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the wings will win the stanley cup

Chris Osgood will have a GAA of 0.01 and Aaron Downey will score 50 goals!!!

Wings win the Cup. Everyone else cries.

Zetterberg and Franzen both reach the 40 goal mark... Datsyuk reaches the 100 point mark... Howard reaches the 40 win mark... We Win The Stanley Cup... Franzen wins MVP.... Lidstrom retires on top... we sign Doughty to an 8 mill + offer sheet in the off season... be about it...

I mentioned it several times on this board before, but it was probably about 6 or 7 years ago, I went a game at the Joe and Pavel had really just started bursting onto the scene (it was only like his 3rd or 4th season with the Wings full time), well anyways, like I said, he had been with the Wings for several years, so I was fully aware of who he was and was just starting to get an idea of just HOW good he was/could be... we went to the game early for warm-ups and after almost everyone else was done with warm-ups and skating back off, he skated into the crease at about the top of the crease and repeatedly (at least 20 times in a row) shot the puck so that it hit the side post, then crossbar, then back down to his stick *ding, ding, dink* , like a double bank shot in billiards... Like I said he did this about 20 times WITHOUT FAIL and without barely moving his stick more than 2 inches each time to adjust to where the puck landed... I was absolutely awe-struck at his control and hands... Fast forward to today and all the CONTINUED highlight moves and I can confidently say, WITHOUT hesitation, that Pavel Datsyuk has the single greatest puck control/hands in the history of the game... go ahead and try and argue who is/has been better? It's like the guy LITERALLY has the puck attached to his stick by a string and is a once in a lifetime (possibly history) that you will ever see a player with that ability... and DAMN are we lucky it is happening in the Winged Wheel...

Another brilliant Pasha's video with an appropriate lyrics

The NHL needs to offer expansion teams for these players. Yes, I know we all hate expansion, but think about it seriously. If we take the current group of foreign players who are in the NHL, then we have fewer talented players. But the problem is, the foreign players overseas provide a larger percentage of that player group than we had before. So by offering the expansion teams, we keep more players here and, more importantly we keep the YOUNGER players here. Two expansion teams is all we need. The biggest question is who can we get to provide the kind of cash? Balsille, Reinsdorf, and others might be in the runnings, but who knows.

Fixed that for ya.

Who are you bumping from the third line of huds mike and cleary to move Helm up. Let the young guns play on the 4th line, hit everything that moves and chip in the occasional goal. Abby Helm Eaves is gong to be really fun to watch.

Howe taking out Pronger would warm my heart. Let's see... Lilja returns to the Wings and has a great season. Someone finally tells Pierre that he's creepy and needs to back off in an interview. If they say, "Quit rubbing your dick on my shorts." on live TV, I will be their fan for life unless it's Pronger or another untouchable. Tampa wins the Cup by beating the Wings, which causes Wings fans to experience such a paradoxical situation that LGW disbands for the summer so that we can all get extensive therapy. The Canadian government reveals the results of a super-secret DNA project from the 80's and 90's wherein they took DNA from the best to create the Ultimate Hockey Player. Excitement dies down when "Wayne" -as he is called- proves to have the hands of Bill Clement, the pugilistic skills of Wayne Gretzky, the masculinity of Pierre McGuire, the face of Mike Ricci, the speed of Derian Hatcher, and the singing talent of Darren McCarty. Someone spells Valtteri Filppula right.

Ericsson mysteriously warps into andy sutton, demolishes kane, starts a rivalry with chicago in which we dominate

Ah. I haven't looked for anything on it from YouTube, and skimming NHL Network on TV early this morning at the gym I didn't see anything on it, so I don't know what was said or not during the interview. If this is the case, I'll take that as some form of an apology towards Draper, albeit indirectly.

Watching those videos makes me really miss that rivalry. What transpired between those two teams from '96 to '02 was something I've never seen in my lifetime in any other sport, and it depresses me to think I likely won't ever see the Wings in that epic of a rivalry again.

Contraction would have this effect: Because there's an overall raise in talent per team, average salary per team rises as players seek to be paid what they're worth. Either the cap rises to accomodate this, or more (and more talented) players leave the NHL to seek what they're worth elsewhere. Likely, some combination of both. If the cap rises to accomodate this (more than just to accomodate the rate of inflation), the gap between the teams that can afford higher salaries and those who can't afford quite as much increases. This results in more teams becoming revenue losing bottom dwellers, owners eventually becoming disenfranchised (terrible pun, I know), and eventually this whittles down to the remaining relative handful of teams that can afford to invest within a reasonable range of eachother to become competitive. While this might be cute to some people, it would be a terrible degradation in terms of business and oodles of lost revenue for the league as a whole, which ultimately makes it harder to market and grow the game... On the other hand, there are a plethora of willing investors in a number of aforementioned locations. In fact, investor 'demand' is high enough at the moment that there were a normal solid investors willing to go for a failing team in the desert, with a number of them prepared to try keeping the team there for a reasonable period. This is indicator that, business-wise, the business is ready to expand. Competitiveness is still an issue, but it has improved on the whole, and I think that soon it will be close enough that the league considers a 2 team expansion. Expecting every team in the league to be financially strong at every moment is simply unrealistic. Like every other major sport, or for that matter, every other major business, the NHL and its teams are going to experience states of economic flux. Sometimes a franchise is simply badly managed for an extended period, sometimes it was never placed in a good location to begin with, sometimes the state of the economy in a particular area changes. The Wal-Mart serving the upper middle class burbs always outsells the one servicing the lower end neighborhoods even though both remain a viable business. Or a Wal-Mart moves from one part of a metro area to another in response to changing economic situations and population concentrations. This is simply the state of business. Franchises grow, shrink, change, move. Every major sport in North America goes through the same situation, and to mistake such as a sign of unhealthiness and to prevent growth on that false assumption is damaging over the long term. That said, I think there is an upper limit on how many teams there should be in terms of ability of fans to follow the game, among other limitations. 30 works (NBA, MLB), but 32 works as well (NFL) and makes for much better playoff bracketing. Considering which one of those is the current leader in North American sports, I think I know which example I'd go with.

Bold prediction - the Chicago Blackhawks will not repeat as Stanley Cup champions.

Not So Bold -Turco will be benched by the Hawks at some point during the season, though he will be given a second chance because they will have no choice. -The Rangers, in spite of offseason changes, will find a way to just barely miss the playoffs again. -Due to the current top-heavy nature of the East, Tampa Bay will slip into the playoffs. -Halak will find life in the West much more difficult and have trouble adjusting his game Bold -The Kings, Preds, and Avs (seeds 6-8 last year) will all miss the playoffs -Ovechkin will end someone's career with a cheap hit, and get a perfunctory "Superstar Suspension" that won't exceed ten games -The Caps will fire Bruce Boudreau after another first or second round exit.

Interesting enough - but only two of those (Packers/Bears and Yankees/RedSocks) have any real staying power. The fact that the Wings Av brawl was still recent in people's memories clearly had a huge inpact on that poll. I doubt it would make the top 10 today (and it shouldn't) but the two I mentioned would. Just as they would have in 1990, 1980, 1970 and so on.

ill never get enough of watching that video!!!!!! to bad if that happend now the wings would probably do nothing about it

Will Babs play Downey over Abby or Helm or Eaves? I sure the hell wouldn't ! I don't think he's going to make the Grand Rapids team!

this. the NHL needs to relocate or just cut loose the teams that are in poor markets as is, not keep expanding. this is the best league in the world, it should be competitive (especially as a goalie)

it Is simple no more teams, maybe get rid of 1 or 2 and move a few back where they came from Quebec, Hartford and Winnipeg

Absolutely not. The NHL has too many teams as it is now. Ever since the Columbus, Nashville, Minnesota, Atlanta expansion there has been a noticeable drop in the quality of the teams. Take a look at the teams of the 80's and the early to mid 90's. They were loaded with talent. There were 30 goal scorers on the third line. Plus, every team was competitive and had stars worth paying to see. What players on Nashville, Minnesota and Atlanta are worth the price of the ticket right now? Columbus has Rick Nash, otherwise they wouldn't have anyone worth watching either. If anything, the NHL needs less teams to improve as a product.

It's tough to say. Stevie definitely had his moments. It's just that there was no YouTube and they didn't really look as bad. Scraps, fights, cheapshots at the end of games seemed to be more accepted in Stevie's time as a youth. Since it's Stevie, we support him if he got cheapshotted. Thing is though, if what's his face did the same thing that Stevie did in this clip ( ), How do you think this forum would have reacted? I'm not comparing anything actually. I should've clarified. I'm just wondering if we saw Skid Mark do the same thing how this board would have reacted. If we saw him sneak behind a player that gave him a cheapshot and aim for his head how objective would we have been? Would we have dismissed him as a whiny punk or would we say his action were right?

Cause and effect between these two variables cannot be determined from this study. It is pretty obvious that there are other variables that have an effect on both hitting and winning. The first, and possibly most important, is puck possession. Teams that posses the puck tend to hit less and win more. This is, this variable is likely causing the relationship to occur between hitting and winning. There are also other factors- blowout games tend to have more fights, and there are likely more hits too (from the losing team). Also, skilled players tend to hit less; therefore an unskilled team may hit more than a skilled team.

Great article, other than Anaheim in 07 the teams that go far in the playoffs seem to be Skill>grit (id say 80% skill 20% grit) whereas the bottom teams the gap is much closer.Great find but, I have a prediction for this thread.. ...Flame on...