Leaderboard

Red Wings: 1. Howe 2. Yzerman 3. Lidstrom No offense to Lidstrom (and I don't think he'd be offended), but it was Yzerman who helped make Lidstrom and everyone else on the 1997, 1998, and 2002 teams Champions. It was his work ethic that guys like Lidstrom, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Holmstrom, Ozzie, etc. carried into the 2008 Cup. Yzerman's 2002 playoffs was only something you'd see in the movies.

Of course no one wants to see a talented player injured, I think the point he was trying to make was that Crosby himself is not the reason the sport is great. Hockey is awesome and Crosby just happens to be one individual in a long line of people who have been born with a natural gift for playing the sport. Crosby does not make the NHL, the NHL simply gives people like Crosby a place to showcase the skills they have. P.S. 100th post

Sorry guys. I was just practicing for my mid-season form.

I know with certainty that this hit him very hard, and it is going to take a while to heal. I have a feeling he and Pasha both are going to be hard pressed to keep their minds on the game, and will be rather subdued next weekend. For those of us who will be there, a kind word passed on can't hurt.

I knew it! We're not making the playoffs this season.

Wow, straw man, wow. If you're going to go there, I guess I will to while further defending my position on this matter. The ideas of holding Amway responsible for their part in running a sleazy, manipulative business and holding individuals joining in that business responsible for their actions are not mutually exclusive. By no means would I suggest that all the Amway "IBO's" are any more victims of Amway's schemes as they are their own greed and gullibility. Ask any friend of mine that's gotten involved and then out of Amway if I ever gave them a pass and they'll tell you flat out that I didn't hold any punches in making them acknowledge what went profoundly wrong in their thought process. The main colossal flaw in your perspective is very simple to illustrate. Just consider drug dealers and drug addicts. Is anyone in their right mind going to pronounce the drug dealer innocent by virtue of capitalism and the drug addicts guilty because they made the choice to buy the drugs? Does that make any sense at all? I don't think so. Few things in life are black and white. Is it not possible that both have slipped up here? And in an effort to address a general problem, is it not reasonable to want to look for root causes? Is it not reasonable to objectively evaluate the whole of a problem to better understand it? Surely no more unreasonable than seemingly suggesting that we shouldn't criticize Amway, again, seemingly by virtue of the positive economic and social benefits of the capitalist system in general, as a wrong-doer. The only thing black and white about this topic to me is that there are a lot of people running the scheme and placing their hope on the scheme that are making harmful choices. The primary difference between the runners and the participants though is that for the most part, in the short-term, an Amway "IBO" is making choices that hurt themselves. But Amway's decision to resort to a business model that clearly is centered around exploiting people's weaknesses and circumventing people's typical consumer defenses. It's a business model that is underhanded and predatory. And lumping Amway in with capitalists is disrespectful to the essence of capitalism. The product Amway is most profiting on is (false) hope. The "products" you supposedly join Amway to sell are almost entirely purchased by and for the Amway IBO's, though internally you're simply "investing into your business." All the while you're also pouring more money into your Amway membership, a never-ending supply of "motivational and educational" material to help you grow your business, conferences to further inspire you, and if you manage to wind up sticking with it long enough to get some people under you, you're buying their "consumer products" too, and by that I mean far too often, the people under you that you're purchasing the vitamins for don't pay up. Nothing you can do about that. Oh well, just chalk it up to an "investment in your business." Bottom line, Amway is anything but a commendable capitalist venture. No corporation or business is perfect, but usually most businesses are actually trying to offer an actual product or service that is of some tangible substance to someone. And what truly is great about capitalism is that if you have a great product that a lot of people want, you will be rewarded for producing and selling it, and I take no issue with this concept at all. But again, when looked at wholistically and objectively, it's clear that Amway is not producing a product that offers consumers much in terms of utility. Indeed, their primary product, the hope and the dream, is essentially vaporware, to use the word generally. Furthermore, they have engineered their system to trip people's defenses up by infiltrating organizations, churches, clubs, basically any group of people that already has a built-in trust factor. They use that trust and social pressure against people, as well as every other little trick to take advantage of the less noble aspects of human nature. They know this. They've spent years crafting their "drug," and just as much time pin-pointing the easiest targets. They know exactly what they're doing. Again, it's predatory and underhanded. You can easily dig deeper and mine up plenty of information to suggest that their ill-informed financial choices hurt the society and economy on whole as well. Just like all the terrible real-estate loans given out in the late-90's that came back to haunt us in 2008, people made poor personal decisions that ended up hurting the economy and society on whole. In that case as well, it's absurd and illogical to only blame the banks for offering the loans or only blame those taking the loans for taking more than they could expect to reasonably handle. All parties involved made poor decisions. I don't care who you are or what side you're on, if you're making poor decisions, you're part of the problem. By this reasonable logic, I conclude that Amway is very much part of the problem. They are not the whole of the problem and their part in it does not minimize the role of personal responsibility at all. But they are the purveyors of a blatantly crooked business model that has been shown time and time again to have a tremendous negative effect on people's lives. That matter has nothing to do with capitalism, and as clearly illustrated, the logic that justifies their actions by virtue of capitalism opens plenty of doors to effects that I absolutely guarantee would send you crying to your knees if they came knocking on your doorstep. Quite simply, Amway does infinitely more harm than good for society. Most any reasonable, objective, informed person can logically understand and defend that accusation. To many of us, the logical side of it as well as the emotional side of having to deal with friends and family who's lives were devastated by joining Amway leave us with nothing but contempt and disgust for Amway. That is why we don't want to have a team we love have much of anything to do with Amway if at all possible, let alone having to incessantly read and hear "the Detroit Red Wings presented by Amway." The Detroit Red Wings, one of the classiest organizations in all of sports, presented by Amway, a company always bound to be one of the scummiest on any list of sleazy businesses. The whole idea is nothing short of utterly disgraceful.

It's a PROSPECTS tournament... Nothing to do with the red wings NHL roster

Maybe if the boys stop trying to fight like a bunch of goons and actually play a little hockey and try to develop into real NHL hockey players, they'd do better. Instead they want to be a bunch of mindless goons, chest pound, fist pump, and play with big egos. Very un-Red Wing like class of players. Winning >>>> Fighting