"Nicklas Lidstrom spent the game in his hotel room, sick with the flu. His Red Wings teammates looked ill, too -- but they were healthy enough to show up at Bell Centre.

Despite cautions from their coach, the Wings, as coach Mike Babcock likes to put it, "got beat like a rented mule" Wednesday by the Canadiens, a struggling Eastern Conference opponent that looked like a Stanley Cup contender. They used four goals in the opening period to send the Wings into the All-Star break with a 7-2 defeat."