adtthosa

I'm just saying that If there was any possible way we could afford him, I would be all for it. Smyth is one player I've always wanted to see in the Winged wheel. Obviously I don't expect us to get him though. I think resigning Markov at this point is pretty unlikely, though I would like to see him back. I think Holland will leave the defence as it is and resign Hasek and Bert, and then probably sign another forward. New Jersey's going to be in pretty tough this season by the looks of it, losing Rafalski and probably Gomez as well.

I'll be the first to admit I'm not all that familiar with Rafalski. However some of the posts in this thread are making me feel pretty good about this signing. It's great to see our defence get a little bit younger for once, as much as I loved having Schiender a part of the team. The price tag may be steep, but I blame the Flyers for setting the bar so high. Excited to see him play. If we could get Smyth at this point, I would be ecstatic. Still hoping for Bert to resign though.

Well I'm disappointed that Schnieder is leaving. I feel like if we had him for the Anaheim series it might have been enough to give us the victory. We're going to miss his shot from the point, oh well. Good luck to him in Anaheim (except against us). I'm hoping we can pick up Souray at this point but it might be a bit too costly.

Best: Red Wings (away, but I like both) Canucks (alternate from last year, the hockey stick one) Sharks (both are pretty cool) Worst: Stars (that one with the logo that looks like a certain part of the female anatomy, I think they got rid of it though and for good reason - http://nhl.imageg.net/graphics/product_ima...1-1238758dt.jpg if you've never seen it. Actually, it's a horrible jersey even if you don't count the logo) Predators (mustard yellow, I actually love the logo but the colour is awful) Panthers (their jerseys have always been dull)

Leafs fans love to rag on the Leafs almost as much as non-Leafs fans do. The intelligent ones, anyways. I'm not talking about the thousands of fans that are like "YEAH! LEAFS FOR THE CUP BABY!" every year. Living in Hamilton, most people I know that are into hockey are Leafs fans, including my dad, and every time I tell him the Leafs resigned a mediocre player like Antropov, I usually get the same response: "Why?! He's useless!!! Here's to another year of no playoffs". I think the main reason why the Leafs are criticized is because they tend to ice a team that is decent, but not decent enough to win it all. For the past however many years, the Leafs have been a team with a few good players that relies heavily on goaltending to get where they want to go. Even when the Leafs were racking up 100 point seasons a few years back, they were never really considered a heavy favourite to win the Stanley Cup to my recollection. I think when you combine that with the fact that it's been 40 years since the Leafs have been to the finals, it makes them a bit of an easy target amongst hockey fans. Personally I enjoy watching the Leafs, and I guess I would consider them my second favourite team. I have to admit though, it's pretty fun to pick on them at times. Espescially when I get to brag to my dad that in my lifetime, I've seen my team win the Stanley Cup three times, while he's only seen his team win once, and he can't even remember because he was only 6 years old.

Wow, where did this come from? Preds fans must not be very happy about this. At least they still have a solid goaltender in Mason.

I like this deal if I'm a Leafs fan. I think Toskala and Raycroft will split the games at first, but eventually Toskala will be counted on as the number one guy. Ideally, the Leafs probably want to get rid of Raycroft, but I honestly don't think there will be many teams interested. If the Leafs make a couple more moves, they could be in for a decent season. Gotta love this time of year as a hockey fan. Few things excite me as much as hearing about new signings and trades.

I would say it's important to get the first goal, but it's not the end of the world if you don't. I did a study on this a few months ago for a course I was taking, actually. I compared the number of times a team scored the first goal vs the number of wins they had at the end of the season (05/06 NHL season). I ended up getting a correlation that was moderately strong, but it wasn't overwhelming by any stretch. THIS is also an interesting article that deals with the importance of scoring the first goal. It's for college hockey, but definately worth a read.

They will absolutely be in the playoffs. They probably won't repeat as champions, but I'll be surprised if they don't make it to the postseason.

I predicted Ducks in 5 at the beginning, and I'll stand by that prediction. Ducks win 4-1, one will be an empty netter. It's going to be disgusting seeing Pronger hoist that Cup, I'll have to turn away.

Going by this, I think he probably should have gotten two games for the Holmstrom hit. Glad to see him punished though. I really hope this guy never touches the Stanley Cup.

I caught the end of the panel and next question. He seemed like a really good guy. I liked it when he said that Pronger was the best guy in the league at cross checking people in the back. Poked a bit of fun at the size of Giguere's pads too during next question.

Schnieder goal in OT. What a great feeling it was when that puck went in.

Move to the Eastern Conference. That would actually help a lot, but really, I think this team was good enough to win this year, we just didn't have luck or fate on our side. What if we change our logo to a four leaf clover? Maybe even a horseshoe? As long as Lidstrom, Chelios and Hasek (if he comes back) can maintain their quality of play, we'll have a shot next year.

It'll be on in the background. I won't be heartbroken if I miss any games though.

Great comeback effort, too bad we let in that 4th goal. If you would have told me before the 3rd that we would score three goals in that period there's no way I would have believed you. We went down fighting, and that made this loss a lot easier to digest. I was much more bitter after we lost to Edmonton last year than I am now. Great season, great playoff run. Let's do it again next year (minus the losing part )

Awesome finish, we went down fighting. Looking back at all the question marks we had at the beginning of the year, and now looking at how this season went, it's been great. I'm much less bitter about this loss than I have been in a few years. Here's to a great 07/08 season.

Great season boys. Proud of our effort in the 3rd.

Haha, awesome. "I will score the goal if you cannot do it!"

I've got a good feeling about this game. All our hard work has to pay off sometime, let's just hope it's tonight. I'm not usually one to make predictions, but I feel pretty confident so here it goes. Hasek will be near unbeatable all night and the Wings will force a game 7.

The worst part about losing a game like this is that it's on your mind all day. It doesn't help much that it was an afternoon game either. I'm really feeling that we will win game 6 right now though. Just thinking about the last couple of games, I can really see us coming out motivated knowing that we should have already won this series. Oh yeah, anyone else think the ice looked really bad today? The puck seemed to be bouncing much more than usual, but maybe it was just my imagination.

Wow, really frustrated right now. We play great hockey for 59 minutes and somehow still lose. There's no doubt in my mind that we should have won this series by now but with all the things that have gone rght for the Ducks, here we are. It really is a game of inches, if Lidstrom's shot doesn't hit the post or if that puck hits Lidstrom's stick at a different angle on the tying goal, we win this game. I would say Giguere was the story of this game, and I like to give credit where it's due, but I don't think he made one really difficult stop all game. Every shot hit him right in the crest. The story of this game was our PP, again, and not in a good way. We REALLY REALLY need to start scoring some goals with the man advantage with all of the chances the Ducks are giving us. We could blame Lilja for this one but if it wasn't for him, we would have been shut out. Zetterberg and Datsyuk seem to be able to do everything but score. If we're going to come back and win this series, they need to be able to generate some offense. Our roleplayers are doing their jobs and we need those guys to give them some offense to work with. Trying to stay positive right now, we've outplayed them greatly in the last three games. All we need is a few more bounces to go our way and Dom to be sharp. We need to work on getting the puck out of the zone as well because it seems like every time we don't get it out it ends up in the net (I won't rag on Franzen, prior to the giveaway he was the best player on the ice). At least the Wings know that they can win in Anaheim, they should have won both games in the pond. If we win game 6 there is no doubt in my mind that we will win game 7. This team is too good and too determined to pack it in like we've seen in the past.

This is our first loss of the playoffs where I can say that I'm not really mad about it. We absolutely deserved to win this game and with a bit more luck we would have. I could tell right from the Star Spangled Banner that Cleary was going to have a great game. They had the cameraman walking by the bench and the look in Cleary's eyes was awesome, you could tell he was ready to play. He was definately the best player out there for us tonight. Bertuzzi, Filppula and Markov I thought were all really good as well. If we didn't have those 5-on-3's, I honestly would not know what to blame this loss on because we outplayed them in just about every area. Too bad we couldn't finish our chances at the start of the 3rd, because the refs just about handed it to us. That cross check call was horrible. Kind of sucks that they got their PP working tonight, hopefully not for long. It would be easy to blame this game on Hasek, and I know it wasn't his best game of the playoffs at all, but I don't think any of the goals were his fault. It was either a point blank shot, he was being screened or it deflected off someone. I will say though that for the first time in the series, Jiggy won the goaltending battle tonight. I refuse to badmouth Dom though knowing that if he lets in 4 goals one game, he's not giving up 4 in the next. All in all, I'm disappointed at the loss but thrilled at the way we played. If we play like we did tonight for the rest of this series, we will win. Game 5 will be huge.

Good news. The reaction he gets in Detroit on Sunday will be something to see.

Wow, great game from start to finish. First of all, I'd like to mention that I hate Chris Pronger so much and I'm happy that he has to eat his words now. I'd love to see him get suspended but realistically know that will probably not happen. But I'm very glad Homer's okay. Second, I really liked Kopecky filling in for Calder. Yeah he took those two penalties in the first but he played with an edge and he was doing the things we wanted Calder to do when we got him. As long as he can keep his turnovers to a minimum I'd love to see him stay in the lineup. Third, great coaching by Babcock. To completely split up our lines and to have it work out so well is awesome. I've always been a big fan of Babcock. You can just tell that he knows what he's doing when you watch him in an interview. As for the other players, there weren't too many of them that I can say didn't play well today. Bertuzzi really stepped it up today, I thought, and not just because of the goal that went in off his foot. I definately smiled at a few of his big hits. Cleary had another great game, as did Lidstrom. Holmstrom was unbelievable today, it was probably his strongest of the playoffs. Filppula was awesome as well, I was glad to see him get a goal at the end there. Hasek, well, it goes without saying. He was big when he had to be, and it was good to see him pick up another shutout. He really has been unbelievable for us. This one definately makes up for the disappointment of game 2. It's nice to go into game 4 now knowing that if we don't win, the world isn't going to end. With that said, I hope we can bring the same game that we brought tonight on Thursday. I'm definately looking forward to it.