Olympics End, Regular Season Continues

Olympic hockey is over, which means a return to the NHL regular season. The Olympic tournament was a great one. With lots of action, and some “upsets”. Team Canada and Team USA didn’t do as well as some people thought they would, and some were very disappointed in their play. Other teams were phenomenal. Finland and Sweden made it all the way to the finals and Finland undefeated to that point, was upset by Sweden who hung on to win the gold medal. Back here in Detroit, we didn’t just witness the world playing against each other. But we witnessed teammates playing against each other for bragging rights in the Detroit locker room.
Now that the Olympic games are over, six red wings return home with medals to show off to the rest of the team (Tomas Holmstrom, Niklas Kronwall, Nicklas Lidstrom, Mikael Samuelsson and Henrik Zetterberg: gold, and Robert Lang: Bronze).   All ten wings, however, will return with many stories to tell and bragging rights from different games. Many times, I’m sure the players will give each other grief over big hits, or bad plays, but all in all they will return to being teammates tonight.
The wings face off against San Jose tonight to start the regular season back up and they will be without their five Swedish Olympians in tonight’s game. The Swedes went to Stockholm yesterday for a celebration to honor them, after winning the gold. They are expected to be in the lineup for tomorrow game against Anaheim. The other five Olympians are expected to be in the lineup tonight against San Jose, baring any travel problems.
     As a fan I feel however, that Bettman should have allotted for travel problems and backed up the starting day by a day or so. Giving players only one day to return from halfway across the world is just insane. Not only do they have to get back to the United States, but they have to adjust to the time change too. Having teams play the next day is not the right way to handle this. This could make a difference for some teams as far as playoffs. Sweden’s Mat Sundin has to return to Toronto to play with the Maple Leafs tonight in a game against Washington. There is only one point separating the two in the playoff hunt. The NHL should have allowed two or more travel days for the Olympians.
     Tonight should be a good game I feel. The Olympians who are back have the adrenaline rushing and those non Olympians have been off for two weeks and are ready to go. The Wings must strike early and often to take the crowd out of this and hopefully come out with the victory.
Until later, thanks for reading and thank you for the patience over Christmas and until now. Hopefully this is the beginning of a great blogging year.