The Wings shouldn't be here because no team in Gary Bettman's sick little short-man syndrome world can be that successful, using a strong man's wallet. For years the Wings paid top dollar for the best players and we laughed as others struggled to keep up, despite the fact, the FACT, that it was one billionaire spending money other billionaires had, too, but were unwilling to spend on their own product.

It's a bitch girls, but no longer did Gary want us depending on the old man's money.

So on came the Cap and down went the Wings.

Woops. Not so fast.

Oh, the chagrin. But Gary got the next laugh, as always. Because as the Wings kept winning, Gary lathered himself in the hot oils provided by the new money that crept into places like Phoenix and Anaheim and Carolina and Florida, into Atlanta and back into Denver. Wintered-over Wing fans spent their retired motor city money and Gary leveraged it into teams built on the backs of the Wings.

But the Wings kept winning. The "transplants" kept showing up, until teams decided to offer tickets only to residents of states that housed the "home" teams. Octopi still flew (until Gary banned them) and Bettman still burned and seethed and stomped. As a reward, the little scamp, the little tramp, the Charlie Chaplin facsimile promised Jimmy D. and the ones he really hated that he'd move the Wings eastward. He'd move the Wings east because the travel sucked ass every April and May. He'd move the Wings east because they'd built this league. It was the wild popularity of the Wings that led to the Ducks and the Sharks, the Canes, the Bolts, the Panthers, the league-financed Coyotes, that allowed Bettman to build in markets that had no place housing hockey.

So he promised us he'd move us. But then he didn't. Year after year, it was rumored. Time zones discussed. Maps pulled out with justifying crooked lines moving south, veering east, then back west: all proof that geopraphy didn't support it.

Until it did. Now the Wings are East, but only as a result of a massive realignment that the Canadian media finally bought into.

Oh, but the move didn't mean Bettman was over his hatred of Ilitch, selectively loud-mouthed Jimmy D, the Wings or you. No. He remembers the laughs. He remembers the way the big bad Wing franchise treated him. The scoffs, the remarks, the smirks, the boos at the Cup presentations, the constant harangue from a fan base smarter than he'd ever understood.

But all of that was at the suit-wearing level. Big money, big decisions by little men with pocketbooks. Look deeper though, because that's where you start to see the real bullshit. The Holmstrom rules. The suspensions for not attending all star games. The unpunished Weber hits. Too many men not being called at just the right time. The comfortable scheduling of SCF games, all the better to suit the Bettman love child.

And yet, the Wings still won.

And Gary still seethed. Still sputtered. Gary still put his Toto records on and slow danced with himself to the idea of a league that would stagger the Wings and still make money on the success he'd grown to despise with all 57 inches of his body.

Now? Now our best defenseman is out, suspended by Gary for a hit seen scores of times this postseason but up to now, unpunished. The delicious irony is that, allegedly, our next best defenseman is out with a concussion and the player who allegedly suffered at the hands and shoulder of the suspended Kronwall is in the lineup for Tampa (a team built and run by a Red Wing legend who hated Bettman with ferocity equaling any of ours) along with whoever concussed Zidlicky.

It's all come full circle and only one constant remains:

It's the Wings, and it's us, against a league built on the premise that the Wings must not compete. It's the Detroit Red Wings against an institution literally built in every way on a business plan dedicated to not allowing the smart, tough guys to win.

Well, they have. Against odds stacked against them by a man who can't see over his dashboard.

Screw it. It's Mike Babcock's birthday and do you think he isn't perversely enjoying this? Higher odds? Bring. Them. On.

It's a Live Blog, bitches. It's a Game 7 live blog in support of a team that wasn't supposed to be here in the first place. It's a Live Blog for a playoff game no one predicted would occur. Not one of those shriveled ivory tower blathering sputtering peckerheads in the Canadian media thought it would go this far.

Well it has and we're live blogging it.

13 to 12. 60 minutes to Montreal.

Let's Go Red Wings.