Off for the weekend

I’m headin’ off to Detroit, MI, in the morning to attend a cousin’s wedding. Won’t be back until Monday night.

I’ve never been to Detroit, but I understand it’s a much cleaner city now, ever since Anaheim gave it a clean sweep in 2003.
ZING!A couple fun facts about that sweep:

• Detroit led the league in goal-scoring that year and hadn’t lost three games in a row all season.
• J.S. Giguere was under contract that season for a meager $900,000. Of the players on Detroit's playoff roster, only C Pavel Datsyuk, LW Henrik Zetterberg, and D Dmitri Bykov made less that year.
• Petr Sykora, the Ducks’ leading goal scorer that year, didn’t score in the series. The Ducks didn’t get a special teams goal, nor a goal from its defensemen.
• In all, 10 Ducks had their first postseason experience in that series (Giguere, Chistov, Krog, Pahlsson, Chouinard, Severson, Kjellberg, Sauer, Havelid, and Vishnevski). Arguably, CuJo needed to concentrate more on the playoff rookies than those who had played before. The players with previous experience scored 5 goals on 90 shots. The players with no playoff experience: 5 goals on 30 shots. Add to that the heroics of Giguere, and it was quite a rookie-led upset.
• The Ducks have more playoff sweeps since 2003 than the rest of the league combined (Anaheim 3, Tampa Bay 1, New Jersey 1).

Well, I’d better stop there, or my number might get retired in Detroit before Yzerman’s does.

Have a good weekend, everybody!