Hockey Palaces Like Olympia Sadly Extinct Nowadays
They don't make arenas like Olympia Stadium anymore. Hell, they don't make buildings like it anymore.I don't know of any place where an escalator lifts you up at an 80 degree angle, which it did at Olympia---the Old Red Barn where the Red Wings played from the 1920s to December 15, 1979.If you think I'm exaggerating about the 80 degree angle---you're right; perhaps it was only about 77 degrees.The Olympia---corner of Grand River and McGraw on Detroit's west side---comes to mind because we're inching closer and closer to the 30th anniversary of the last game played there. Oh, they played a charity alumni game there a couple months later, but 1

Last Night on "The Knee Jerks": Mucking it Up in the Corner with Matt Hutter
We took to the ice---figuratively, anyway---and talked some serious Red Wings hockey last night on "The Knee Jerks", my weekly sports gabfest with Big Al from The Wayne Fontes Experience.Our guest was Matt Hutter, who filled in admirably for Jose Canseco, whose schedule forced a re-set till next week (we hope). Matt is one of the featured Red Wings writers for Bleacher Report. Matt provided us with some terrific insight and analysis---not bad for a guy who covers the team from California! Matt gave us

Lions Serve Notice to Rams: We're Still No. 32!
All those Jim Zorn haters out there ought to rev up their engines again. They ought to bang down Redskins owner Dan Snyder's door and demand that Zorn get the ziggy. In fact, the entire Redskins team ought to wear scarlet letters on their uniforms: "L," both for Loser and for Lions.How any team can lose to the garbage that is the Detroit Lions is beyond me.Someday, one of the current Redskins will pen an autobiography and he'll let us in on the secret. Surely it must have been an effort, willful and with malice, designed to get the coach fired.No way could the Redskins have actually given it their all and still come up short against the Lions, as they did

Lack of “Franchise” Defensive Lineman Detroit Lions' Bane for Decades
Football has had a fascination with the morose when it comes to handing out monikers to the game’s greatest defensive platoons. We’ve had Steel Curtains and Doomsday and Purple People Eaters. There were the Killer Bees down in Miami. Detroit and Los Angeles—when the NFL actually had a franchise there—shared the alliterate name Fearsome Foursome. Pro football games are won in the trenches, they say. Rare is the championship team that doesn’t possess a solid line, both on offense and defense. Lions fans will tell you that the team has been looking for its franchise quarterback for some fifty years or so. That’s difficult to refute, but h

New-look Pistons Have Lowest Expectations In Nine Years
When the Pistons open the home portion of their season on Friday against Oklahoma City, the pre-game fanfare won't be all that.No banners to raise. No pre-game speeches. No glow from any division title or from yet another appearance in the conference final. No pride, really, taken from anything that happened last season.Check that---maybe they could raise a "2008-09: Glad THAT'S Over!" banner.It'll be one of those fresh starts with several new faces. So many key players from last season's drama are gone: coach Michael Curry, whose tenure becomes more soiled by the day thanks to player retrospectives; Allen Iverson, the petulant superstar; Rasheed Wallace,