-- I went back and forth on the goaltender interference call on Tomas Holmstrom at first, but there's no way that should be whistled. I don't see how the referee could have seen for sure that Holmstrom's stick impeded Marc-Andre Fleury, which it did not. From his angle, it could have looked that way, but that's what made it a bad call. He called what he thought happened, not what actually happened. And obviously, Holmstrom is a marked man, to the point of being singled out, to the point of changing the game for the worse.
-- Mikael Samuelsson is a better player when he's got confidence. I'm hoping for a few excellent games from him after that Game 1 showing, which he was remarkable.
-- Brian Rafalski played an active, heady game and was especially noticeable early on.
-- The Valtteri Filppula line did a good job when on the ice against the Evgeni Malkin line. The Red Wings have to be the deepest defensive team in the NHL. It's tough to find a bad defensive forward.
-- Andreas Lilja is looking like a good replacement for Chris Chelios.
-- Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg have an interesting pride battle with Marian Hossa, Malkin and Sidney Crosby. All of those guys are really going at each other. Although they're not as good defensively, the Penguin forwards are good enough skaters and strong enough to bother Datsyuk and Zetterberg physically. But Datsyuk and Zetterberg obviously won those battles in Game 1.