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It drives me nuts that not a single member of the press corps has asked or written about this Weiss situation. Khans busy speculating about all-star ballots, while St. James is making up trade rumors involving Tatar. Neither, apparently, have the time to ask actual questions about real team issues. Garbage.

Mantha still has his hands full adjusting to the AHL. Pulkkinen has paid his dues in the AHL, is tearing it up down there, and is most likely not only to not be a liability on an NHL team, but potentially contribute. I can't possibly see Holland bring up Mantha over Pulkkinen given how the two have performed so far this year.

I agree. At this point I don't want to see any kind of trade that involves significant pieces. Firstly, because I have a lot of faith in our kids. Secondly, because I have almost no faith in our coach using guys properly. Wouldn't it suck to lose Tatar for Myers and then have Babs utilize him in some asinine way? And it's not like that's out of the realm of possibility. I'd waive Kindl (or trade for picks), promote Ouellet, and (maybe) add a second tier, right shot, defenseman at the deadline, if the asking price isn't too much.

I've never seen anything that says Weiss isn't a defensively responsible forward. Maybe not "heavy" on the puck... but maybe people get confused about his two-way play because he used to be on one of the s***tiest teams in the league. On top of that, I would be amazed if Holland ever offered a 5 million dollar+ contract to ANY FORWARD that isn't at least a decently responsible two-way player.

Any scouting report I've ever seen on Weiss mentions his two way game and defensive responsibilities. But I don't know either. That's why I'm irritated that nobody has bothered to ask or write about it. You've got a 5 million dollar player getting 7-10 minutes a night, AND he wasn't playing bad before getting benched. It's a head scratcher.

Well, guys, I guess that's it. The season is over. It's been fun and exciting. Hopefully we can build on this. We've seen some improvements, most notably in the department of "not taking stupid penalties, especially in the neutral zone". We can take down the Blue and Silver decorations and put up the Red and White. Mike, you can get the lights, Jimmy can take care of the streamers, I'll clean up the snack kitchen. The rest of you guys can tidy up the mancave and get the beer cans/bottles out for recycling. Don't worry about picking up the flags. The officials will be over to take care of that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about adding an offensive defenseman. We struggle to score primarily because our defensemen struggle to move the puck and shoot the puck and put up points. Ericsson is a shutdown defenseman. Quincey is a shutdown defenseman. DeKeyser is a shutdown defenseman. We want to play the way we played in '08 and '09, but we don't have the blue line for it. We had one straight-up shutdown defenseman in that top four (Stuart) and three all-star offensive defensemen (Lidstrom, Rafalski, Kronwall). Now we just have Kronwall. That's not nearly good enough. That's why we run around in our end. It's why we trudge through the middle of the ice, often settling for just clearing the red line so we can dump it in and get a line change. It's why our power play often sucks. It's why we aren't a high-scoring team. But we also don't have enough scoring depth up front. Even when we had Lidstrom and Rafalski and we'd just won the Cup, we thought it was worth adding Hossa. That gave us Datsyuk in his prime, Zetterberg in his prime, Franzen in his prime, Hossa in his prime, and good secondary scorers in Samuelsson, Cleary, and Filppula. (And even then, we came up short that year.) At present, we have an old Datsyuk, and old Zetterberg, Nyquist (can he be a major factor in the playoffs?), Tatar (can he be a major factor in the playoffs?), and sometimes an old Franzen (when he feels like showing up). Jurco is a possession monster, but he's not a significant scoring threat (yet). Helm's not a goal scorer. Abdelkader's having a career year, but he's not a goal scorer. Miller and Glendening don't score. The jury's out on Weiss. Sheahan's a stud, but he's not a goal scorer. I get that adding a scoring winger isn't going to fix this team's fundamental problems, but there's no such thing as too much scoring depth. If we're not going to put our late first-round pick towards a top-end defenseman like Yandle, if we're not going to use it on a rental like Green, if we're going to use it to select a pimple-faced teenager who won't be a real factor for the Wings until 2019, I think we should consider adding a gritty right-shot scoring winger. If we're loading up for a deep run (and I'm not sure that we are), better safe than sorry. Depth, depth, depth. It matters. And at some point we do have to add some righties. That's another reason why we don't move the puck as well as we'd like - everyone's a left shot. It's a wonder we move the puck as well as we do, actually.

I disagree with this to a point (although I wouldn't mind swapping a left handed shooter for a right handed shooter). Adding 20 goal scorers is nice, but I don't think the issue with scoring comes down to who we have on forward, how our forwards are playing, or even the coaching schemes that they're playing under. The way I'm seeing our games play out, it all comes down to the fact that we don't have any real offensive threat aside from Kronwall from our defense. If you look at goals scored (or even points) from the blue line, the Wings are close to the bottom of the league, especially for a playoff team. Other teams know this and they're playing more aggressively down low in the defensive end instead of playing more tightly to our defenders, which gives our forwards less time and space to work with. (For the record I think this is more of the causative agent why the Wings are labeled as a perimeter offense team, and not the notion that we need more power forwards). And if we play it back to the blueline, they know as well as we do the puck likely isn't getting to the net. They can afford to give our defenders that extra second with the puck. I even think that our coaching staff has tried to adapt to this weakness by using our defense more as an outlet to get the puck from one side of the zone to the other, instead of forcing a shot through (I have no solid data or quotes to back this up, I've just noticed a lot more winger->defender->opposite winger/opposite defender plays than winger->defender-> shot on net plays this season. I could be entirely wrong on this). Anyway, if we spend the assets to get Perron, we're down those assets, we're down the roster player that Perron is replacing, we're down that chemistry the players have established until Perron gets comfortable, and there's no guarantee that Perron even gets comfortable in our system. And in light of how other teams defend against us, I'm not even confident saying that Perron is a 20 goal scorer here. Acquiring him certainly won't change how other teams defend against us, although it might make it easier to rip a one-timer from the half wall on the left side, or break out of our zone under pressure from the left side, which does have its values. On the other hand, if we can somehow acquire someone who can, at the very least, put pucks on the net from the blue line with some consistency, I think we will see production go up throughout the entire team, because in addition to what the defender can make happen (goals, shots that are tipped in, etc) I think it will open up some space for our forwards as opposing wingers will have more to worry about from our blueline for them to cheat on their coverage. So I guess my main beef is that I don't think acquiring Perron will make much of a difference in the trajectory of this team, and I'd rather see our assets go towards an offensive defensman, whom I do think can be a real difference maker.

As someone who deals with health issues (kidney stones, back pain...) on a daily basis, I can understand and respect his decision. Ultimately, it's just a website, and hockey is just a game. Health and family and quality of life is all that really matters. I hope everything works out for him. He'll be in my thoughts and prayers.

Agree about the defenseman. I've been beating this point to death lately but when I watch other teams I realize how often defenseman usually get shots on net from the point and how crucial that is. I've just gotten used to the Wings not being able to do it. I think Dekeyser is playing great overall, but his slapshot swing is so awkward it looks like he's gonna fall over half the time. Ericsson's windup is slow as molasses. Kronwall has turned into the new shinpad assassin. It's always great to have depth up front, but I have to think that the most beneficial move is getting a right handed defenseman who can move the puck and get shots through from the point. It's pathetic right now.

I mean, maybe there's a perfectly good explanation for it. My problem isn't (necessarily) that Weiss is on the fourth line, it's that nobody is even asking why. And given his production up until the demotion, you'd think the dramatic reversal in this fortunes might be of interest to a beat reporter.

Well then there goes that theory. No idea how God-zil-la didn't win it. The Toronto fans knew what was up.

Godla is goalie of the tournament imo. He's playing outstanding. He will get a standing o when he's announced player of the game for Slovakia

Canada's looking better now. Started slow. Shots 14-2 in the third. Slovak goalie standing on his head and playing amazing.

if we trade Tatar for a right handed version of Ericsson, we are in trouble.

Why would you trade Smith without bringing a significant asset back?

Miller stood on his head, our special teams failed us, and man oh man oh man do we need help on the back end.

If they can't get offense from the players they have then it's a systems problem or the defense needs upgrades. It's not the forwards.

I saw a fantasy team once named "Teemu's Salami"

Seems like everyone is acting like the Wings got skunked 8-0. Yes the final was not flattering but it was padded with two EN goals. For 50 of the 60 minutes the Wings were the better team by quite a bit. The one reason they lost is because Miller played out of his mind last night. When one of the hottest goalies in the league has that performance you just have to tip your cap and move on. They played ok and far better than the Boston game. I will agree that though that Franzen is lazy and he sucks.

The announcement said it was due to health reasons, and that he doesn't want media or purchase requests about the site. So no, nobody can help him run it. I'm hoping that he's not selling it because he wants to restart it once his health issues are over. I know that it takes a lot of work, and it was mostly him doing it all.

I've kept in touch with Matt on and off for years (for a short time he wrote about the Red Wings' prospects on this site before the turn of the century and branching out to Rivals.com and eventually RWC). We worked a bit on CapGeek together and this is truly sad news. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. I know the decision made tonight was an extremely difficult one for him....

Sad thing, Mike, is that I once did have one shot, one opportunity to grab everything I ever wanted. I took that shot, that opportunity. He screamed like a girl and the restraining order is still in effect.

The league needs to let the Ave's host it at Mile High Stadium against the Wings. Bring back one of the greatest rivalries in Hockey! Imagine the Alumni Game they could have if they bring back the Alumni Game (Not sure why there wasn't one for Caps/Hawks), has an Alumni Game ever had a line brawl break out before?