News just came in today (or late last night depending on how you  look at it) that Dominik Hasek is expected to announce his retirement some time this week (my guess is Monday).  I know nothing is certain until the player does it, but chances are it's accurate.  The guys is 43 years old and left on a relatively decent note, even though he wasn't in net for the Cup.

In either case, read up - here is the article .

Not only did the Red Wings win their 11th Stanley Cup and fourth in the past 11 years, but the big win is gonna help get about 15 wishes for the local Make-A-Wish Foundations of Detroit, Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids.

Fans can now own a replica Stanley Cup and official NHL Stanley Cup Finals puck set for $69.95, with proceeds going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Michigan.  It's really a sweet item, and will look great inside the display case that is also available.  In the past four years, we've raised almost $1.7 million for the MAW kids around the country.

Hope Wings fans will respond.  Not only to own a GREAT item for Father's Day coming up or for a birthday or graduation gift, but to help out a lot of these kids who have some life-threatening medical conditions.

Go to www.nikcosports.com to see the set or call 1-800-345-2868 toll free to order.

Thanks so much!  Bob Ibach 

Hey Wings Fans

Detroit won, but I'm optimistic about Pitt's chances next year.  But it's still an awesome and well-deserved accomplishment.  It's one of the most hailed, famous and heaviest trophies in the history of sport.  In that respect, the HHoF has a pretty cool photo journal they're doing with the Cup.

http://www.hhof.com/html/exSCJ_2008.shtml

Keep up on the adventures in the offseason.

Now I'm just going to type a bit because there is a limit on the amount of words I have to type in order to post a fanpost.  There - that should be enough.

That's that.  Detroit has deservedly won the Stanley Cup and its fans have every right to cheer.  Congrats and well done.  You guys definitely had one hell of a season, no doubt about it.

But I do have to thank the Red Wings for one particular thing - Game 5.  Even though we won that game, you would be lying if you didn't admit it was flat out amazing.  There will be future Cup wins for both teams (sooner than later, most likely) but amongst those wondrous memories will be Game 5 of the 2008 finals.  I have to say thanks for the memories on that one.

But I'm posting here on a Red Wings site, and that means I have to give it up for the Red Wings.  Congratulations, folks.  Drink heavily in your victory.

We'll no doubt see you next season.

I would like to give my condolences to the Bourdon family and I hope Luc is in a better place right now. May he rest in peace. :( He was WAY to young. Luc was a promising defense men for the Vancouver Canucks and he died in a motorcycle accident this morning. Apparently he only recently got into riding motorcycles and he had just bought one of his own two days ago! This is a huge tragedy for the NHL.

Just listened to the moron that is the Pittsburgh Penguins head coach... Michel Therrien.

Its rare that coaches bother me. And even rarer that a hockey coach (excluding Marc Crawford who I truly believe is the devil himself), pisses me off to the extent that this coach has tonight.

Listen to his postgame press conference after tonights game.... ridiciulus.  Some of his statements (summarized)

- Osgood is a no-good diver... Our players didn't touch him.

- The ref's are against the penguins. 

-  The Wings are all a bunch of obstruction and interfering players... and they're good at it!!!

-  My team can't win with the other team getting this treatment from the refs.

Throughout the rest of this idiots mumblings... I pretty much picked up bitterness, and stupidity.  Only shitty coaches make excuses for their team when they get shutout in back to back games.  Claiming that the other team is getting favored... the Red Wings no less... a team typically hated by referees. 

I'll simplify it for Therrian:

We outplayed your team.  Gary Roberts is a cheap shotter.  And to summarize, you are holding back your team by coddling them and telling them, "don't worry guys, we'll win this series when we get home." By doing this, it puts you in the drivers seat for worst coach of the year. 

He is surrounded by talented players.  And yet, they are struggling immensely.  That spells bad coach. 

To clarify, once again, I'm not complaining by any means about the wings kicking ass, I'm complaining about the terrible-ness of Michael Therrien.

Finally, I would like to say, that the Wings and Osgood have played beautifully.  Amazing how well they are clicking.   And by biting their lips and not taking the stupid careless penalties that the opposing coach seems to encourage, the wings have got a nice hold on the series going into Pittsburgh...

GO WINGS!!!!

UPDATE:  Sidney Crosby is now expelling the stupidity about obstruction and how "when we start to get the calls" we'll win.  Yes Crosby, thats why the wings are winning.. because of the lack of calls against obstruction.  THIS IS WHY THERRIEN IS A MORON... hes turning a potentially great player into a excuse-making crappy captain who blames refs for 3-0 and 4-0 losses.

via blog.mlive.com

Ok, I have a question for you guys... Who has been the best defense men for Detroit in this year play-offs? Lidstrom? Nope. Rafalski. Not a chance. According to coach Mike Babcock it has been Niklas Kronwall.

Kronwall's career started rough, with injuries ranging from a broken leg to a fractured sacrum. He was in and out of the lineup so much that it was hard for him to find any consistency in his game. Its seems as though these play-offs are his coming out party. He leads all defense men in play-off scoring and his penchant for the big open ice hit has his teammates impressed.

"It gives us so much more energy," forward Henrik Zetterberg said. "It's unbelievable to see Kronner do it night in and night out. It's nice to see him healthy and playing good in all situations. He makes huge hits and nice plays, so he's a pretty complete package." (Quote courtesy of detnews.com)

The opposition has also noticed Kronwall's physical play as of late. "You have to have your head up and be ready. If your elbows get up quick enough, you have to protect yourself also," Malone, the 6-4, 224-pound Penguins forward, said during a conference call Wednesday. "If by accident your stick gets up a little bit, maybe he learns his lesson. He's definitely a player you have to keep your eye on." (Quote courtesy of Mlive.com)

If the Wings can win their fourth cup since 1997, be ready to hear Kronwall's name in the talks for the Conn Smythe, he definitely deserves it.

Just months after being named interm GM's in place of the fired Doug Armstrong, Brett Hull and Les Jackson have signed contract extensions that will run through 2011. While Jackson is the "brains" of the operation, managing salary cap issues, Brett Hull is a guy that fosters strong relationships with the players and offers unconventional wisdom.

“This unique combination of talents gives us many advantages for our hockey club,” Hicks said in a statement. “Signing Les and Brett to these contracts provides stability for the future.”

Hull and Jackson engineered one of the biggest trades in franchise history, acquiring center Brad Richards from the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for Forwards Jussi Jokinen, Jeff Halpern and back-up goaltender Mike Smith. Richards was a vital part of the Stars during their play-off run, finishing tied for second in team scoring with 15 points.

“We think the same way,” Hull said in trying to explain why the co-GM role has worked. “He is the ultimate gentleman, and anybody who can’t get along with Les, you’re in big trouble. Mostly it’s the self-confidence we have in ourselves and the confidence we have in each other that makes it real easy.”

Up next for the two is trying to get Tippet to sign a contract extension, something Brett Hull says shouldn't be to hard.

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If you look at stats, it's pretty easy to tell why the Penguins and Redwings are in the Stanley Cup Finals.

• The Penguins and Redwings have the top 5 players in points with Crosby and Zetterberg tied in 1st with 21 points, and Hossa, Datsyuk and Malkin tied at 3rd with 19 points each.
  
• Redwings have 3 of the top 5 in goals with Franzen in 1st with 12, Zetterberg 2nd with 11 and Datsyuk in 4th with 9, tied with the Penguins only top 5 goals guy in Hossa.
  
• Crosby leads all players in assist during the playoffs with 17 with the redwings having Kronvall (12, T-3rd) and Zetterberg(10, 5th) making the top 5 as well.
  
• The Red Wings have 1-4 on the list of +/- with Zetterberg(+15), followed by Datsyuk(+12), Franzen(+9), Lidstrom(+9) and followed by the only Penguin in the top 5 of Whitney(+8)
  
• Detroit dominates Pittsburgh in Face off % with Draper leading all at 63.4% and Zetterberg 3rd at 57.9%. You have to go to 21st out of all playoff players to find the 1st Penguin in Jordan Staal at 52% and 29th in Crosby at 49%
  
• Marc-Andre Fleury of the Penguins leads all goalies in the playoffs in Save %(.938), Wins(12) and Shutouts(3). Osgood leads in GAA of just 1.60 with Fleury in 2nd at 1.70. Osgood is 3rd in Save %(.931), 2nd in Wins(10) and T-3rd in Shutouts(1)
  
• Pittsburgh Leads all teams in Goals per game at 3.64 with Detroit being 2nd at 3.44
  
• Pittsburgh also leads all teams in goals against at 1.86 with Detroit in 2nd at 1.94
  
• Detroit and Pittsburgh were T-3rd in PK% during the playoffs at 87.3%
  
• Pittsburgh was 2nd in PP% at 24.6% with Detroit being 5th at 21%
  
• Pittsburgh was 1st in the playoffs with at 1.71 in goals for/against while playing 5 on 5 with Detroit in 2nd at 1.48
  
• Detroit has 3 players(Franzen, Zetterberg and Datsyuk) who have scored 5 goals or more in the playoffs. Pittsburgh has 5(Malkin, Hossa, Malone, Staal and Sykora). Crosby has only scored 4 times, but he has 17 assist.

[Note: This is the new WIM look that I was talking about! Be sure to read the following post with all the answers about the new design. If you have any questions, feel free to leave it in a comment for this post! - Christy]

Hey Winging It In Motown,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Winging It In Motown from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Winging It In Motown and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Winging It In Motown now has all the basic information about the Detroit Red Wings and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of Detroit Red Wings material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

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There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.