VM1138

You guys...I love bench clearing brawl-filled rivalries as much as the next guy, but Ottawa is the only team I can remember doing this. The East hasn't been some big, bad, enforcer-filled battle for the Wings. We lose fair and square most nights.

His role is: we're stuck with him because he trappes Holland regarding a buyout this summer. And he's not quite as bad as Cleary.

The Sammy signing wasn's stupid until this year. I see the logic, nobody could've predicted his injury last season or his jerk move regarding the buyout. I think Quincey is done here. I wish we could get Stuart back. But without a lot of free agent D I'm worried Holland will have to re-sign Q. I think Kindl and Quincey are both expendable at this point. We need another top 4 D unless Smith continues to improve to that level.

No, he was mislead by his agent. I don't harbor any ill will toward him. He has flaws but he always seemed sincere about working on them.

I know it makes roster sense to send Nyquist back down, but what's the point? Holland would only delay the inevitable. No one will trade with us. No one. So no matter what, unless he wants to wait until February or whenever to call Nyquist up again, he has to waive someone. It sucks to lose someone for nothing, but we've got a plethora of players who can be called up in a crunch. Of course we all want to see Cleary and Sammy waived, but that won't happen. Likely Andersson gets waived to make room for Nyquist and someone else to make room for a defenseman if Lashoff isn't better for the next game. We can dump a few players because we can always call up Eavea or Tootoo or some kids. Which makes me wonder if Miller is waive bait, despite having a good year.

I wouldn't say he was brutal. He looked worse because Nyquist looked so good, but you take out that bad turnover at the end and he had a decent game. The good news is, maybe he and Nyquist will get a competition going and they'll push each other to be better than the other. It's going to be fun to watch them develop together at the NHL level.

In short: they played decent. A little sloppy. They shot nearly 50 shots, and they had a lot more dangerous chances than usual, but I wouldn't say they played a great game overall. Decent, but not great. Nyquist, however, was magical. Two goals and he was on the ice for a third, I believe. Energy was high in the arena, and Nyquist was all smiles. Team seems to really enjoy his enjoyment of the spotlight. He looked very poised and confident. I don't recall any mistakes. Tatar, on the other hand, played a good game but made a crucial mistake at the end that led to a goal, though one of our posters speculates it was due to exhaustion more than to a rookie brainfart. So in all, a memorable game because of Nyquist, but the rest was sort of average. On the plus side, we're scoring again! EDIT: We have an effective second line now. Franzen looked good, too. Defense chipped in with assists like in the old days. But now we don't have a first line because Cleary was up there. It was basically the Datsyuk show but he couldn't get enough going by himself.

It's been said that only two people in the world can't produce on a line with Datsyuk: Dan Cleary and Justin Abdelkader.

Around 950,000 I heard. Conveniently just enough to keep Nyquist up.

Nobody's saying Tatar SHOULD be punished, we're just being realistic. It's Babcocks' MO.

I was just thinking that. If only Tatar had a great game, too, that'd be the ultimate finger in Holland's face. But I'm afraid Babcock will use his game as an excuse to waive him or some garbage like that.

Goodbye Miller or Cleary. Nyquist won't be sent down now, though. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nyquist looks so freaking good out there!

I noticed Ericsson make a smart play earlier. Instead of pinching to grab the puck, he saw he would lose that race. If he pinched, a Carolina player would've jumped in between him and the net at center ice and have a clear open run at the net. Old Ericsson would've pinched. He's gotten so much better over the years.

Can someone please go back and find out how many games were decided by Quincey and Cleary screwing up? Not just their +/-, but let's say if we lost by one goal and Cleary or Quincey were -1. I bet most of our games are lost by these clowns.

That one really hurt. That was a slick move.

Two terrible shifts by Cleary and Quincey. Faaaaaantastic. Oh, and it's a first NHL goal. How typical.

Hey, remember earlier this season when Babs sat Tatar, or played him 6 minutes a night and said kids have to earn their spot? Now Nyquist is given a second line spot. I'm certainly not complaining, but it's interesting.

I do. Babcock basically said as much today. He's an emergency call up, so it doesn't affect his 2 game limit. Babcock essentially said Nyquist has to the blow the roof off the joint to ensure he stays in the lineup. Hard to imagine they won't send him down if they went to the trouble to make him an emergency call-up so they wouldn't be forced to keep him up.

He basically told Nyquist that he has to be mind-blowingly good to have a spot on the team. Disgraceful.

I love this. Ugly jersey are fun when they're intentionally bad.

Quincey is hurt. Looks like Nyquist is unlikely to get the call after all. They need to call up a defenseman instead.

Bumps and bruises, huh? Nyquist is probably beyond frustrated at this point. An easy solution would be to waive an underachiever and call Nyquist AND a defenseman up.

We shouldn't get our hopes up. We will be in a real bad situation of he plays two games. We can hope Holland finally accepts it, but there will be pressure to hold off losing players for nothing by waiving them. I agree about Andersson, though. I'm not sure he'd get claimed if Eaves and Tootoo didn't, and we do have other options at center. Emmerton, Glendening, etc.

In fairness to Babcock, he's had everyone play with everyone else and it doesn't work. If he wants to get another line going, he really doesn't have much of a choice other than splitting up the Euro Twins.