One does not simply walk into Detroit!

Well, it turns out that Paulie MacLean conveniently forgot to return his key to the Joe, so maybe that’s exactly what we do.

Detroit is still considered the standard of excellence for the league despite the fact that they, like almost every other team, rely on their superstars and are completely boned next year when Lidstrom is gone. The Senators have been picked by absolutely everyone, including most Sens blogs, to finish dead last in the league. Paul MacLean is quoted as saying that he hopes he’s not scared to death tonight, and Foligno says he hopes they can rally, apparently unaware that before the game starts the score is usually set at 0-0, and so there’s no need to rally from anything.

All of this to say that the 2011-2012 season, and especially the games against teams from the Western conference, are a bit like trekking into Mordor. And our Sens have nothing but their hairy feet to guide them. (Also, these days, Detroit is a little bit like Mordor for real. #jokesabouttherecession)

But you know what? Fuck all that noise. It’s a new season, and there will be plenty of time over the next 82 games to take long sobering looks at the 2012 draft. It’s the first game of the season, I have eight tallboys in my fridge that I have no intention of sharing, Foligno just turned up the Tragically Hip in the dressing room because he’s never had very good taste in music, and Filip Kuba is going to score a hat-trick tonight. Go Sens!

Keys to victory:

1) MacLean knows all of Babcock’s tricks. One of them is “play Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Nicklas Lidstrom, and Johan Franzen about 20 minutes each.” Urm…that’s a hard one to counter, actually.

2) Do what Pierre McGuire says you should do, even if it doesn’t make any sense. If I’m interpreting this list of things he says correctly, that means take your penis out and wave it around at the other team.

3) Tell Craig Anderson to make 47 saves tonight. Self explanatory.