Dominance? Yep. The Dominator was. Didn’t it seem like every one of his saves tonite was tough? He was on a mission, absolutely. From the first save forward he was as good as we’ve seen him since he began his third stint in Detroit.

Pavel Datsyuk? I told you guys last week he was heating up. I am, apparently, a genius because he is on frigging fire. His sixth and seventh goals in five games. 10 points in his last six. Prediction: he’ll finish with more goals than Zetterberg. Datsyuk is literally unstoppable right now. Wanna know when it started? Training camp? Nope. October? Nope. Try May. Try Game 6 when he and Zetterberg almost single-handedly brought the Wings back against the poultry. They established themselves as the unquestioned on-ice catalysts for Detroit, if not the outright leaders of this team.

Puck possession? A month or so ago, Bruce MacLeod used a stopwatch to determine Detroit’s time of possession over the course of an entire game. I’d like to see that stat for tonite’s game.

Penalty Kill? Dominant. Against the number one ranked PP, they shut it down. Completely.

Absolutely dominant tonite.

I do hate DC traffic, in case you were wondering. It sucks and it sucks very hard. But I’m learning to appreciate the delays a bit because I’ve got HNIC radio to listen to on Sirius. Tonite on the way home I listed to Jeff Marek interview Andy “the implosion” Strickland. Wanna hear an interesting tidbit young Andy provided? Sure you do. Try this on for size.

Strickland: Yes Paul Kariya is playing tonite. Sometimes he doesn’t attend the morning skate and that’s ok because (ready?), when he signed with the Blues he said, “I need to be able to do whatever it is I want to do.” According to Strickland that includes skipping morning skates and practices. According to me, that makes Kariya the prima donna we all suspected he was.

Back to Hasek. He changed the dynamic of this goalie

situation. His play tonite just made Uncle Mike’s life a lot more miserable.

More tomorrow.