Making history

ERIK HOHENTHANER SPORTS WRITER Our beloved Detroit Red Wings are in the record books with a 3-1 victory over the Dallas Stars on Tuesday with their 21st straight victory at Joe Louis Arena.

The Red Wings tied the 1929-30 Boston Bruins and the 1975-76 Philadelphia Flyers for the longest home winning streaks in NHL history with their 20th straight win Sunday against the Flyers.

The remarkable thing about the streak is, as good as Detroit has been playing at home and in general, they are still just three points ahead of St. Louis for the Central Division lead. Nashville is just eight points behind the Wings and Chicago is 13 back, as of Friday.

Detroit plays in the toughest division in hockey as four teams from the division would be in the playoffs, as of today. As good as the Wings have been playing, one small slump could see them stumble down the standings.

The Red Wings began their streak on Nov. 5 with a 5-0 decision over the Anaheim Ducks. They have won three of their games during the streak with a shootout and they have won the last three games during the streak with a goalie that started the season in the minors. Joey McDonald took over the backup job from Ty Conklin and starting goalie Jimmy Howard has been out with a broken pinkie.

The Red Wings have been the model of consistency over the last 20 years in the NHL and teams around the league try and emulate the Wings from the front office down to the players on the ice. Tough luck

Last Saturday, our area had three teams at the Ortonville-Brandon Individual Wrestling Districts. North Branch, Lapeer West and Lapeer East were competing and looking to advance as many wrestlers as possible to the wrestling regionals yesterday at Mt. Pleasant.

To say these four teams were going to have a tough road would be an understatement. Standing in the way would be teams such as Corunna, who has been a consistently tough team for at least a decade, Goodrich, who bumped up from Div. 3 this year and has won several state titles over the past decade, and St. Johns, the No. 1 ranked team in the state and No. 3 ranked team in the country.

St. Johns dominated the tournament, advancing 13 of the 14 wrestlers they entered. The Red Wings lost only one finals match and will likely advance most of those 13 kids to the state tournament.

The Panthers still had a fine day, as they led the area with six kids advancing to regionals followed by North Branch’s four and Lapeer East’s two.

Our area team’s will go from one of the toughest districts in the state to one of the toughest regionals with the addition of ranked teams, Greenville and Sparta. The kids that move on to state will certainly be battle tested and ready. ehohenthaner@mihomepaper.com