Gameday Poop: Pittsburgh Penguins vs Detroit Red Wings – January 31

Game time is 12:30PM and can be seen in Super HD at the Igloo or on NBC 

When the Penguins knocked off the reining Stanley Cup Champs last June, Detroit started to slowly fall apart. It started with Marian Hossa saying he wanted to keep playing in Detroit and then jumping ship for Chicago (sound familiar?) along with the Red Wings Tomas Kopecky, then Detroit lost ex-Penguins Ty Conklin & Mikael Samuelsson and had a huge kick in the nuts when Jiri Hudler opted for the KHL instead of staying with the Red Wings. By the time it was all said and done Detroit had lost players that had accounted for over 1/3 of the goals they had the previous season. 

The injury riddled Red Wings are currently not owners of a playoff spot. Mike Babcock the Red Wings coach is also Canada’s Olympic hockey team coach, and you have to wonder why Olympic Hockey GM’s wait to the last minute to pick the players on how well they are doing currently, but they do not wait last minute to pick the coaches. Is it possible the players confidence in the coaches ability will be undermined by the fact that Babcock can’t coach with a little adversity? We will see in two weeks.

The injury riddled Penguins are currently owners of a playoff spot. Can you name how many Penguins regulars have not missed games because of injuries? If you said three you would be correct. You get 12 1/2 PenguinPoop Bonus Points if you can name the three, the answer is at the very bottom of this post below info Darius Kasparaitis’ purple sofa.      

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Gameday Poop: Game 2 – Pittsburgh Penguins vs Detroit Redwings – Stanley Cup Finals

Dan Bylsma has done a fantastic coaching job this post season, but the one thing he could have stood to do was be a little more pro active in the line-up changes between series. I felt going into the Washington series that he should have changed the lineup because Washington has a different style than Philly and even though we won the last game in Philly, that didn’t necessitate keeping the same lineup together.

Tonight he has a big advantage over the Red Wings in the fact that he has a very healthy team and can plug fresh guys into the lineup who are just as skilled as the guys they would be replacing. Dupuis, Sykora, Goligoski and the rest of the guys sitting should all be brought in, and used to pound Detroit with the fore check. ...