GDFD No. 24: Wings of Providence… er, Detroit

Welcome to the Game Day Fire Drill, for this, Calgary’s 24th game of the season on Nov. 27, 2009.

(Please forgive any typos or other errors in this post, as it is being typed on an iPhone while I am in a car on the way back home after Thanksgiving down here in the good ol’ US of A. The things I do for you people.)

I get nervous about games like this.

The Red Wings obviously aren’t very good this year because they’re old and they’ve had a lot of injury problems and, well, you can’t be the best franchise in the league for 14 straight years without it catching up to you mathematically or something. I don’t know though, I guess you’d have to ask Kent about it.

But I’ve seen more than a handful of Wings games this year and what I’ve gotten from them is this: they may not be the old Red Wings any more, but they can sure as hell play like them every once in a while. A couple weeks ago they beat some team (I forget which) like 9-1 or something crazy loike that. Then they hung seven on someone else a few games later. Plus they beat the Flames earlier this year in Calgary and boy did the Flames ever play like garbage in that one.

So would I be shocked to see the Flames win by a substantial margin tonight? No, because beating the Wings hasn’t been that hard this year (they’re sub-.500 if you account for OT lossses) and Calgary plays very well on the road generally. But would the Wings putting up a six-spot shock me? Of course not. You’re Flames fans. You get it.

The Calgary Flames (14-6-3 for 31 points. Fourth in the West, second in the Northwest) and the Detroit Red Wings (11-8-4 for 26 points. Tied for 10th in the West, fourth in the Central).

5 p.m. Mountain time and 7 p.m. Eastern time. All other time zones should get in the box.

Joe Louis Arena, Detroit, Michigan.

Calgary is 7-1-3 on the road this year, and have gotten points in the last seven games away from home. The Red Wings are 7-3-2 at home, which is pretty good, and they’ve been getting better the last few weeks.

Their fans — I know you don’t have a reason to get it but in my writings for Puck Daddy I have run afoul of these people more than a few times. Because they are the most hypersensitive crybabies of all time, typing out anything about the team other than incredible amounts of praise is obviously based on some deep-seated hatred of the franchise and jealousy over its success. This is really the main and ONLY reason to hate an otherwise great team that’s fun to watch.

Chris Osgood — This kind of stems from the first one a bit, but Chris Osgood hasn’t been a good goalie in three years, and Red Wings fans act like he’s the second coming of Ken Dryden. Again, my having anything resembling a dissenting opinion on this matter results in tons of hate email and chirping on Twitter.

Mike Babcock — I am upset that he tried to kill Spiderman. (Get it because he looks like Willem Dafoe. Okay I’ll see myself out.)

Because I might make it home in time for puck drop. Enjoy the game and don’t get caught in traffic in the comments section.