Leaderboard

You're giving our team too much credit, he's a 1st liner on Detroit and a career 3rd liner at best on virtually any other team in the NHL. I do feel like we win this tonight, something like 5-2. Z has a strong night an Baby Bert gets a couple points. AA emerges with at least a couple and a strong game also. Larkin does Larkin-like things and gets at least a goal. LGW!! HYPE!!

HYPE! LGRW

We are going to win this one. I bought Lotto Powerball tickets today for the $384 Million prize. The odds are about the same as a W for us, so... I might be rich soon! LGRW! Still love the team and believe in them.... Happy New Year, LGWers!!

Yeah, Mantha hasn't been great, and I agree with demoting him from the top line to the 2nd line (I'd prefer him on Larkin's wing anyway), but removing him from the power-play is just dumb in my opinion. You want to try Bertuzzi in that net front role? Great, Mantha shouldn't be there anyway. Put Mantha where he belongs, on the right half board and let him utilize his biggest strength, his shot. I agree on Athanasiou. He's been awful at zone entries, or carrying the puck in general these past few games. He's been single-handedly killing valuable power-play time. I'd prefer to see him taken off that unit before Mantha. I feel like AA's trying to do way too much out there, needs to simplify things.

USA!

USA!! USA!! USA!! Oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah!!!!

Now watch the Wings win 9-0 tonight, because of course.

https://www.nhl.com/redwings/news/notes-mantha-questionable-for-tonights-game-against-the-rangers/c-294457402 Could be without Mantha tonight. (Maybe that's why Blashill was giving Bertuzzi a look on the top line and the power play?) He got shoved face-first into the boards in the last game. When I saw it, I immediately figured he'd be missing some time. I'm guessing that's what he's dealing with. We'll see.

Oh, I think I'm starting to get it now. Because Getzlaf isn't a top 5 player at his position, Adams doesn't have a shot at reaching that sort of ceiling. But because Hedman is a top 5 defenseman, Setkov does have a legit shot at reaching that sort of ceiling, because he's tall and a defenseman of course. It makes total sense now...... Lemieux did suffer injuries, but his career was cut short due to multiple battles with cancer. Lindros was injury prone, I'll give you that, but that doesn't mean that big forwards in general are prone to injuries. Jagr will be 46 in a couple months and is still going strong. What about Bure and Kariya? Two smallish forwards that had their fair share of injuries. What about Orr and Neely? Two biggish defensemen (relative to era) that also had their fair share of injuries. Being big or small has very little to do with injuries, but more to do with hockey sense and awareness. Something Cholowski seems to have, Setkov, I have no idea. I will agree that everything else being equal, bigger is usually better when it comes to any physical sport, but in hockey, that goes for ALL positions; forwards, defensemen and goalies.

Or like Trunks and Goten you know. So the dads will always be better.

Do I think Larkin is a good PKer? Yes. Does it look like he needs more help? Yes. Would AA be the right man for the job? He could be. Does that mean Mantha could help out too? No. So what can Mantha do then? Spend more time with his gf. Would she appreciate that? Yes. Would I spend time with Mantha’s gf? Yes. His gf gave me some statistics that Zetterberg’s son Love is top 5 from MULTIPLE sources for 2033 draft. Now does this mean we should draft him? Yes. How would @Euro_Twins feel about that? Good. Why? Because he wants the son of Zetterberg and the son of Datsyuk to play together and be drafted as the new Euro Twins. Does that mean it’s going to happen? No. Does @kliq want this to happen? Yes. Would he want to fight Bret The Hitman Hart? No. Does that mean @Jonas Mahonas is in love with me? Probably. Does this mean @Bill Berzeench and Drew Miller were actually the same person? NOT LIKELY!!!!!

Mantha isn't on the PK and shouldn't be on the PK because there are at least 4 other forwards on the roster who are more suited for it. The best analogy I can think of is the mid 90's Lions. Barry Sanders is the best RB to ever play the game. He was certainly better than Mel Gray. Despite that, the Lions didn't use Sanders as a kick returner, that's what they had Mel Gray for. Could you imagine the uproar if the Lions threw Sanders out there on a kick return and he suffered a catastrophic injury? That's why you have special teams guys. The PK is basically a special team. That's why you have guys like Helm, Miller, Glendening, etc. You don't put Mantha out there.

First bold: Yes, I was referring to Cole, de Haan, etc. not Carlson. I am not opposed to signing Carlson btw, I agree that he is a top pairing D (on any team), but he's more of a 2nd tier guy. My concern is that he ends up getting top tier pay. Wings can't afford to get into that sort of bidding war. 2nd bold: In terms of Cole's salary, he signed a 3 year deal for 6.3 mil. DeHaan's deal was for one year. Somehow in my brain that turned into Cole making 6.3 mil on a one year deal . Which would be a lot for a 2nd pair guy for sure, but that's where I got that number from. Although considering recent deals for defensemen last year, I think he gets more than 4 mil. That would be less than what Brendan Smith and Ericsson are getting. Cole's better than both, IMO. Based on that, I think he gets 4.75 or more. 3rd bold; I agree. I also think the chances of him coming back are better than people think. https://www.si.com/nhl/2015/11/15/mike-green-detroit-red-wings-washington-capitals 4th bold: 7x7 is not a bad deal at all, but I would be more comfortable with 5 years, and I don't think he would sign for that. Besides, it only takes one idiot GM to overpay beyond that. Holland should walk away at that point. Maybe we could pair Leturnover with Errorson.

I am no expert on the prospects by any means, but I was going to post something similar. My plan, regardless of draft position, would be in this order: 1: Draft Dahlin if available 2. If Dahlin is gone, draft Svechnikov if available 3. If Dahlin and Svech are gone, draft Boqvist or Hughes if available 4. If all of those 4 are gone, draft one of Tkachuk or Zadina 5. If the Wings get really bad luck on the draw (likely), and all 6 are gone, throw darts

@kliq what I tell you

Is Canada projected to win btw? I know nothing about Juniors. My two teams are always U.S and Sweden for sake of Lidstrom and Zetty. Canada over Russia of course.

None of that has anything to do with what I said. 5 years of mediocrity doesn't even put us close to league laughingstock status. It's just a normal down cycle that every team goes through. For the record, Kings missed the playoffs 11 times in 17 years prior to their Cup, not to mention had been mostly irrelevant since joining the league in 67. Boston had been mediocre or worse for 15 years. So was Chicago. At least try to be a little objective. Furthermore, no one is suggesting to rebuild strictly through the draft. (And by the way, Edmonton has plenty of UFAs and trade acquisitions as well.) We go after UFAs every year, and will continue to do so. Some people may not want Carlson specifically, and most probably don't want Cole or de Haan (and shouldn't, because they aren't notably better than what we have), but that doesn't mean anyone is against UFAs. Trades are another matter. We can't get the kind of players we need without creating other holes just as large. Best we could do is trade for prospects then hope they develop into something, but that strategy isn't anything all that different from drafting. Shuffling our middling players for different middling players isn't likely to do much either, though once we're sure of what core players we have that can be done to tweak things. But we're not at "tweak" stage yet. Anyone we move should be for picks or prospects. But the bottom line is 5 years of mediocrity and adding the pieces we have is doing very well, no matter what some spoiled fans think. Even just a couple top picks in the next couple years could conceivably get us heading back toward the top. It's pretty remarkable actually, considering we haven't really even had any particular luck in the draft.

Not sure what you're trying to say here. Top UFAs don't want to come here, so we need to sign a top UFA like Carlson to show some "direction"? I think the whole "top players only want to play for top contenders" idea is way over-stated. Lot of reasons a player will choose to play somewhere, and I haven't heard anything to suggest that Detroit isn't still a very well respected organization. It's not like we're the only team in NHL history to miss the playoffs. Don't know why so many Wings fans have this idea that it's so egregiously bad for the Wings to now go through what literally every other team in the league has gone through multiple times since the last time we did. What will make it difficult to land any of those guys is that it is unlikely that any of them will actually become UFAs. I would be pretty surprised if even one of them do (including Carlson this summer). If they did, we'd still be only one of many teams vying for them, so even if each team was given equal consideration the odds overall would still be against us. If you really think "a couple of years" more of this would put us in the same category as Edmonton, you need some seriously intense psychotherapy. They missed the playoffs for 10 consecutive years, over that time finishing with 86 fewer points than any other team, last twice, bottom five 7 times. And that decade of awfulness was immediately preceded by more than a decade of being mediocre or worse. Overall for that 25 year period they were a bottom 5 team in the league. We've been middle of the pack over the last 5 years with last year being the first time finishing lower than 15th overall. Still haven't finished bottom 5 (though we're working on it this year). We still have the 15th most playoff wins over the last 5 years. We are a long, long way away from anyone making fun of us, much less Edmonton doing so.