I know the Wings are in Pittsburgh.

I also know that, had this been 8 years ago, or maybe 6, I'd have been a wreck today.

I've not been a wreck. I've been calm. I've been calm because this team, our team, is one that is rebuilding and painfully learning how to compete for sixty minutes instead of, I don't know, 59:52. This is a young team with great building blocks, great pieces. This is a team that probably won't make the playoffs and that's ok. Because they're getting better.

I've not been a wreck because this used to be the best rivalry in hockey, for at least two years, and maybe four.

But it's not anymore. Syd Crosby used to be the target of our disdain and the skinny guy to Hank Zetterberg's prison antics. Now? Now it's fun to watch him on a mediocre team, never to touch the Cup again, but the venom is gone.

The times, they are, and have been, a changin'.

And that, my friends, is an ode to a garbage song, sung by a completely garbage folk singer. Gramps and I used to quibble about that, back when...get ready...the only things that mattered were injuries and officiating.

But the times have changed and the rivalry that used to be white-hot has cooled to mundane. And that's just science. Heck, that's just a tribute (Tenacious D...for George, wherever he may roam).

This is a live blog that took a turn for the melancholy, bitches. Sorry. But I do long for the days when the games caused a little tic, a little pee shiver, a minor palpitation, even a tremor. Those days will be back. But not yet.

As I said, it's a live blog, bitches.

LGRW.