stormboy

i agree with this, but mainly i wanted to quote you because of your farnk herbert quote. i'm reading through the dune series right now. awesome. sorry, off topic. anyway, i hope this is a genuine statement from bab's, and hopefully hudler is stoked to be back in the best hockey league in the world. could be an interesting year, for sure!

i guess i never really thought about it, but it's somehow surprising to me that no one else has coached to IIHF world championship gold, olympic gold, and stanely cup ring. given that he's the only person ever to have done that, i'd say this was certainly a no-brainer.

K55 got at this, and i don't pretend to predict that howard will become a brick wall, but the dude is an NHL rookie. yeah, he's old for a rookie, but i don't see any reason to not believe that he can still improve on things like rebound control and stick handling. he's a rookie. datsyuk did not do his best stick-handling his rookie year; franzen did not score the most goals of his career his rookie season. i keep reading people's comments about how howard has failed us and how that means we won't succeed in the future. i see no reason to believe that he won't improve. i'm not saying he WILL, but there's a good reason to believe that he might. the j-ho we saw this year is not the best j-ho we will ever see.

the goalie interference rule is, i think, a very complicated one, and one that won't get into in this post. i'm still undecided on no-touch icing, but i do think the trapezoid should go. regarding the "intent to blow" change, i totally agree. here's what i've seen happen several times: - the puck is loose. - the goalie is trying to cover it. - an attacking player is chipping at the loose puck. - the puck goes in the net. - the whistle sounds after the puck is over the goal line. - the goal is disallowed on intent to blow. to me, this makes no sense because, in spite of the fact that the ref allegedly lost sight of the puck, the goalie and his defensemen should have STILL BEEN PLAYING because they had not heard the whistle! if, on review, it's shown that the goalie was pushed into the net with the puck in his control, i can see the goal being waived. but if the review shows a loose puck that was chipped in before ANYONE HEARD A WHISTLE, as long as the puck was over the line before the whistle actually went, i see no, no, no reason why that goal should not count. that situation, to me, seems like, more than any other situation, the refs impacting the outcome of a game far more than they should. i don't care if you intended to blow -- if you blew unfairly, well, we'll just have to live with that, because once the whistle goes, people stop playing, and anything that happens after that cannot be counted. i am fully in support of that, even if the call goes against the wings. BUT IF A GOAL GOES IN BEFORE THE WHISTLE AND YOU STILL DON'T COUNT IT, to me, that is bulls***. normally, i'm opposed to will-o-the-whisp rule changes, but, for me, this seems like it needs to be changed.

http://www.battleofcali.com/2010/5/5/1459087/how-not-to-play-a-2-on-1 didn't see this posted anywhere. obviously it's a game late, but i still thought it was both accurate and funny.

yeah dude. we might lose thursday; we might win. i fully support the idea of this thread: just keep cheering your team until they're bounced. and then, keep cheering them. because they're the red wings, and we love them. and if you're going to hate on them just because they lose a couple of games, then jump off the bandwagon and go to hell. love, matt. i could easily be wrong, but you sort of seem like the nicest opposition poster that has ever graced these boards. also, you seem objective, which is rare among sports fans. we were all hoping for a good series. if the wings at LEAST win one game, it will be a better series, drama-wise, than a pure sweep. as an objective sports fan, i'd like that. and, as a wings fan, i'd like to see them win four straight. : )

i just don't agree with the bolded part. you're basing a guy's career value on one playoff run. sure, he's an "old" rookie, but dude's still an NHL rookie. like i said before, cam ward had an amazing playoffs in his rookie year, but it's not as if that's led his team to be a perennial cup contender. i just don't want to see howard getting totally thrown under the bus when he's had once chance to prove himself as a playoff goalie. IMO we've seen him improve a lot in the last few years from GR to detroit, and it seems to me that, as of right now, there is no reason to assume that he won't be better in the playoffs next year, assuming we make it.

for those blaming howard...i see your point, to a degree. it's tough to win playoff games when you let in four goals a game. that short-side goal-line shot, for example, should not have been let in tonight. it seems like he's had one of those every game -- one goal that he should have gotten. and we've lost all the games by one goal. so maybe that IS the difference. at the same time..yeah, so we're probably going to get bounced in the second round this year. it's our 19th straight trip to the playoffs, so we can't be that bummed, can we? maybe this a good learning experience for howie and for the future of the wings. you can't expect a cup every year. i'd rather have howie have a mediocre first playoff experience and keep building on that than have a cam ward AMAZING first playoff experience and then not make the playoffs for a bunch of years in a row afterward. i would say that, in some ways, this a rebuilding year for the wings, but for us, a rebuilding year means only getting to the second round. for most teams, "rebuilding" means a sub .500 record and no playoff berth. so, honestly, i'll take it. don't be too quick to s*** all over howard for one imperfect playoff run.

obviously coming late to the party -- just got home from work. i listened on the radio and read the boxscore -- so it's obviously not the same at watching it. but here's some thoughts. - obviously, the calls. having not SEEN them, i can't make a judgment, but 10-4 seems a little ridiculous, especially in the third period. yikes. - a sub point of that, though, is that we actually had a marginally better PP% than the sharks (1/4= 20% vs. 2/10 = 20%), and that's including the fact that they had a five on three advantage. we won the special teams battle on a percentage scale -- they got two goals because they had more than 2x the amount of powerplays and a 5-on-3. - howie had a petter save percentage than nabby (.911 vs .903). one goal was a 5-on-3 and one was that fluke 3-1 because of lids' broken stick. again, didn't SEE the game, but form a stats perspective (and hearing the PxP) it seems hard to say that howie is at fault here. - FACEOFFS. FACEOFFS. FACEOFFS. we had a 37.7% faceoff efficiency. hank was 4-10; flip 2-6; abby 1-4. that's a combined 7-20, or 26%. helm was our only regular with more wins than losses. this is, to me, is the key stat of the game. you can't blame the refs. you can't blame the sticks. you can't blame the goalies (either howie for being bad or nabby for being great). pavalski and malholtra DESTROYED us in the faceoff circle, going a combined 24-8, or 75 percent. pavie was over 80 percent on his own. i'd be interested in a breakdown of faceoff percentage on the PP/PK as well, but i'm too lazy to do it myself. i think we can get two at home. better calls, better breaks (or NONbreaks, eg, lids' stick resulting in a 3 on 1) i'd say goaltending ON PAR would even be enough (still outplaying nabby IMO, (.882 vs .888 save percentages through two games, with howie giving up two 5 on 3s and nabby having not faced one), and GET BETTER IN THE FACEOFF CIRCLE!

if OP is a troll, he is the most successful troll in the history of the internets. i want the other 13 or whatever people who voted "yes" on this poll to show their faces. also, this is probably being discussed in the GDT, but aside from the 10-4 pp ratio, how does 37.6 percent strike you? that was our faceoff efficiency last night. but, no, ozzie is not the answer right now. win faceoffs and don't take so many penalties. we would almost certainly have won the game if those two things has happened.

i'm sort of having a hard time making out your point here, honestly. you're pissed because people like ovechkin because he's a rival to crosby? you're pissed because his post-game interview had nothing to do with the penguins or the red wings? i'm honestly baffled. this thread was created to discuss ovie's post-game interview, not to compare him to crosby, not to compare him to zetterberg, not to compare the caps to the wings or to s*** on or even praise AO. you say, "Ovetchin said what he said and this has nothing to do with um...zetterberg or crosby." i couldn't agree more, unless you want to debate the standard american-english transliteration of ovechkin's surname. this thread was not really created to contrast ovie with Z or crosby -- it was made to discuss the actual interview in question. no. but lids is a player who has seen way, way more than ovie, and, though he has certainly been held on a pedestal, has not been a "face of the league" the way ovie has. lids has won cups; ovie hasn't. lids has been an instrumental part of cup-winning and first-round-losing teams his whole career -- ovie hasn't won a cup, and, in his youth, is not as acclimated to the ups and downs of NHL playoff hockey. so of course they're going to react differently.

the wings are not paid to gain support in LGW forums. So, discussion from any point concerning the wings by fans is aburdity [sic].

i can see the point of the rule, but if they make exceptions for things "outside of the pilot's" control, i'd hope that a late ending to game seven and the fact that the game would have been on friday if not for the eagles concert will work in the wings' favor. in any case, when you have a salary of 50+ million in addition to what have to be massive operating expenses, i doubt that 2.5k is going to get more than a blink of an eye from the DRW organization.

i agree, and i agree with the post you quoted. there was a lot of talk about the caps' weak defense, but the habs (admittedly not an offensive juggernaut) only scored two goals in two of the last three games. the caps scored a total of three goals in those games -- not something you'd expect from a team with those kinds of goal scorers. i don't watch the caps enough to know, but you do have to wonder if the lack of a great playmaker has something to do with that. having a ton of good goal scorers is great, but when a goalie is red hot, you need someone to make that cross ice pass when the top-corners shots just aren't going in. you need someone to open it up a little bit. i think i agree with this, too, in regards to the crosby-ovie debate. obviously, wings fans are going to be biased if for no other reason than we've played the penguins twice in a row in the finals and they beat us last year. because we're much more rivals with them, it's easy to see the capitals in a better light: the enemy of your enemy is your friend. i do think that there are graceful ways to lose, but it much easier to be graceful in your loss when you're the underdog -- tippet's comment about the wings just finding another level the 'yotes couldn't match comes to mind. but when you're supposed to dominate a team and they absolutely stun you, that seems to be the most brutal loss in all of sports. handling THAT kind of loss is always going to be ugly.

good. i've always liked savard, and i don't like any series in which any team is missing one of their top players. if we beat the sharks without thornton or the hawks without kane (or the yotes without doan???) i wouldn't be as satisfied. i'd take the win, of course, but i'd rather all teams be at their full potential when going into a playoff series.

in b4 lock! well done, fellas. i only had a few posts, but i was glad to be a part of it. hope it works! i'll be listening at work tonight (as long as the tigers game doesn't go too long on wbbl)!

i am the last person to cry "conspiracy," but i think there is some merit to what you're saying here. it's honestly a bit like another poster said about the wings doing subtle interference. in the ANA situation, they do blatant roughing and crosschecking infractions because they know that they can commit 20 penalties and get called for five....simply for the reason that if any one team literally had 20 minor penalties in a game, everyone would be screaming their heads off that there was a conspiracy for the opposing team. so you know you can commit 20 penalties and get called for at most five or six. if the opposing team gets one or two goals on the PPs but you prevent or cause three or four more goals by breaking the rules, the ultimate benefit is in your favor. word. a poster in another thread made the point that early powerplays are easier to kill of than late ones -- the PK troops are still fresh. but so are the PP troops, so you can't really call conspiracy because our PPs were "early." i don't care what anyone says about the fairness of the officiating in game six, we had six straight penalty minutes and ended up a goal in the negative. there's a point where you can absolutely not blame officiating, and you have to say that either a) we are not getting it done, or b) brzy is a top, top notch goalie. personally i'm inclined to go with B, since i see merit in giving credit where credit is due. he would not let pucks get past him, and we couldn't find a way. we could have easily been up 2- or 3-0 at the end of that powerplay sequence. instead we were down 0-1. given that, i accept no bitching about the reffing. we simply have to get it done. edit: clarity, typos.

yo dogs i herd you like posts so i put a post on your post so you can post while you post. LET'S. GO. WINGS.

you know what it says in the bible: go big or go home.

my heart cannot handle an OT game.

weird. bikes.

i'd like the wings to win game seven.

time for some domination. GO WINGS!!!

gah... can't believe i have to miss game seven because of work!!!! i guess i'll do what i can while i can. GO WINGS!!!

grass on the other side = greener.