I can't believe I'm doing this.

But (of ALL things) the Redskins fan in me demands it because Dallas is involved.

There's a headline in the sports section of the DaMN (Dallas Morning News, for those of you who never worked at Nortel--and therefore got to read nortel.talk before TPTB shut it down) talking about Detroit's "patsy of a schedule"--as if there's some sort of conspiracy to get the Red Wings the President's Trophy. One of the gems is this line:

If the Stars pass Detroit, they will have also overturned the handiwork of the NHL's Board of Governors.

When the league returned to an unbalanced schedule this season, it gave Detroit a ridiculously easy path. It is difficult to judge how good the Red Wings are, because they have had a season full of cupcakes.

You gotta be kidding me--Gerry Fraley (the dumbass who spewed that garbage) clearly needs his dosage upped, if he seriously believes what he wrote. Otherwise, he just needs a good swift kick in the ass.

The Central Division may be the weakest in the NHL (the three worst teams in the League not named Pittsburgh are there), but I'm sorry--aren't you supposed to try to beat your division rivals? I must have missed a memo somewhere, because last I checked those division games were supposed to be ones that you wanted to....oh, I don't know, try to win if you wanted to get a decent playoff seed (or make the playoffs, period). Wow, what a shocker.

I can honestly tell you, as somebody who loathes Detroit and every single stinkin' team in it, that there is no Vast Red Wing Conspiracy. Nothing of the sort. Nada. ничего. The schedule is pretty much randomly generated, with game dates set to take into account arena scheduling and special requests from individual teams (The Hurricanes going on a road trip during the NC State Fair and the ACC Tournament, the Maple Leafs asking the NHL to push back the start time of a road game to accomodate Sportsnet East's telecast of a NASCAR race in the GTMA, etc.) How the teams do is entirely up to them, really. I mean, how many people predicted that the Blues would free-fall like they did? For that matter, how many people predicted that the Hurricanes would be at or near the top of the standings....or that Dallas would fatten themselves up on the shootout?

Yeah.