Weird Bounces and Chris Osgood Doom the Predators: Red Wings Advance in Six

Whether it's fair or not, my memory of Chris Osgood is always going to be as the guy who spent his entire career losing his job to someone. Early in his career he had trouble wresting the Wings' starting job away from Mike Vernon, then the Wings' signed Dominik Hasek. He went to New York and got moved out to St. Louis for Rick DiPietro. He's since moved back to Detroit and mostly been splitting time, first with Manny Legace, now with Hasek again.

Unsurprisingly, when the playoffs started this year he was placed on the benched in favor of Hasek, despite leading the league in GAA during the regular season. He got his chance partly into Game 3 of Detroit's first round series against the Predators and he's really shone since then, stopping 53 of 54 shots in two and a half games, leading the way today with 20 saves in the Red Wings' series clinching 3-0 win.

Osgood wasn't the only story in the game today, though, as Nicklas Lidstrom put the Red Wings' up 1-0 part way through the second period with a crazy, bounding shot from half-ice that found it's way past Dan Ellis and into the back of the net. A friend of mine assures me that Lidstrom is not quite human and I think I believe her. You can see the video evidence below:
Not human indeed.

This closes out the season for the Predators, who made a good run at the President's trophy winners and put all the Detroit haters on the edge of their seats with their thrilling Game 4 win and last second goal to send Game 5 into overtime. Dan Ellis was flat out awesome despite giving up the goofy goal to Lidstrom, making 95 saves in their Game 5 and Game 6 losses and keeping the Preds in both games. In the end though, Nashville simply couldn't match up with the pure firepower the top seed from the West brings to the table, and so they'll be the second team from the conference to head home this off-season.