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Negativity and Pulkamania, 2 things that don't go together brother. NHL...Whatcha gonna do when the Pulkster runs wild on you?

Next is Helene St. James to move on and start writing about Babcock and the Leafs.

I'm not sure what losing a scout has to do with Babcock. His involvement with scouts would be minimal at best. Shanahan would be the one who poached him, but I think it has more to do with him getting a promotion he was never going to get in Detroit. The Wings have Hakan as their director of European Scouting and I'm sure Shanahan was well aware that Vuori has spent the past few years learning from him. Who better to choose to become your own director of European Scouting?

A Larkin like transition? Give me a break. Larkin played a grand total of 6 games in Grand Rapids. Sure, he looked great, but anyone can pull that off in such a small sample size, especially coming off an unbelievable college season, World Juniors, and World Championships. I'm willing to bet that Mantha could have pulled off similar numbers in the 2014 playoffs with the Griffins, if Val d'Or didn't go on such a deep run, winning the President's Cup and going on to play for the Memorial Cup. Confidence is huge in any professional sport, and hockey is no different. Larkin was coming into the Calder Cup playoffs oozing confidence, just as Mantha would have a year prior. Instead, Mantha came into training camp last offseason oozing confidence and looking great, and then fractured his right tibia, and as a result was out for 2 months, missing the Red Wings training camp and the Griffins training camp, and just never got his game on track after that. Some act as such a serious leg injury is no big deal, and he should have immediately regained form. I do think he had a rough season, and he probably should have ended the regular season on a more positive note, or at the very least should have been more of an impact by playoffs. However, I do believe that we will see a completely different player in Grand Rapids this season. I expect he will hover at or around a point per game pace the entire season. Here's to hoping...

Hilarious. He absolutely should have been expected to be a top line player in GR. Even considering the injury he should have at least reached that level by the end of the year. The people critical of him now are not for the most part the same people who had such unreasonable expectations. Those people are mostly the people defending him. Like LW. Last summer Mantha was better than Franzen and should be on the top line in Detroit, now it was too much to expect top line in GR. BS. 20th overall pick, 20-yo, great size, excellent skating, exceptional offensive skills, goal-per-game in the Q...we absolutely had a right to expect something better than 60th overall pick, undersized, 18-yo, first year in NA, Tomas-Tatar-level production. He was disappointing. Not just relative to the more ridiculous expectations, but even to the reasonable ones. I didn't even expect him to be dominant in the AHL. But top-liner? 25-ish goals? 50-ish points? Maybe some consideration for AHL ROTY? Without a doubt. The injury was a setback, but he should have been coming around late in the year at least. Instead he got even worse. He was disappointing. He knows, the coaches know it, management knows it, fans know it. Some just want to deny it because they think saying anything critical about a player they like is the end of the world or something. It isn't. He was disappointing. And that's OK. Doesn't make him a bust. Doesn't even mean he won't eventually be as good as thought prior to last season. It's just one season.

Yeah well. I'd rather lose a scout and a coach or two than watch Glendenning and Miller play 18 minutes a night again this season.

I'm so glad that I'm willing to call that number for the Delhi call girls.

Excuses. Bottom line is he had a disappointing first AHL season no matter how you want to paint it. Devellano isn't wrong, he's just dumb for saying it to the media. Clearly the organization had higher hopes for his first season. No I think he's still untouchable. He's just trending downward. However, If plays the same way again this coming season I think he's gonna start becoming touchable real quickly.

Also he didn't have a proper training camp like the other guys. He started it, got injured before the season started then had to get back into shape while healing his injured leg. The fact he scored .5 PPG is pretty good, he was also playing on the 3rd/4th lines for awhile as well getting limited minutes and being stuck with Potter didn't help. Edit: Forgot he was also injured before the playoffs as well.

Yeah they would. Goals everytime. No time to react.

I see this working a well as an unsinkable ship and the best dirigible ever.

The two sides of this debate probably aren't as far apart as the arguing might look. It's just easier to argue against an exaggerated version of the opposing opinion. Like you're doing here. Histrionics are fun. I don't think anyone is making excuses, just disagreeing with your assessment of him and/or what is required to be a successful player.Even those saying 'who cares if he's one dimensional" I'm sure only mean that it'd be fine if all he's ever good at is scoring goals. Not that lacking a complete two-way game is not a weakness nor that he shouldn't work to be as good as he can in other areas. There are plenty of effective players in the NHL who aren't that good defensively. The Wings are fortunate in that almost all of our forwards are pretty solid (or better) defensively, but that just means that we can afford a few who are less so. Would he be a star, team-leader, next-Datsyuk? Not very likely, but he could be a valuable and effective secondary scorer. And some of us disagree with how one-dimensional he is anyway. He'd probably be a liability against top competition right now, but given a bit of time I don't think so. No more so that Tatar or Nyquist are now at any rate. And his offensive game is much more well-rounded than those saying he is just a slapshot contend. In the AHL he is a dynamic offensive producer. He creates his own opportunuties, not wholly unlike Tatar, Nyquist, Zetterberg, etc. He's not just a product of defensive ineptitude, weak goaltending, and teammates feeding him one-timers. If that was true, every decent player would light up the AHL. Can he figure out how to do it in the NHL? Let's see. Let's see, before we conclude that he can't. And for all this talk that he can't create space or get open or get his shot off...and it's true he does need to improve in that respect, and should as he gets used to the competition level...but even now he shoots at a higher rate than anyone on our team, higher than most of the league in fact.

What's being pointed out are certain posters perception of his flaws. Whether that perception is actually reality is the big question. You are entitled to your opinion that he has flaws, just as krsmith17 is entitled to his opinion that his flaws are being overblown. Personally I have not watched enough AHL games to truly have a strong opinion on the matter. I will say this though, people on here have a tendency to exaggerate things, and once a narrative is created for a player, its very hard to break that narrative (ie. Quincey sucks).

Brilliant! I didn't even notice the crowd until the 2nd time I looked or it! Awesome! I was searching hard for the famous Hudler face or Doan face, but still absolutely brilliant!

I thought that was all of our prospects until the collective decides they're the worst after 15 games or so?

OMG, what an awesome photoshop opportunity that is!! MINIONS!! I generally don't mind the poaching, especially in Babcock's case, as people prefer working with certain people and others are offered a promotion, but it's kinda weird that it's the only time people tend to leave our front office.

Well that someone isn't me... I do however believe he could potentially become a 25-30 goal scorer once he reaches his prime... that while not being a liability on the ice, like some people believe he is / will be... He's not nearly as bad defensively as some are claiming, and we don't need all defensive dynamos up front. We could however use a pure goal scorer with an unbelievable shot up front...

Next thing you know Shanny will show some real chutzpah and offer Craig Janney a job.

I doubt very much that Babcock is hiring scouts, Shanhan wanting to poach from the Redwings scouting team is entirely different and very likely.

Hey I'm glad Babcock and his minions are gone

Looks like another useless let's bash the best coach in all of hockey kind of thing. It takes 2 to tango and sadly for us the guy wanted to move on just be happy it wasn't Hakan

Meh. If he was Andersson's right hand man, then technically Andersson was more responsible for drafting those guys. But yeah. Babcock and the Leafs can go get f***ed any time know.

I honestly think the Mantha backlash was completely based on the fact that Wings fans haven't had too many first round, blue chip prospects to boner over in 20 years. We were starving for one. So when Mantha came along, the hype got out of hand.

Outstanding article on Mantha from WiiM http://www.wingingitinmotown.com/2015/7/23/8903521/the-demise-of-anthony-mantha-has-been-greatly-exaggerated-detroit-red-wings

Nice to see the Leafs pillage another organization for a ******* change.