stormboy

initially i'm opposed to the idea, but i'm not sure sure it would be terrible. yes, it's a break from tradition. i'm not saying that that's NOT a good reason to be opposed to it, but i think on some level you have to look at things practically, and then decide if tradition outweighs potential benefits (if there are any). i see a few good points: - the potential for expanded exposure is there, i think. because it's different than a normal playoff series, there will inevitably be more fanfare surrounding it. additionally, it seems to me that at a neutral site, you could do more superbowl-esque pre-game celebrations that might not necessarily be possible in one team's rink because, obviously, it's going to be all about that home team at that arena. while this might not be great for the top seeded team, i do think it would attract more attention. - currently, home ice advantage isn't really that much of an advantage. yes, you start (and potentially end) at home, but you play 57% of the games in a 7 game series at home as it is now. discounting the first neutral-site games, the top team would now play 60% of the remaining games at home. not significantly higher, but higher indeed (more importantly, not lower). - you could complete a sweep without ever having to go into the other fan's barn. put differently, you wouldn't ever have to play with the other team being the "home team" until the fifth game of the series, which may be more of an advantage for the home team. the second seeded team has to wait until game five to get home ice, instead of being able to turn it around after just two at the other team's rink. - you still get the game 7 clincher at home. so i'm not positive that the "it screws the top seeded team" is entirely valid here. i do think the question of where the "neutral" site is located is crucial, though. like if the bruins are playing the ducks in the finals and the first to "neutral" games are held in phoenix, it is obviously an advantage to the ducks (especially if they are the lower-seeded team). i don't think you'd want to have the game in two arenas (unless they were close) because you don't want to add MORE travel for the players. because they're only two games of a seven game series (which will be played in both teams' arenas eventually) it's unlikely that, in the example above, a lot of bruin fans are going to fly to the desert when the series is eventually (most likely) coming back to boston anyway. hmmm...so maybe not a terrible idea. i'd have to hear more about it.

it's a tough spot the front office and coach are in, imo. obviously there's the balancing act of loyalty vs. pragmatism. you've got to make players believe that the organization is loyal (which it is) to help get good players signed for less money. the flip side of that is now what you see with 2/3 of our fourth line. as for the faceoff argument with drapes...i see it, but at the same time, if you really, really need someone who is responsible defensively and can win faceoffs...i can think of two players who fit that bill. they wear 40 and 13. both draper and maltby (though draper to a lesser extent) have shown flashes of their old selves this season. kopecky has, at times, shown that he can hit and actually play the game a bit. but all of these things have been so far and few between that it does make me wonder how much worse a helm-meech-downey line would be. obviously downey can't really play the game at all...helm and meech, if they get put on the ice with at least the second pairing of d-men, might be able to generate some scoring opportunities. the question to me becomes...if this is the one thread that LGW agrees on, it means it is something that seems obvious to fans. there are two possibilities: one, we are wrong, and helm-meech-downey would actually be worse, and the guys that get paid big bucks to know these things know better than us, and they're right; two, there are mitigating factors. one being cap space. another being the inability to do anything with the three of our current fourth liners. a third being the idea that the front office believes that even with this s***ty ass line, we're still going to win enough games, and if we can get by on the skill of our top three lines and (hopefully good) goaltending, why not show future players that we are very loyal to our veterans, in hopes of snagging a few good free agents down the road? i don't know. this thread cropped up after our first loss in seven games, and one which we still got a point for, on the road. obviously, when this line is costing us games, it's going to be an issue. but for the majority of the games this season, it hasn't been enough of an issue that we've lost the game. if we were losing tons of games 5-4 and 3 of every four goals was coming against this line and they were producing none of them, it would be a bigger issue. for now, we're getting by. is that enough for the playoffs? we'll see. it sounds like we'll have more roster options then, too. in kenny we trust.

my only thought here is that i wonder if we'll be able to sign conks for such a low price again. what's ozzie getting paid now, 1.7 this year and 1.4 or something next year? conks is making half that? obviously, the playoffs will make a big difference in terms of signing (i.e. if ozzie carries us to another cup or deep into the playoffs, conks will likely get paid less next year than if HE carries us deep into the playoffs). but right now conks numbers are way better than ozzie's and he's getting more starts. we're midway right now, so who knows how it will all end up. but assuming the season ended today, i have a hard time seeing conks re-signing with us for half ozzie's salary when he has outplayed him. just adds another dimension to the discussions of next years' plans, in my opinion.

and this is why i post at lgw.

haha...yeah. with our performance over the past few years, it seems like wings fans are only satisfied if we're the best in every category and win the cup. for myself, i've always liked the shot-differential stat, for some reason. i guess i see it as an indicator of how well we're playing our game. so when i'm watching a game, i cringe every time the other team takes a shot on goal, not so much because i'm worried they'll score, but because that's -1 for our shot differential stat. at the end of the day, it's totally meaningless, but for some reason i assign arbitrary value to it. *shrug*

bingo. in my opinion, retaliating for a clean hit is similar to retaliating for a goal scored against you. if the other team scores, you want to score to get them back. obviously, one is more directly related to winning the game, but to me, it's at least a similar principle. yes, kronner's hit was clean, but that doesn't mean ott has to like it--the same way a legal goal can be scored, but you're still pissed off at the other team for scoring it. thus, an appropriate response is to lay out a big, clean hit, or fight someone. in this way, i'm fine with ott taking exception to the hit. what isn't okay is the way he responded. that was an intent to injure play. not only was kronner not looking, but if i remember right, it was after the play was whistled dead. maybe it wasn't. if it was, nik had no reason to be protecting himself or bracing for a hit/cross check in any way. either way, do you think ott knows that kronner has injury problems? i do. stick up for your teammates, be it a legal or illegal hit that went against them. but either way, do it in an appropriate fashion. that was a ***** move by ott and, in my opinion, should have been a game misconduct. the frustrating thing is that at that point in the game, another power play for us didn't really make a difference. the game was more or less in the bag, and thus, ott acted with impunity, for all intents and purposes. he put his team at no risk for losing the game--they'd already lost it. this is a situation where our powerplay being our enforcer doesn't play out. i've not been one to say that we NEED an enforcer on the team, and i'm still not sure we NEED one. but, i'm not satisfied that ott got away with a meaningless two minute minor. edit: clarity.

just to argue for the sake of argument...when the wings wear red, their numbers are in white. would you then say "number five in white" when referring to lidstrom? usually, one team is white and the other team is the color of their home jersies, be it red or blue or black. just for the sake of argument...

nice goal by lang. also, earlier in the highlights, everyone's favorite commentator pierre kept on referring to one of the rangers players as "number six in red." they were wearing blue, retard.

true, unfortunately. i think you hit the nail on the head here. i think that with confidence brought the enthusiasm that datsyuk now has. he hits a lot more and he celebrates a lot more, which are two things that, i believe, spark fans and teammates alike to cheer louder and play harder. it seems to me that a player like dats lacking confidence would be afraid to celebrate after goals and risk laying out hits because his shy persona would be afraid of getting ahead of itself. for example, i don't hate lebda, but when he does his little arm-twirling celebration after a (rare) goal, i'm kinda like...Really? did you earn that? i think now datsyuk realizes that he has earned the right to do that, which has further buoyed his consistency in playing. positive feedback cycle. if i didn't know better, i'd think you were new to these boards. that's not a dis on you whatsoever--i too wish that more posters would take the high road. unfortunately, it's a pretty rare thing. it's the wonderful thing about the internet, because other people aren't real people--just screennames with avatars. still, at the end of the day, we're all wings fans. :beerbuddy:

i'm going to have to go ahead and agree with this. to me, malkin's a great player but because of his odd appearance and relative inability to speak the language (sounds like someone else we know ) you can't use him to make inspirational NHL commercials and the like.

fair enough. i guess i try to never go so far as to say anything will happen with 100% certainty, and i try to stay away from dogging on players too much because you never know what will happen. re: the bolded part--i can see where you're coming from there. having not gone back and researched old threads, i don't know if the targets of my quoted poster were doing those things; maybe they were, and as such, yes, they turned out to be very wrong. i still maintain, though, that saying "there are smart people and dumb people in the world" is going a little far when pointing out that someone was totally wrong...there were people who were very right and very wrong on the issue of datsyuk...if they were 100% sure he was going to fail, then yes, they should be corrected. that doesn't make that group the "dumb people" of the world and other people "the smart ones." that was my main point, i guess. i agree that people overreact and perhaps should be more optimistic. the point of this thread, though, is that yes, datsyuk is awesome. i'd hope that no one disagrees with this now.

see, the funny thing about this post is that everything thinks they're the smart people and everyone else is the dumb people. we justify it when we're wrong, but call it "poorly thought out ascertains" made by "fools" when other people are wrong. look, there was no way that anyone could have known datsyuk would turn out to be such an amazing player. it's not beyond the realm of possibility that filppula will turn into an 80 point player in two years. but that doesn't mean the people who wanted him to be traded now are "fools" that are "wasting people's time," it just means that they made a judgment based on the evidence that turned out to be incorrect. if kopy suddenly turns into a monster player, i think there will be about two people on this board who wouldn't have to eat crow. that doesn't make everyone else useless and those two people hockey gods. get over yourself.

if he were on a hot streak (which he isn't right now, but will be some time in the near future), this thread wouldn't exist. also, just for the record, thread titles with just the name of the player are starting to annoy me. you have lots of letters...say something about the thread other than just the player's name. but, that's just me.

i think both are true. it was the a good play by the wild player, but also kronner f***ed it up. the same way that every great datsyukian deke is also somewhat the fault of the goaltender...if huet had kept his stick on the ice dats wouldn't have scored that goal in the winter classic. that being said, it was still a great effort by dats. same thing is true here, i think. give credit to the wild for a good play in the offensive zone, but i have to believe that kronner could have handled that situation better. in one way, the "good" part of the wild play was taking advantage of a detroit weekness.

to some degree, +/- is more of a team stat anyway, but to me, having our 2nd defensive pairing be at an average of -2 is horrible, compared to this team in years passed. i'd have to look at the stats again, but i'm pretty sure last year we only had one or two players in the minus column, and it was like maltby at -5; conversely, we had 3 of the top five leaders in plus/minus for much of last season. the fact that our second defensive pairing averages below even is a huge indicator of how our team is doing with those guys in on the ice, IMO. that being said, last year we blew out a lot of games and our powerplay wasn't as good. we're winning a lot of one goal games on the strength of powerplay goals, hence a lot of our players will be minus in red wing victories. either way, team wide, five on five is not what it should be, especially with these two. both of them should be +10 or higher with the kinds of forwards they're playing with, IMO. to me, stuart has seemed invisible, which is desirable vis-a-vis the glaring kronwallian giveaways. that being said, i think both of these guys will pick it up in the playoffs and, despite what this entire post might indicate, i'm really not worried about either of them. rather have kronner sit in the minus column all season and not lay out big hits and then turn around and lead the team in defense points and routinely lay people out (like last year) than have him be trying too hard right now and get injured late in the season. his chemistry and experience still makes him desirable over any of the AHL guys, IMO.

agreed.

voted for the turco one just because it was in-game. one thing i did notice when watching the videos is datsyuk's reaction after each goal. i mean, maybe it's the fact that the goal on turco put his team up 6-2 and it was obviously not important, but i've seen pavel get more and more fired up after scoring goals in the last year or so, which i think is great for team energy and his role as a leader. *shrug* just something i noticed.

as others have mentioned, i thought ozzie rocked tonight. an interesting comment by ken and mick that i thought was true was that the outcome of the game didn't really matter in terms of ozzie's confidence--just how well he played. i thought the second goal was interesting because it was really just a result of a defensive f*** up, and you could tell that ozzie was really pissed right after it happened. but the thing is, instead of disrupting his focus, it honed it; he completely shut the door for the rest of the game and played great. hopefully this is the beginning of the something good for the wizard of oz.

i've actually got a good feeling about this one. wings are on right now. hopefully a good solid start of ozzie. 3-2 wings.

for me, it's pretty up in the air at this point. though the sharks have a history of playoff let downs, it seems to me that this could be the year for them. i know it's been said in the past, but new coach and an improved blueline will, i think, make a huge difference in playoff games. i'd say they are a very serious threat to us. ducks have also played us really tough this year. i wouldn't be too afraid of the hawks...we've played well against them this year, especially the last two games that really mattered. i would expect us to drop a few games to them later in the season, but i don't think they can match up to us in a seven game series. 'nucks have played us tough, too. on the one hand, we were not playing well in the times we met them, but they'll have added sundin by that point...a change that would not surprise me if it made a huge difference or if it made no difference at all.

too early to make solid predictions, but here's what i'm hoping for: 1. sharks 2. wings 3. 'nucks 4. flames 5. 'hawks 6. wild 7. ducks 8. jackets wings don't win the prez this year (or even the conference), so maybe there not as much seen as the "team to beat," though on some level they will be as defending champs. i'd like to meet the ducks in the first and dispatch them once and for all. sharks beat jackets, wild and 'hawks upset nucks and flames. we then play chicago...san jose wins its series, then its detroit and san jose in the wcf. that would probably be the hardest playoff road for us, but i think it would be very rewarding to beat those three teams. i wouldn't be surprised if the wild make a late season surge, nor would i be surprised to see the jackets trail off. in think the wild, the 'yotes, and even the dives have a chance at sneaking in. possibly even preds, but it's doubtful.

this is pretty much how i saw it...it looked like his arm slid up heward's back because heward was hunched over. if this had been called a 2min minor i wouldn't think it was an awful call, but i don't think it's suspendable. OP, i respect your opinion and agree that no player should be given clemency for a bad hit just because they're superstars. however, a few points: one, whether a player was injured or not should, in most cases, have little bearing on whether a suspension is doled out. obviously, a lot of potentially suspendable hits are let go because the player isn't injured, but just because a player is hurt on the play does not automatically mean the offending player should be suspended. that pronger hit on homer in the 07 playoffs comes to mind. homer came back later in the game, but because of the nature of the hit and its obvious intention, pronger got suspended (though i still think one game was too light). two, i don't think that this hit is that comparable to the other hit you posted. again, this is obviously not quantifiable, so we likely won't agree on this. however, in my viewing of the AO hit, the capitals player is coming in to the right of the lightning player. at the last second, heward turns slightly to his right which, i believe, made the contact much worse than it would have otherwise been. in the other video you posted, it seems to me that the monteal player has a much better idea of where the toronto player is going to be and chooses to run at him hard anyway. the AO hit seemed much more bang-bang, in which ovechkin really had no time to make an adjustment to heward's movement. three, it seems to me that the hit wasn't really that hard of a hit. it looked like AO was going with about as much speed as intensity as the average hit. just seemed like heward's head hit the boards at an awkward angle. there are probably a dozen hits a game that could end up like this but aren't at quite the right angle to cause injury. the kostopolous hit, on the other hand, is of a variety that is rarely seen, both because players are more intentional about protecting themselves in those particularly dangerous situations, and players are less likely to rail someone who is in that vulnerable position. kostopolous clearly made a decision to make a dangerous hit. OV made an average check when both players were twisting and turning along the boards and his elbow accidentally went up heward's back and heward hit the boards at an unfortunate angle. whether the player was injured or not is immaterial (in terms of suspension). remember when jason williams got knocked out a few years ago by an oilers player? the hit was clean; willi just wasn't protecting himself. the oiler should not have been (and was not) suspended just because williams was hurt. it is the job of the league to, as best they can, determine the intent of the player and gauge whether or not they willingly put another player in serious risk. it is my opinion that alex did not do anything reckless, and that it was an unfortunate play in a physical and sometimes dangerous game. he should not be suspended. all the best to heward. edit: grammar. also: i like AO but am not a deeply committed fan of his. i don't keep up on his stats or watch his highlights. he has never been and never will be my computer's desktop image (unless he wins a cup with the wings).

we've done well in statement games this year. hopefully the pattern continues this week. even if we get one point out of either game, we'll still be in first place on jan. 2 (though the 'hawks do have some games in hand). on the other hand, if we win both in regulation, we'll have our nice lead back. that being said, it's funny how wings fans think it's the end of the world if we don't win the central. obviously, i'd like to win the central as well, but i'd rather have the situation we're in, where our biggest concern is winning the division, not making it into the playoffs.

'shoop. i believe from the playoffs last year, though it may have been created before. sorry to sound like an ass if you were being sarcastic.

yeah, right now they're down seven points with two games in hand. if they win both those games, they're down by only three points. put differently, if they beat us in regulation the next two meetings, then win their other two games in hand, they would take over first in the division. it seems to me they've still been flying a bit under the radar this year. i would love a playoff series against them. hawks first round, ducks second round, sharks third round, boston in the cup? that would be an impressive (and enjoyable) cup run.