It's not easy to make history in Detroit, but these Red Wings are close

The history, it’s everywhere. Joe Louis Arena oozes with reminders of the past, from Steve Yzerman Drive out front to walls painted with the name of every Stanley Cup-winning player.

Sometimes it's living history. Like when Ted Lindsay strolls by following a morning skate.

Or like Tuesday night, when Gordie Howe walked through the Red Wings’ dressing room, following one of the best games of the 2011 Stanley Cup playoffs. The Red Wings won 3-1, bringing a smile to the face of Mr. Hockey.

His franchise was still alive.

He’s one of the great players of all time. Arguably the greatest. He led some of the best teams to ever play the game.

And yet, none of the Red Wings greats accomplished what this 2011 squad is on the verge of doing. None of the names on the wall did this.

After dropping the first three games of the Western Conference semifinals to the Sharks, the Red Wings have now won three straight. They could become just the fourth team in the history of the NHL to win a playoff series after facing a 3-0 deficit.

The first in Red Wings history.

“We’re not worried about putting something in history. That’s not what we’re here for,” Red Wings forward Dan Cleary said. “We’re here to win a game. We’re here to move on. We all know we want to win at the end.”

It’s about Stanley Cups, we know that. But by carving a story for the ages, this one has the potential to be more special than some of the rest.

The fans in Detroit felt it.

With 9.5 seconds left, and the outcome settled, a frenzied Joe Louis crowd cheered as the lyrics “California, California, here we come!” blared over speakers. The Red Wings were headed back to San Jose for Game 7 on Thursday. Usually it’s Eminem or Kid Rock firing them up, not theme music from The O.C. But it was fitting.

They were witnessing history. Potentially, at least.

“It was fantastic,” Henrik Zetterberg said. “You know what? I don’t think it’s been as loud since I got here.”

It provided the Red Wings the energy they needed in the third period. They dominated this game -- absolutely dominated -- yet it was scoreless after two periods, despite Detroit enjoying a 32-13 shot advantage. Credit Sharks goalie Antti Niemi for that, along with a couple missed opportunities, like when Darren Helm failing to convert a pass from Zetterberg into a goal, or Cleary missing an open net after beating Niemi.

The energy from the building was sapped momentarily when a Logan Couture shot trickled past Jimmy Howard to give the Sharks an improbable 1-0 lead in the third period.

But one bad goal doesn’t beat these Red Wings. We’re having a hard time figuring out what does.

“You keep playing,” Howard said. “That’s the beauty of this game is that you know it’s never over until the final buzzer. No matter what the score is, you keep going.”

That goes for games. That goes for this series.

The final buzzer didn’t sound when the Sharks took a 3-0 series lead. Detroit captain Nicklas Lidstrom said there were conversations among the players after the Red Wings dropped the first three games of the series, and the message from the captain was consistent.

All they had to do was win one game to keep this thing going. When they did that, the focus shifted to the next one.

Here they are.

“We can’t relax because every game has been so tight and so close,” Lidstrom said. “We’re not done yet.”

Sharks forward Joe Pavelski made a wise observation after his team beat the Red Wings to take a 3-0 series lead. Every one of the teams left in the playoffs has had four-game winning streaks this season. He knew the Red Wings were capable of this.

So it’s not a stunned Sharks team that heads back to San Jose. Every game has been close, and chances are the final one will be too. These Sharks won’t just roll over and let the Red Wings coast into history.

“Just ask Detroit. They lost three in a row and their confidence wasn’t frayed. We’re a confident group still,” Sharks center Joe Thornton said after the loss. “You work 82 games to get home ice in these Game 7’s. Now we just have to make it work.”

These are two franchises with dramatically different histories. If the Sharks win, they can alter theirs. If the Red Wings win, they add to theirs.

Until one of those things happen, the significance of Game 6 remains unclear.

“We haven’t really done anything yet,” Zetterberg said. “It’s first to four. You have to go in and play a good Game 7 and win that. If we don’t do that, no one will remember us.”

Michael Rosenberg: How did Red Wings pull off Game 5 miracle, beat Sharks?

You might want to be careful as you read this column, because it comes with a disclaimer: I have no earthly idea what I just saw. I have no clue how the Red Wings beat the Sharks to keep their season alive. I just know they did.

Just call this The Miracle at HP Pavilion. OK, I'll admit: That's a stupid name for a miracle. I don't care. The Sharks skated circles around the Wings, figuratively and sometimes literally. They built leads of 2-0 and 3-1, and the way Sunday night's game was going, both leads seemed insurmountable. But the Red Wings ...surmounted. It was incomprehensible.

This was a Grand Theft Hockey, and I’m still trying to reconstruct the crime scene. I know center Pavel Datsyuk was great when he had to be, in the third period, and goalie Jimmy Howard was great when he had to be, for the entire game. Sharks coach Todd McLellan told investigators afterward that his team had “two-on-ones … three-on-ones …” and I wanted to give him a glass of water and a cold compress.

“We didn’t play a poor game,” McLellan said. “And that’s hard to swallow. I thought we actually had some poise and composure in the third period.”

McLellan slipped and referred to “our collapse,” though his lawyers may argue he was under heavy interrogation at the time. Anyway, it wasn’t really a collapse. The Wings had scored three goals on five shots.

Early in the third period, the Wings were down, 3-1, and the math was a head-scratcher: They obviously needed three more goals, but how would they even get three more shots? Wherever the Wings tried to go, the Sharks were already there. Whatever the Wings tried to do, the Sharks had already done.

And yet: Jonathan Ericsson scored. Danny Cleary scored. The game was tied and the arena was quiet -- everybody knew the Sharks should have wrapped up Game 5 long ago.

It felt like the Wings could have been down 6-1 instead of 2-1. As hockey people say, Jimmy Howard needed to stand on his head. Also, he needed to hide the goal in a dark basement so the Sharks couldn’t find it. Alas, that is not legal. Trust me. I checked.

The Wings were playing for their season, but coach Mike Babcock said bluntly that “we weren’t competitive enough up front.” Yet Howard, who has been perpetually underestimated, kept his team in the game. The final shot totals were Sharks 42, Wings 22. My first question for Howard was borne of curiosity: Aren’t you tired?

“I had a great night’s sleep last night,” he said. “I had a good nap today after the pregame meal. So I felt good out there.”

If sleep is all it took to play like this, the best goaltenders in the world would be cats. Howard had a night for the ages. And still that doesn’t explain what happened.

Datsuk was his usual brilliant self – lifting sticks, stealing pucks, leaving no fingerprints.

“He just amazes us every single night,” Howard said. “He’s a world-class player.

Howard also said, “You can’t say anything bad about the guy,” but naturally, on this crazy night, Babcock did just that: “I didn’t think he was great early.” That may be partly because Datsyuk had an injured wrist. You know the wrist is in bad shape because he didn’t take a single faceoff. (“Good investigative reporting,” Babcock cracked, when somebody pointed that out.)

Meanwhile, the team’s best postseason scorer, Johan Franzen, is hobbling so much that he got benched. The Mule is battling a bum hoof and didn’t even play in the third period.

So when Tomas Holmstrom shot high for the unassisted game-winner, it was still hard to believe. The Sharks dominated almost the whole game. They had way more shots, much better chances. The only thing Detroit really did better than San Jose was the only thing that matters: Find the back of the net.

The Sharks had to be so shocked I didn't know if I should go in their locker room to ask questions or send flowers. Coach Todd McLellan didn't even address his team afterward. There was nothing he could say.

The Wings still have to win Game 6 at home and Game 7 on the road to advance to the conference finals. I don’t know what to make of their chances. Is it a bad sign that they have to beat a team that thoroughly outplayed them in Game 5? Or will the Sharks be so stunned that the Wings have a huge mental edge?

How the heck should I know? I can’t even figure out in the game they already played.

Whatever happens the rest of the way, give the Wings credit for winning this one. They had every reason to crack. They did not get catch any breaks from the officials. Nicklas Lidstrom was whistled for tripping when his stick got caught, and Datsyuk was whistled for holding for reasons that remain a mystery to me.

And, as I may have mentioned: They were severely outplayed.

It didn’t matter. Howard was so great, Datsyuk was so masterful, and the Wings so mentally tough that they somehow found a way to win. I don't know what that way was, exactly. It might take me six months and four private detectives to figure it out. I just know they did it. The Red Wings are alive, well and going home for Game 6. What a resilient team. What an incredible sport.

Sharks take 3-0 lead with another OT win over Wings

Devin Setoguchi completed the hat trick at the 9:21 mark of overtime to give the San Jose Sharks a 4-3 win over the Detroit Red Wings in Game 3 of a Western Conference semifinal series.

In the extra session, Joe Thornton caught up to the puck at the right boards and stopped there. He looked up and sent a pass to the top of the right circle for Setoguchi, who snapped a shot on net that went off the stick of Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg and sailed into the net for the win.

"You need heroes and you need people to step up and he was the guy tonight," said San Jose head coach Todd McLellan. "He's got a tremendous trigger and always puts himself in a good position to shoot the puck."

Dan Boyle tied the game with 4:08 to play in regulation while Thornton finished the game with three assists for the Sharks, who have a 3-0 lead in this series and will look to close it out in Detroit on Friday.

All three games in the series have been decided in overtime.

Antti Niemi stopped 38 shots for San Jose, which also went up 3-0 in the semifinals last season against Detroit before winning the series in five games.

Nicklas Lidstrom had a goal and an assist while Pavel Datsyuk and Patrick Eaves each had a goal for Detroit, which has dropped seven straight playoff games to San Jose by one goal. Jimmy Howard made 34 stops in the loss.

"It's a tough loss and it's especially tough cause we had the lead late and let them tie the game," said Lidstrom. "We just have to dig deep and find a way to win the next game."

The first goal of the game came at the 12:57 mark of the first period when Setoguchi tipped in the puck from in front on the power play to give the Sharks a 1-0 lead.

Detroit, though, tied the game with 19.3 seconds left in the opening frame as Lidstrom's one-timer from the slot off a turnaround backhand pass by Zetterberg beat Niemi for a power-play marker.

The Red Wings took a 2-1 lead when Eaves backhanded in the puck from the left circle after a scramble in front at the 13:59 mark of the second.

The Sharks tied the game with a power-play tally less than a minute later when Setoguchi blasted a shot from the left circle that he didn't get all of, but got enough to beat Howard.

Skating on the power play later in the second, Detroit took a 3-2 advantage as Datsyuk's sharp wrister from the left circle off a feed from Zetterberg beat Niemi with 1:43 left in the middle frame.

The Sharks were able to send the game to overtime when Kyle Wellwood sent a blind, sweeping pass from the deep left boards that made its way over to the right side for Boyle, who snapped a shot into the net.

Game Notes

Lidstrom's goals was the 29th of his playoff career, breaking Denis Potvin's mark for defensemen and tying Mario Lemieux for fifth-place all-time. His assist was his 128th in the playoffs and tied him for fifth with Doug Gilmour...Both teams went 2-for-4 on the power play...Thornton has seven assists in the playoffs.

Daylight Savings Time 2011: St. Louis Rams Need That Extra Hour

I was thinking about this, in the seconds when Daylight Savings Time stole an hour of my 2011—to be given back later, without interest and in a much less inviting neighborhood: Which St. Louis team could care the least about losing their 2 AM? The St. Louis Rams? Right out.

With the NFL lockout officially in session the NFLPA needs all the hours it can possibly shovel into the negotiation engine, and by the time they get it back in the fall we'll have already missed a chunk of season. Sam Bradford needs his beauty sleep; Danario Alexander only has a limited number of hours before the extended warranty on his knees expires, and the rest of the team is going to be telling-him-so the minute they go out again and Geek Squad charges him full price.
Steve Spagnuolo's four pillars—faith, core values, character, team first, fear, denial, horniness, wisdom, sleepiness, and depression—say nothing about squirreling an hour of the year away for personal gain. That's something Plaxico Burress would do, or Randy Moss, or Vincent Jackson, and the Rams have only gone after two of those guys.
The St. Louis Cardinals could stand to lose an hour, but not here in the middle of March, where Spring Training is still exciting and novel. Anywhere between March 23 and March 30, where Spring Training games begin to look like regular season games held in an alternate universe where lacrosse became America's national pastime, would have been ideal; March 13 just won't do. (On a side note, if you're a literary agent I'd love to query you about my speculative fiction novel, Le Passe-Temps National, complete in 100,000 words.)
So after some careful deliberation I've decided that this year's Daylight Savings Time is best suited for the St. Louis Blues, who have not had an especially rewarding 2011 to date. Even Game Time couldn't get pissed off about a recent loss to the Detroit Red Wings. The Detroit Red Wings!
Chris Stewart has proven to be an exciting acquisition, and Jaroslav Halak is back just in time to make things vaguely interesting, but this isn't even a rebuilding year yet—it's that year before the rebuilding year, when the players who are going to emerge from the wreckage are still busy digging themselves out of the ugliness inside Scottrade Center.
That kind of thing makes this last month of hockey a race to the finish. And thanks to George Vernon Hudson, they have an hour's head start. Unless they happen to be in Arizona.