stormboy

are we playing the same game?

personally i think the scales tip slightly in the favor of safety, but i think game integrity is a piece of it as well. i guess it's hard for me to see how OP cannot understand what a safety risk allowing kicking in goals would cause. sure, the vast majority of the time, nothing would happen. but the last thing this sport needs is some goalie bleeding to death on the ice. OP made the point that blades would be sideways and that players would not be kicking straight forward. this is true. from that he draws the assumption that blades would rarely come off the ice. i disagree. i also argue that blades on the ice can still be dangerous to a goalie who is laying on the ice trying to make the save / find the puck. think about this, too. if a forward gets knocked down in a scrum, he's going to be laying on the ice. if everyone's batting away at the puck, he might as well kick at it, since he likely can't use his stick (if, say, he's laying feet-first towards the goal). there is no way that *that* is not a safety risk. again, not going to happen a TON, but even one goalie getting cut severely every few years is too much, and that's why the rule is there. i understand being frustrated when a goal is called off in a situation where the "kicking motion" was marginal and no one was at risk. but it's sort of like the clearing-the-puck-over-the-glass rule: if you make it a rule, no one is going to do it on PURPOSE, so you're penalizing accidents. but, like in the delay-of-game situation, if it's NOT a rule, people will do it all the time, so you have to, in effect, punish the innocent (e.g. people who are not TRYING to delay the game or kick the puck) to prevent people form intentionally doing just that all the more. lastly, OP seems frustrated that no one is on his side. if i were OP, i'd think about why that was. LGW is notoriously divided. and we all seem to agree that it's a good rule...except you.

obviously in this situation, i'm glad the sharks won. i'm wondering if anyone else had an opinion about the two "kicking motion" goals. on the preds one, which was disallowed, it really seemed like the shark player pushed the preds player's leg/body into whatever motion it was that put the puck in. on the sharks goal, that was allowed...i understand that you can redirect the puck with your skate, but to me that looked *more* like a kicking motion than the preds non-goal. like i said, i'm happy with the result, but after watching (only) the highlights package, that's what it looked like to me. anyone else think that?

DON'T YOU KNOW WHERE WE ARE???

unless we play great for the rest of the season. sure, if the past is any indication, we probably won't, but you never know. and just as a thought...obviously this game was pretty close to a "must win" for us...to me it was the most important game of the season thus far (though points are points and stealing two in chicago in some small way begins to make up for this loss), but it was even more of a "must win" for calgary. they won, and they're a point up. if they lose, they're three points down. for us, it was a must win in terms of putting distance between us and cal. for them, it was a must win in the sense that they'd have an even bigger hill to climb. so, in a way, i see them as being more desperate than us just because of that. not an excuse, but you have to give credit where credit is due, and note that calgary was battling for their lives out there.

i agree with this. either lebda-lilja OR e-lilja is better than lebda-e IMO. you need one guy who jumps up more and one guy who generally stays back. although they're pretty different physically (small and fast vs. big and slow), ericcson and lebda are more similar to each other than either is to lilja. whatever the pairing, we're going to need out bottom d to be good tonight.

i was thinking the same thing. i hate to be one over-hyping the importance of any given game, but head-to-head versus calgary is about as big as they get right now. time to start putting a little space between us and ninth! if datsyuk keeps up his great play and howie has a good game i could see us pulling it off. hopefully we get a big effort from the boys...iginla & co. are going to playing tough tonight.

in related news, i would have voted for rafalski if the poll was, "most likely to give up a really bad turnover at a crucial point in the game."

howard, though far from perfect, has been the *most* consistent on a team of very inconsistent players this year. that said, helm has still been my favorite player this year. maybe it's just because so much less is expected of him that when he does do something good it seems like icing on the cake.

it was sad to me when this forum was down. i didn't get my daily dose of people bickering and trying to boost their own self-esteem by tearing others down. for me, i guess it all hinges on what will happen with the cap. one might argue that the cap will go up steadily for the rest of hossa's contract, but i'd argue that there's no way to know for sure. do i think filppula is overpaid? yes. would i want to see the wings royally hamstrung in ten years by the tail ends of several frontloaded contracts for players who are now well passed their prime? no.

O. M. F. G. wow. GO WINGS!!!

1:06!

holy s*** i can't feel my heart.

pk. really really not trying to feel a sense of doom here. COME ON WINGS!!!!

f***. why do i have the feeling that this game is already over, and not the way we want. i hate being such a downer...but that's just how i feel right now. with this much time, i just feel like it's inevitable. WHY CAN WE NOT HOLD LEADS!!?!?! ugghh...

lol what a flop.

as much as i'm glad lilja's back, i still get nervous when he and lebda are out there together and the other team is cycling.

lol wut? i turn the game on and it's 5-2 WINGS?!?!? never saw that coming. and while i admit this is sort of debby-downer of me, if it were 5-2 hawks i'd hardly see the point in watching the third, but with it 5-2 wings anything could still happen. still. 5 straight in the second? crazy! go wings!

well at least franzen is playing well. now we just need some goaltending.

ell. oh. ell. i guess this is one of our five allowed losses for the rest of the year. we don't need anything more than a two-game win streak. uggghhh....c'mon wings.

ack. i mean, i'm going to anyway, but i sort of wonder what the point of watching the third period is.

it seems like teams score on every descent scoring chance they have. ugh. it just seems like it takes us ten chances to get one goal and every effing time someone else gets a little bit of open ice they score. jlkaslkjfaslfdsa. f.

i hate how the TSN guys say franzen's name. just a personal pet peeve of mine. it seems like teams score so easily against us.

i feel like these comments debate the point fairly. yes, holland couldn't see into the future. yes, anyone can now see that meech or lebda are not as skilled as quincey. maybe he never would have performed that his current level with the wings (i.e. he would have been a third pairing d-man or a long time in our system). but it's impossible to say with hindsight that having Q on our team would be a bad thing. thus, holland is not a god. made the wrong choice. but did as well as could be expected under the circumstances.

you've got it, sir. the mob is a fickle *****.