The pre-season wasn't kind to the Red Wings.  At one point they had lost 5 in a row, finishing with a 4-5 record before the puck dropped for real overseas on Friday afternoon.

When the real season started everyone expected this team to rise to the occasion and pull out at least one, if not two wins, against their Central Division rivals, the St. Louis Blues.

The team was headed to Sweden - homeland of Nicklas Lidstrom, Tomas Holmstrom, Henrik Zetterberg, Niklas Kronwall, Jonathan Ericsson, Johan Franzen, and Andres Lilja - and all the talk in Traverse City during training camp centered around the excitement the team felt about making this once-in-a-lifetime trip, and how they were all going to band together to win one