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I really wish people would stop with this, "well we haven't done ANYTHING in the past 5 years", blah, blah, blah... How many times does it have to be said and how the hell is it not obvious to some of you that the Detroit Red Wings are in the midst of their second rebuild in the past two decades, without once missing the playoffs?... That is not that impressive at all... I mean, most teams in the league have done that haven't they?... NOPE, not even close... The Wings streak is at 23 consecutive seasons without missing the playoffs, after that there is the Sharks at 10, Penguins at 8, Bruins 7, Blackhawks 6, Kings 5, Rangers 4, Blues 3, and no other team has made the playoffs more than the past 2 seasons straight. That is absolutely insane when you actually think about it... To continue to make the playoffs for this long, through two rebuilds is nothing short of astonishing, and I'm willing to bet that the Wings make it at least another 7 years to beat the Boston Bruins 29 year playoff streak from '67-'96. People that do not see the brightness at the end of this tunnel, that has been the past 5 years, are pessimists to their truest form. How can you not be thrilled as a Red Wings fan, not only because of the "stupid, not-at-all-impressive streak", but because of all of the talent that we have coming up over the next few seasons. To say that there is no way that Jurco can turn out to be as good as Datsyuk is very bleak in my opinion. Jurco has accomplished more than Datsyuk had accomplished at the tender age of 21. Jurco has already got his first taste of NHL action and played quite well for a rookie, while Datsyuk wasn't even drafted until he was 20 and didn't play his first season in the NHL until he was 23. They both have great hands, obviously Pav gets the edge there though since he has better hands than anyone that has ever played the game. Jurco definitely has the size advantage, as he is 3 inches taller and already closing in on 200 lbs., whereas Pav is around the same now but came into the league as a rookie somewhere between 175-180 lbs. I also think that Nyquist has the potential to become somewhat of a Zetterberg lite. Nyquist is slightly behind Zetterberg in production at the same age but he does have a slightly better point percentage. In Zetterberg's first two seasons he put up 87 points in 140 games, 0.621 points per game, while in Nyquist' first three partial seasons, he put up 61 points in 97 games, 0.628 points per game. Gus has the same drive and determination that makes Hank such a world class player, and he also seems to have the same type of leadership qualities. They're both approximately the same height and weight when they were the same age, while Hank has put on some muscle over the years, Gus still has plenty of room to grow as well. The Wings definitely have a few potential future stars up front in Nyquist, Jurco and Mantha, but to go along with that I think we have much more depth coming than we have ever had before. Sheahan, Tatar, Pulkkinen and Athanasiou are all potential top 6 players, and Nastasiuk, Bertuzzi and Callahan could be great 3rd and 4th line players. I'm not quite sure where Janmark, Nosek, and Frk will fit in but they're quality players as well. Then you have guys like Larkin and Turgeon that we just drafted that I think could be along their way in about five years as well. On the back end we also have a few potential future stars in Smith, DeKeyser and Sproul as well as guys like Ouellet, Backman, Marchenko and Jensen. And of course between the pipes, we have Mrazek coming along quite nicely, and he could be a future top 5 goalie in this league. I realize that all of this, as of right now, is just "potential" but with as many high end prospects that we have, at least a few of them have to turn into quality players. We have one of the best prospect pools in the entire league because we have one of the best general managers in the league, as well as top scouts and development teams in the league (credit to Holland for putting this management team together). I'll never understand some of the constant negative attitudes in here, but to each their own. What a boring forum this would be without you guys lol.

Holland has done that in the past. Del Zotto would have been a decent choice over Quincey, for example, but for whatever reason he hasn't wanted to in recent years. Maybe that's more on Babcock though.

Just watched all 69 minutes and 14 seconds of this at work. I'll blame you SOW when I'm unemployed.

Where neither understands each other and anyone watching can only glean half of what is actually going on *hilarity ensues* I imagine like a weird three stooges, except there's two of them, and one is the Swedish Chef from Sesame street. Man... really need hockey to start soon...

Who told you that, Bowman? To Feds credit he did very well playing defense, and i believe the Caps experimented with him at D late in his career when they didn't have enough Dmen on the roster.

From the same user who made the video number9 posted...

I think something that really works in Pav's favor regarding the HOF is the idea that most people have regarded him as at least a top-5 player in the league for the better half of a decade now. For 2-3 years, a lot of people considered him the best player in the game. I think that reputation will give him a big push.

LOL "not even sniffing at the third round dice almost 6 years" implies that they haven't been close for 6 years. They were literately 1 goal away from the third round 15 months ago.

This is awesome. Sidney who?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmGu6AVFRgc I really like this one. The guy who made it matched the music perfectly to Datsyuks goals. Gets me pumped for hockey season.

Are you actually serious?

Ya, two of the best players in the league aren't comparable to two of the best players of the league. They were in a much higher scoring league then the one z and d grew up in, no one will ever rack up the points those guys did anymore. But we replaced them with some "possible top 6 complimentary pieces"

You need good scouting and proper development in order to get value from your draft picks, as well as a solid plan (looking at you, Oilers), but a high percentage of the elite players come from the top half of the first round. Last year's top 8 scorers were first round picks, 3 first overall, a 2nd, a 5th, then 19th, 22nd, and 28th. Looking at the top 30 scorers, only 6 were taken outside of the first round, and 18 of the 30 were top 10 picks. Looking at defensemen by TOI/gm, 12 of the top 30 were first rounders, and 7 were taken in the second. Given that 18 year old defensemen are harder to project, that makes sense, but it still shows that you're far more likely to get a #1 defenseman in the first round than you are in any other round. They didn't. Yzerman and Fedorov were better players.

I remember when z and d would never turn into Stevie and feds...

The red wings are far and away the best draft team and its widely recognized as such even by other teams announcers. We don't get high end draft spots cause we never miss the playoffs. So no we didn't get a toews, Kane, ovie, Malkin, Crosby, Tavares, or so on. We make our own superstars. Nyquist WILL be a star, so there you go, Tatar may be a grind it top 6 tough as nails type player, but the goose is loose, and everyone knows it. We won a cup through the draft basically. All these teams tanking to win... The same three teams keep winning and the sabres, islanders, Panthers, oilers, as well as others always getting these top 5 picks but somehow never win are getting top end talents every year. We keep winning without tanking.

But can they do magic?

Have people forgotten that Fedorov played defense, scored 56 goals while winning the Selke, and often played with Shawn Burr on a TKO line shadowing the opposition's top players? Fedorov was a BEAST on both ends of the ice. He was very much a complete player.

Oh but of course their cash cow HUT will still be there, so they can have their $20 player card pack deals and bank on those every week. EA has proven time and time again that money is top priority. I've been playing versus since Sega Genesis hockey games. For me it's run it's course, that's why I loved EASHL so much because it was an entirely different way to play the game. With full human control, there is no "glitching" or exploiting the AI goaltender all game with short side high corner goals that go in 100% of the time if you shoot from the right area of the ice. With the human element there, 6 human players versus 6 human players, it's true competition and team work to succeed and win games. NHL 13 and 14 combined, I had about 2,700 EASHL games played, got my Legend 3 card within the first 6 weeks of the games release and played it around 5 times a week. Now I gotta find something new to binge out on when i'm bored at night and looking to game.

Mmmmmmm Emma.

i started using tapatalk app to access this site on my phone. works much better than trying to access the full site on the phone. seems like you got a handle on the rest of it from the posts above.