You are reading live from the morning skate at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

A few pictures we've taken:

-Some road in downtown Detroit:

-The Ambassador Bridge over the Detroit River:

-The outside of Joe Louis Arena:

If it weren't for the markings on the arena, you wouldn't know this is where they host any sort of hockey games. It looks like a big warehouse.

-This is "Al," the octopus they hang from the rafters during games:

He's not that big in person. We throught that thing was the size of a conversion van. He's smaller than a Mini Cooper.

-When you walk in through the back entrance, this is what greets you:

-The ice:

Walking around the stands here is pretty cool. It's almost like walking around Noah's Ark at Kennywood. The floorboards creak and sink in when you step on them. The only thing missing is the plush tongue in the whale's mouth when you walk in. The floor and the seats look like they haven't been cleaned since they were installed. This is a pretty cool old barn. "Slap Shot" could've been filmed here. This isn't a big, generic, antiseptic multi-purpose facility filled with corporate suites. This is a hockey arena.

-Retired jerseys:

-Since we're doubtful he'll get a lot of facetime on Versus or NBC, Here's Mike Yeo:

-Here are the Red Wings warming up:

We haven't seen Detroit forward Johan Franzen as of this morning.

-We assure you this is former Penguins defenseman Jim Paek:

He turned his back on us everytime we tried to take his picture. He is an assistant coach with Detroit's AHL affiliate, the Grand Rapids Griffins. Since the Griffins failed to make the playoffs, the Red Wings called up several players and a few coaches and trainers to Detroit to get exposure to the NHL postseason atmosphere.

-Mike Babcock's press conference:

-Mike Lange talks to former Penguins defenseman Larry Murphy:

Murphy does television work for the Red Wings.

-Crews clean the ice:

-The Penguins begin to practice:

-The Penguins stretch:

-Marc-Andre Fleury having a chat at the bench:

-Maxime Talbot, left, and Gary Roberts chatting:

(Amazingly Talbot's body didn't explode like Ben Affleck's in "Dogma."

-Michel Therrien's press conference:

-Someone installing a camera on one of the nets:

-They still call it "Hockeytown."

-This is a storage room they keep a lot of the team's merchandise in:

-Some place in here called the Olympia Club:

By the looks of it, it's sort of like the Igloo Club at Mellon Arena.

-All of Cup-winning Red Wings teams are painted onto the walls in the bowels of the arena here. The 1954-55 team is tucked away behind a vending machine almost:

-The mullet factor has risen quite a bit here.

That's Brian Engblom on the left and Barry Melrose on the right.