a negative in Paul’s eyes. Share your thoughts in the comments.

Stadium Journey is…

a brand-new web venture. Our goal is to become a world-class community resource for sports fans, built around optimizing the experience of traveling to and attending live sporting events. We provide top-notch editorial content and reviews of sports stadiums. We rely on fans to provide tips and information about their favorite home stadium, or a first time impression. By sharing our knowledge, we can make every trip to the ballpark, stadium, or arena the very best it can be. Enjoy the journey!

I also found some other reviews of stadiums in our great state of Michigan, give them a read if you’re thinking of heading to a game!

Comerica Park – Detroit Tigers (My View: I love Comerica Park, but miss the closeness of old Tiger Stadium. You’re so far away from the action, but that’s how stadiums are built today.)

The Palace of Auburn Hills – Detroit Pistons (My View: I’ve had many great memories from games and concerts. Grant Hill vs. Michael Jordan was one of my favorites!)

Ford Field – Detroit Lions (My View: It looks great from the outside!)

Joe Louis Arena – Detroit Red Wings (I’ll always remember my first game at Joe Louis Arena. We were sitting in a suite of a friend’s uncle and we had a blast! Bob Probert had some monster hits and the Wings defeated the hated Chicago Blackhawks. I don’t remember the score, can’t find the ticket stub right now, but I know I didn’t leave the arena hungry!)

Photo courtesy of Stadium Journey

Detroit, MI… Chris Chelios, a three-time Stanley Cup champion and three-time Norris Trophy winning defenseman, announced today that he will retire from the National Hockey League after 26 seasons. Chelios played for the Montreal Canadiens, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings and Atlanta Thrashers during his illustrious NHL career. He retires having played the most games by a defenseman in NHL history (1,651) and as the only player in league history to play in over 400 games for three different teams (Chicago-664, Detroit-578, Montreal-402). http://www.inplaymagazine.com/blogs.php?blog=Detroit-Red-Wings

By AJ Petronzi
In Play on Facebook

The Detroit Red Wings gave up three quick goals before battling back to lose to the San Jose Sharks 4-3.

Joe Pavelski broke open the score sheet tonight for San Jose before Dany Heatley and Devin Setoguchi added to the lead within a minute and a half. Dan Cleary cut into that lead with Detroit’s first goal. In the second period, Johan Franzen cut the advantage to one before Pavelski scored his second of the night early in the third. Brian Rafalski scored right afterwards, but no one else netted a puck again.

The Red Wings got caught early in the first after giving up a powerplay goal and found themselves in a quick 3 goal disadvantage. Afterwards this game was mostly the Red Wings. Detroit dominated the face-off circle in the final two periods and Evgeni Nabokov didn’t look great after the first either. San Jose was without Patrick Marleau, one of their top three forwards, tonight. Marleau missed the game because of an illness.

In Play! Man of the Game: Joe Pavelski. Pavelski was the only Shark who seemed to never have a bad shift. He finished the night with three points but didn’t contribute to San Jose’s minus-5 team rating.

GAME ONE HIGHLIGHTS

By AJ Petronzi
In Play on Facebook

The Detroit Red Wings demolished the Phoenix Coyotes 6-1 to win their first game seven road game since 1964.

Pavel Datsyuk was the first on the score sheet tonight, but followed his rebound goal with a beautiful breakaway deke to score tonight’s second goal. Vernon Fiddler gave Phoenix some life, but Brad Stuart, Todd Bertuzzi and two goals from Nicklas Lidstrom put the Coyotes to bed in the desert.

Pavel Datsyuk has a history of embarrassing Ilya Bryzgalov on breakaways and shootouts, and tonight Bryzgalov just wasn’t the same after that goal. Adding to that was the pure domination that Detroit had over this game. Detroit now moves on to San Jose, the number one seed, and will likely play Thursday. Detroit is the only bottom four seed team in the Western Conference to continue to the next round.

In Play! Man of the Game: Pavel Datsyuk. Datsyuk had the first two goals tonight and several other chances. Had Datsyuk not scored on that breakaway goal, Detroit may have lost this game.

By AJ Petronzi
In Play Magazine

The Detroit Red Wings broke a 1-1 tie in the third period to go on to a 4-1 win and take a 3-2 lead in the series.

Drew Miller was first on the board tonight with a goal that was kicked in by Phoenix’s Vernon Fiddler. Ed Jovanovski tied the game during the second. In the third, Tomas Holmstrom and Pavel Datsyuk scored two quick goals before Henrik Zetterberg scored an empty netter to finish the night.

The Red Wings played 40 solid minutes of hockey tonight. They were outplayed during the second period but were bailed out by Jimmy Howard, who played a great game tonight. Detroit just dominated play in the first and third periods. Nicklas Lidstrom was on the ice for all four goals scored by Detroit. Today Lidstrom was not announced as a finalist for the Norris Trophy for just the second time since 1997.

In Play! Man of the Game: Pavel Datsyuk. Datsyuk won the face-off that lead to Holmstrom’s goal and netted his own shortly afterwards. He also recorded stats in every column on the sheet today except he failed to record a hit or giveaway.

DUCHENE, HOWARD AND MYERS NAMED CALDER TROPHY FINALISTS

NEW YORK (April 22, 2010) — Center Matt Duchene of the Colorado Avalanche, goaltender Jimmy Howard of the Detroit Red Wings and defenseman Tyler Myers of the Buffalo Sabres are the three finalists for the 2009-10 Calder Trophy, awarded “to the player selected as the most proficient in his first year of competition,” the National Hockey League announced today.

More here…

By AJ Petronzi
In Play Magazine

The Detroit Red Wings rallied back from an early no-goal call to tie the series with the Phoenix Coyotes 2-2 moving back to the desert on Friday.

Henrik Zetterberg opened the column tonight with a powerplay deflection. Pavel Datsyuk drove that lead further late in the third with the second goal of the night before Zetterberg buried the hatchet into Phoenix with his second of the night just 25 seconds later.

Detroit not just opened the door to the Coyotes net tonight, they kept their penalty box busy, giving the Coyotes five power plays and stopping them all. Jimmy Howard controlled his rebounds tonight but made a rallying save on a rare rebound despite losing his mask. The absence of Shane Doan, Phoenix’s captain, from this game played a huge part, allowing the Wings to take better control of the puck around the boards and allowed Detroit to dominate the physical play, out hitting the Coyotes 43-27.

In Play! Man of the Game: Jimmy Howard. Howard stopped all 29 of the Coyotes shots and recorded his first career playoff shutout.

Post game audio from both teams.

By AJ Petronzi
In Play Magazine

The Detroit Red Wings have lost the opening game of the playoffs, falling 3-2 to the Phoenix Coyotes.

Tomas Holmstrom scored first tonight, but quickly that lead was equalized by Keith Yandle. Late in the first period Nicklas Lidstrom scored to put Detroit to a lead again. In the second, Wojtek Wolski tied the game before Derek Morris game Phoenix the game winner in the third.

This game was down the wire through two, but was all Phoenix in the third. Phoenix just outworked Detroit in the final stanza and took over the game. Detroit was a train wreck today on the penalty kill, giving up goals on all of the first three times shorthanded. Tonight there were issues with consistency on penalty calling. While Phoenix accumulated more penalties than Detroit, the game winning goal was scored because of interference that was worse than the interference that had put Phoenix on the man advantage. Phoenix also wasn’t penalized when Lidstrom was high sticked while handling the puck midway through the third. That lack of a call cost Detroit a four minute powerplay as well as cost them the use of Lidstrom for roughly a quarter of the period.

In Play! Man of the Game: Derek Morris. Morris finished the game with three points (2 assists and the game winning goal) as well as a blocked shot and one of Phoenix’s 43 hits.

By AJ Petronzi
In Play Magazine

Every year there is a debate about who should win the Jack Adams award – awarded to the best coach of the year in the NHL – and this year two likely candidates, Dave Tippett and Mike Babcock, will get to face off in the opening round of the playoffs.

Phoenix’s Dave Tippett isn’t just a front runner for the nomination – he’s been considered the likely winner of the award since the Olympic break. Tippett has taken a team that, in the beginning of the year, wasn’t even sure if they’d be in the desert or if they’d be in Ontario and coached them to the playoffs. Most professional teams that are adrift in the front office don’t stand a chance in the standings. Take for instance, the Coyotes. Phoenix had the same front office issues last season but under the coaching of Wayne Gretzky finished 25th in the NHL and missed the playoffs. Tippet took over the team and finished 4th in the league this season.

Mike Babcock isn’t a stranger to the playoffs. He took Anaheim there and has never missed the playoffs since taking the job in Detroit. This year he had something to deal with that he had never faced on such a large scale. Injuries. For most of December and all of January and February, Babcock was missing eight of his top players to injury. That’s one player short of half the roster if you don’t count the goalies. In fact, it wasn’t unusual to hear the chant, “Let’s go Griffins” in the Joe Louis Arena this year (the Griffins are Detroit’s minor league team). Detroit broke 300 Man Games Lost from injuries in early March. Only Philadelphia, Colorado, and Vancouver made the playoffs with more man games lost to injury. However, all of those teams suffered more regular intervals of injuries and never saw more than three or four major players injured at one time.

Whether both of these coaches end up in the running or not, this opening round series isn’t just about which team will move on to the conference semi-finals, it could be an important factor in the decision of who will have the bragging rights behind the bench next season.

By AJ Petronzi
In Play Magazine

The Detroit Red Wings overcame the Columbus Blue Jackets to win 4-3 with a goal filled two minute exchange to push their streak of consecutive 100 point seasons to 10 to a real possibility.

Niklas Kronwall scored first tonight but quickly that lead was snubbed out by a rare Nicklas Lidstrom turnover that RJ Umberger stuffed past Jimmy Howard. Just before the end of the first, Samuel Pahlsson put Columbus up to a one goal lead. The game stayed this way until a 76 second period in the third in which Tomas Holmstrom scored twice and Dan Cleary followed with one of his own. Columbus cut the lead to one with a goal by Mike Blunden but couldn’t tie the game.

Detroit came out to a rough game and set the stage for a train wreck early in the second before turning their game around in the third. Columbus took themselves out of this game late when they spent more time arguing about a penalty call than defending the powerplay. They then took a pair of misconduct penalties and set Detroit up for the three goals in just over a minute. Dan Cleary played possibly his best game of the season today.

In Play! Man of the Game: Tomas Holmstrom. Holmstrom deflected both late powerplay goals and played a great game in front of the net.

ADDED BONUS:
Post game interviews with Lidstrom, Holmstrom, Eaves, Howard and Babcock.

By AJ Petronzi
In Play Magazine

In a defining game in the battle within playoff rankings the Detroit Red Wings lost 4-3 to the Nashville Predators in overtime today.

Brian Rafalski broke open the score sheet today scoring the lone goal of the first period. Shea Weber tied the game in the second and Martin Erat gave Nashville a one goal edge before Nicklas Lidstrom tied the game again. Just before the end of the second, J P Dumont put Nashville up by a goal again. Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk scored the tying goal late in the third to force overtime before Ryan Sutter scored the game winner just 16 seconds into overtime.

Detroit played a rough first half of the first and didn’t look great during the second period either. Again they put themselves into a bad situation in overtime and lost the game. Today wasn’t the best game by Jimmy Howard, who will not start tomorrow for the first time in 25 games. Chris Osgood will start tomorrow in Philadelphia and today’s loss leaves Detroit in the possibility of falling back to seventh place in he standings.

In Play! Man of the Game: Tomas Holmstrom. Holmstrom was the only player to amass three points in the game, all of which came from assists.

Post game audio

In the 1955 Stanley Cup Final against the Montreal Canadians, Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings scored 12 points (five goals, seven assists) in seven games to set an NHL record for most points in a final series.

By AJ Petronzi
In Play Magazine

In the first of three meetings between Columbus and Detroit in the next week, the Detroit Red Wings beat the Blue Jackets 3-2 to pull only three points shy of guaranteeing a spot in the playoffs.

Tomas Holmstrom scored the opener tonight, but Columbus’ Andrew Murray tied the game up after the first period. Pavel Datsyuk gave Detroit another lead in the second and Todd Bertuzzi extended that lead early in the third. The final goal of the game was scored late by Columbus’ RJ Umberger.

Detroit didn’t play a great game through the first twenty minutes, but came back and took control of most of the game afterwards. Detroit scored an additional goal tonight but the goal was taken away because Todd Bertuzzi spiked the puck out of the air and into the net with his hands. While the goal didn’t count, it did cause some laughs on both Columbus’ and Detroit’s benches. Tonight marked Detroit’s seventh consecutive win.

In Play! Man of the Game: Pavel Datsyuk. Datsyuk scored a great goal, plus had an assist and on more than one occasion turned the Blue Jacket’s defensemen inside out with his stick work.

Post game audio from the dressing room here…