GMRwings1983

Star players tend to like enforcers, and I've never heard otherwise. It's only common sense for players to want someone on their side when s*** goes down. Also, Flip is a guy who is often soft on the puck and is easy to knock off his feet. Maybe a little more grit and tough love wouldn't hurt him from time to time. After all, we're not paying all this money to a marshmallow who can't even take a simple bodycheck in practice.

Downey was just teaching Flip the meaning of "team toughness". It's not like he jumped the guy and forced Flip to have to fight him. I can tell you many stories I've heard of other enforcers doing things in practice that were a lot worse than this.

I guess we both are.

Not as often as I perform it on your girlfriend, pervert.

That should be the Sabres main jersey. The ones they wear now look like some bad acid trip.

Stop bitching guys. This is hockey not baseball. Believe me, if the hit was dirty enough, Lilja would have stepped in there and destroyed Downey. Since he didn't, I'm guessing it must have been a clean hit. It's not Downey's fault that Flip is softer than a beanie-baby and he got hurt from a simple hit.

I knew it when we signed him. Another soft euro.

Are you high? Lilja went undefeated as a fighter last year. You're a worse judge than those idiots who judged the gymnastics competitions in these past Olympics.

Burke would look less stupid letting Schneider leave for nothing, than by trading him and Marchant for Ken Klee. The latter situation just looks downright embarassing.

I hope they don't have to do their protecting from the press box.

An enforcer is only useful if he's in the lineup. I can only see him being dressed if there are injuries to other players. Also, it'll be hard for him to repeat his surprising season last year, where I didn't see him lose a fight. I'm glad that he's ready to do the same dirty work again, since he looked like a guy that wasn't going to play anymore just a few seasons ago.

Eric Brewer is overrated. He's a good defenseman, but he's not a great guy to be a team's #1 defenseman. He doesn't score much, and even for his size isn't as physical as he should be. Also, he's a little prone to injuries. Of course, it doesn't help that he's played for s***ty teams his whole career, but that's just my take on him.

Brodeur won the Gold in 2002, and has 2 more Cups as a starter than Hasek has. Also, wasn't Roy the goalie in the 1998 Olympics, instead of Brodeur? Fact is, you probably made your post forgetting that Brodeur was still playing in the league. You're forgiven.

Brian Burke baby!

I'm sure Brodeur is dreaming about it as we speak.

I have no Canadian bias to Roy. I hate the man, and if he were here right now, I'd take a baseball bat and break it over his head. I just think he was the best because of the longevity, the Cups, the Conn Smythes, and the fact that he took several underdog teams to the Finals throughout several different eras.

You guys living in Detroit are lucky that you have opportunities like this. I wish I could have been there. We must not forget that before there was Andreas Lilja, there were these 2 greats.

But it is difficult when you start comparing his 11 gold medals to anything that Roy or Hasek did. Roy didn't play that much internationally to win 11 gold medals. Also, the level of competition in the Olympics wasn't as high then as it is now. It's hard enough to compare goalies from different eras, let alone different leagues.

Laugh all you want, but if you look at Tretiak's accompishments and the way he revolutionized goaltending, it's not overstatiing it to say that he's in the top 2 or 3. He was considered the best goalie in the world for a long time. I was just merely saying that it's difficult to rank him because of his non-NHL career, but that I still personally put him highly on the list.

As someone already mentioned, he probably wouldn't have won all those Vezina trophies if the team was elite. Besides, goalies seem to play better with the more shots that they get. Hasek was a guy who got a lot of work, hence that made him look more important to his team in the voters' minds than other goalies who played for better teams which faced less shots.

I don't know if it's just me, but I'm always disappointed that Tretiak never played in the NHL, because it would have been great to see how he'd measure up in a discussion like this. At this point, it's near impossible to compare him to Roy or Hasek because he only played internationally. With that said, I still put him 2nd on my list of best goalies ever. I was wondering how others here rank him?

The NHL at that time was far ahead of any European leagues. The Czech teams were good, but not as good as some of their players and teams are now. It's no comparison.

Those are some good points, but you quickly dismissed early on in your post all of Roy's accomplishments before Hasek came into the league, such as winning the Vezina, and taking his team to 2 Finals appearances. That was clever of you. Roy was a better goalie for a longer period than Hasek was. Fact is, I don't think a younger Hasek would have had the same success as Roy had, if he played in the NHL in the mid 80's. It took Hasek a while to learn to control his maddening style of goaltending. With that said, Hasek probably had a better prime than Roy had, but over a career span I still have to give the edge to Roy.

Roy and Tretiak were the best goalies ever to play the game. I would put Hasek anywhere from 3-5, with Sawchuk and Brodeur taking the other two spots. Thus, him being number 2 isn't really that big a stretch.

Honestly, if not for Lang we probably wouldn't have won the Cup last year. His clutch goals in 2007 allowed the Wings to avoid likely elimination, thus giving the younger players on the team more playoff experience. As a result, in 2008 the younger players had better awareness of the playoffs and more hunger to go all the way.