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I mostly agree with Custance on his thoughts on Ericsson. Most DRW fans treat E like he's completely useless and should be bought out. Which is completely exaggerated. If we had a good top3 (like Lidstrom/Raflaski/PrimeKronwall good) and Ericsson was a fourth spot, he'd be ok, and would probably even look great in bottom pairing role on that team. But that is skill-wise, the bigger issue is his contract. Imagine if Ericsson was capped at $2million. At $2 million or less I'd be thrilled with the guy. And even at $3 million I could probably make an argument that he's worth that. But at $4.25 I won't. The real problem is we've failed to draft any top4 Dmen in almost 20 years. So for a team that relies more heavily on the draft than others, this naturally leads to worse Dmen being promoted through the system due to lack of competition. Remember, in a span of 2 seasons... Holland lost the top HALF of his defense, in Lidstrom, Rafalski, and Stuart, to forces outside of his control. Ericsson was still young, and there was no way they were going to let another Dman go. Ericsson is a defensive mind, with size. Something that almost no one else brings to the table on our team. At the time of his payday we were hemorrhaging good Dmen. He capitalized on the unique position he found himself in. Should he be bought out? No. That's reserved for players that are completely useless or overpaid by huge sums. He's still serviceable even if he's overpaid by a few million. So I believe Custance is on point.... Team in need of Dmen overpaid a Dman... supply n demand, this is what happens, now we have to deal with it. Sometimes it's better to get something for your $4.25 for the next 2years, than pay $1.5 for the next four and get nothing.

I mean, I think Dave Lewis takes a lot more flack than he deserves.

I'm hoping that Blashill is the new Dave Lewis in that he ends up being the filler in between HOF coaches.

Make sure master roshi is blash please!

I completely agree. The same can be said / will likely be the case for DeKeyser. Good bottom 4 defenseman, that is expected to play above his ability. Which is the reality when you have a very weak defense corps. I think Ericsson as a 4/5 defenseman at $2-2.5M, and DeKeyser as a 3/4 defenseman at $3.5-4M would be two reasonable contracts. This is exactly why I've said countless times, and still maintain that Ericsson should be traded. I know it will never happen with Holland as GM, but there would be interest around the league for a veteran, bottom pair defenseman like E, at $2.25M ($2M retained). Whatever, it's never going to happen, but Ericsson should NOT be bought out.

I think he means, "I'm going to have to physically go around this large pylon to get the puck. Oh wait no he just passed it to me, what a moron" He thought about physically going near or around Ericsson in exhibit A

LW C RW ANTHONY MANTHA HENRIK ZETTERBERG GUSTAV NYQUIST TOMAS TATAR DYLAN LARKIN ANDREAS ATHANASIOU SCOTT WILSON FRANS NIELSEN DARREN HELM MARTIN FRK LUKE GLENDENING LUKE WITKOWSKI DEFENSIVE PAIRINGS JONATHAN ERICSSON TREVOR DALEY XAVIER OUELLET MIKE GREEN NIKLAS KRONWALL NICK JENSEN

Get in here, nerds. Don't pretend you have better things to do on a Saturday night.

And on his backhand no less. He is turning into something special for sure. BTW, don't mean to sound like a Danish fanboy here, but I am becoming more pleased with Nielsen as the season goes on. At this rate he will somewhere around like 25ish goals for the season as a 3C. Not too shabby.

I'm pretty sure they also won back to back presidents trophy too

Agreed. When you are taking over a hall of fame ridden team that is coming off a cup, there is really only one direction to take a team. The sweep against the Ducks was hard to take, but they dominated the entire Western Conference that year in the playoffs. Didn't the Wild only score 1 goal in the entire series! Not saying the guy was a great coach, but he was definitely made a scapegoat.

Lmao can you imagine if they had to send him down or trade him. Who would even take him? If he does end up being a regular scratch, his contract is an overpay. Ken Holland won this trade 100%

The kids are alright.

Bro is there like a tl;dr to this

I mostly agree with these assessments. Not surprising, as we seem to agree on most things. I've always believed Mantha has very real all-start potential. He's really starting to blossom this season, but Holland and Blashill would probably say he has to continue to grow and improve and find ever-higher levels of excellence...and I would agree with that. Teams aren't truly keying in on him yet, aren't gameplanning around shutting him down -- and they won't start doing so unless/until he has a big breakout season like Larkin did in his rookie campaign. So, even if he scores 30+ goals this season, he'll still have a lot to prove. It'll only open the door to the ultimate test, which is the challenge of scoring 30+ goals every year when you're a marked man on every single shift of every single game. The best of the best scorers are the ones who are guaranteed to put up a ton of points every season despite every player in the league actively wanting a piece of them. I would settle for Franzen 2.0, but I think if Mantha doesn't get complacent and/or suffocated by the attention and tight-checking of every team's best players (assuming he does enough to warrant such treatment), he can become one of the absolute best wingers in the league. I'm with you on Larkin needing to attack the net more. At the same time, it seems pretty clear that he's trying to grow as a playmaker and establish himself as a dependable two-way top-six NHL centerman, so I'm ok with him backing off on the dagger thrusts at this point in his development. AA is still trying to do too much on his own. I'd like to see him work the standard curl-back-and-pass into his zone entries more. Enter the zone with speed and force the D to back in, curl back along the wall and look to hit a speeding trailer with a pass. That's a high-level way of using speed to create space for yourself and your teammates. Being dangerously speedy isn't all about South-North play and getting around defensemen in one-on-one situations. I don't think AA is a stupid or selfish player, I think it's just a learning curve thing. He's used to being able to outskate people and deke them out, and he's used to that being enough to get the job done. At the NHL level, it isn't enough to get the job done. It took Datsyuk a few years to really put it all together. Svechnikov has to be better than he's been so far this season. Simple as that. To be fair, though, he's only 21 and he only has one AHL season under his belt and he's coming off of what I strongly suspect was a concussion and the Griffins are kind of a mess right now. His ceiling remains very high, IMO. I was thrilled that we were able to draft him so late in the first round and I'm still thrilled that he's ours. I think he's going to become a very good top-six winger. I've gone from being vehemently opposed to picking Rasmussen at #9 to being fully onboard the hype train. His training camp strongly suggests I was wrong and stupid to be so down on him. Like you, I'd like to see him putting up bigger numbers than the ones he's putting up this season, but I'm not sure that's in the cards, and I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. Blashill and Holland have both indicated that Rasmussen is pretty much expected to become a full-time Red Wing within the next two years. That indication (coming from the Detroit Red Wings), coupled with the fact that Rasmussen isn't tearing the WHL apart, leads me to believe the Wings don't see him becoming a high-scoring 1C. I think they picked him for the power play prowess and the shutdown potential. I honestly feel his point totals in a lower league where everyone is smaller than him and where he seems to have a somewhat constricting role as "big guy who goes to the net" isn't of much concern to the Wings' brass. I think they just want the power play prowess and the two-way potential. Zetterberg's in the twilight of his career and Nielsen's 33. I think the Wings sort of see Rasmussen, in the short term, as a quick-fix plugin to help shore up an anticipated talent hole at the center position. In the long term, I think they want him to be a Martin Hanzal, i.e. a really big, really physical, really solid two-way 2C who can play in all situations and be hard-matched against top talent.

Its pretty bad when your ranked below Dave Lewis.

...but would do wonders for Detroit's future? I certainly haven't had a large enough sample size of Blashill as coach to really make a clear decision on him. There are certainly things about the way he coaches that drive me crazy, but there were things about the way Bowman and Babcock coached the team that drove me crazy too.

Yeah, Mantha is tha man. Really impressed with him lately. One thing is that he's been pulling off some great moves on defenders 1-on-1. Maybe it's just growing confidence, but we haven't seen as much of that from him. Also, he's stepping up his playmaking game - Just look at that set up for Nielsen last night!

From @Kaaaaaahhhhhhhhnnnnnn

Mantha is a f***ing beast. He's going to be an elite winger in this league for a long time, in the mold of a Jamie Benn. Larkin has been good, but I wish he would start attacking the net. Too often he seems to skate around the perimeter, turn and throw a weak shot toward the net. Athanasiou has elite level skill, and can make something out of nothing, but he just needs to stop trying to do it all himself and use his line mates. I've never been that high on Svechnikov. He's off to a really rough start this season, but hopefully he turns it around quick. I still think he will be a top 6 winger, but probably not a legit top line winger. I wasn't happy with the Rasmussen pick, but he's impressed me since (in training camp / pre-season). He's not putting up the numbers I was hoping for so far this season in the W, but hopefully he ramps up the offensive here pretty soon. Either way, he seems to play a game that should translate well to the pro game. Hopefully he develops into a top 6 center. I absolutely loved the Smith pick, but to expect him to develop into anything more than a middle 6 winger is wishful thinking in my opinion. I see him as an Abdelkader type, with maybe a little more snarl. Can slot in anywhere in the lineup, but best suited as a 3rd line winger. Same goes for Bertuzzi. My bet is one becomes a 3rd line winger, the other, 4th line winger.

Some of us.

Don't make me get Charlie Murphy

Yeah, but then they're frked in June when Mraz will demand money again and they still have a $9 million dollar Henrik on the books. It would be a costly upgrade just to have a better back up. Not gonna happen. They signed Pavelec because they didn't have a an inexpensive piece to promote within the system. So they went with the most inexpensive guy they could find, hoping he would rebound. Trading for Mraz would be a complete 180 in strategy from the Rags. Have they really lost that much faith in Lundqvist after only a month? I highly doubt it.