StormJH1

The more I think about it, this isn't just a PR move by the league, it's a GREAT PR move by the NHL. It had been all over the media for weeks that the assumption was the two sides would eventually meet at "50/50". In one fell swoop, the NHL has offered what fans perceive to be the ending point, PLUS a full 82-game season. For the players to flat reject that now would make it appear that they're the ones who wrecked our chance at a full season. There's just a few problems with that proposal, though: It ISN'T 50/50. The definition of "Hockey Related Revenues" (HRR) is significant, as it apparently deducts costs from gross revenues before dividing it up to the players. This is not analogous to a 50% share in other sports, and is probably more like 45%. Given Donald Fehr's stance from the beginning, which is that the league was booming and the owners got virtually everything they wanted in '05, what does this offer GIVE the players? If it lowers contracts to 5 years and drops the salary cap over $10 million, what are they getting in return? Still, having the pressure on the NHLPA is a good thing if you're a fan that only cares about the players getting back to work. The NFL referee lockout was a good idea of how a dramatic shift in public opinion can create "sudden movement" in a negotiation that otherwise appears to be a stalemate.

This is still such an encouraging sign, even if it's a PR play. Talks have continued, an they just moved the dial in the first significant way. Didn't even talk until Dec in the 04 lockout. Sent on iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm dropping it - I have strong opinions about celebrating the hunting of endangered animals (even if it's necessary/tradition for certain archaic ways of life), and obviously have strong negative opinions of Tootoo as a hockey player. The purpose of the post was twofold. I suspect more people will share my hockey views on him the first time he takes a selfish minor in a close game, while scoring a lower goal total than Ian White. Not trolling here, thanks for the spirited discussion. Sent on iPhone using Tapatalk

A Native American tribe recently petitioned (successfully, I believe) to sacrifice two Bald Eagles because their religion told them to do it. Cool with that too? I'm not debating the conservationist aspect of it. Obviously, asking people to care about animals, even endangered ones, on a hockey board is a fool's errand, when said advocate of killing the endangered animal has a chance to help out your 4th line. But as a tactic, it's a troll move, and an "eff you" to people who try to protect endangered animals. Tweeting a picture of a dead animal that most civilized nations are working hard to save from extinction is not a necessary tactic for arguing Inuit rights. And no, it's not the same as showing a picture of a dead deer or rabbit. But on the hockey point, what player are you talking about?! $2 million for a "30-point" player who they BENCHED in the playoffs. His career goal high was 11, and that was 6 years ago. He had SIX goals last year. Do you know how hard it is to play 77 games and only put the puck in the next 6 times? That's Cory Emmerton territory. If we signed him for $700,000 on a two-way non-waiver deal, that'd be one thing. For $2 million a year, he's going to play. The people who think this is a good hockey signing are the same people who thought Brad May was going to save the Red Wings a few years ago because they were too soft. I'd rather be known as a whiny animal lover than a fan of Jordin Tootoo.

Heck no, I love meat. I'm actually thinking about getting a burger for lunch. This obviously goes deeper than polar bears. If Henrik Zetterberg killed an endangered seal with a harpoon in Sweden, I'd be more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, because I didn't start with the assumption that Zetterberg is a POS. It was just tough for me to accept that we needed to pay a premium for a 29-year old hack would was a healthy scratch for a team that cleaned our clocks in April, yet can barely get to the cap floor in salaries. I think part of their success was DUE to the fact that guys like Tootoo weren't running guys in the corner for no reason. http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/2012/04/20/jordin_tootoo_frustrated_benched_nashville_predators_nhl/

This. The first time I read the article about the early cancellation of the Winter Classic (to avoid its use as leverage), I thought: "that's so Bettman". I don't think the league perceives fan pressure to be a real "thing" they have to worry about in terms of that event, but the longer it's being held over their head...it can only be a bad thing. Detroit and Toronto will REALLY feel the pain of seeing this thing cancelled, but the sad truth is that the bulk of NHL fans are going to gradually forget about hockey, just like they did in 04-05. The people who care enough to actually be looking forward to this event, and setting their DVR's for 4 episodes of HBO's 24/7 production (which I'm equally bummed about losing as I am the actual game) - say what you want, but they'll be back. The beauty of the Winter Classic is that non-hockey fans seemed to stumble across it and become interested, and this year, that's not likely to happen. But all these wannabe tough guys and people who try to guilt fans into not coming back after the lockout so they can "punish" Bettman, please. How in the world does that make any sense? You really expect the people hurt MOST by a lockout to artificially prolong the lockout for themselves by not watching games, attending games, or buying NHL stuff when it's back? The Gary Bettman era is a blip in the history of hockey, much the Black Sox Scandal or the height of steroids in baseball. It's ugly, it's unfair, and it sucks. But Gary is not the effin' game. One day, he will gone, and I will still be a hockey fan. In the meantime, none of this politics or business BS gets to destroy my fandom. If the Wings are playing, I'm watching.

Wow. Loved how the article was entirely about Sergei, except they made sure to get the perfunctory reach-around reference to Yzerman "motivating" Fedorov to play hurt. Hockey players are tough, period. It doesn't matter how big you are or where you were born. I remember a story about Brent Gilchrist screaming in pain as they injected his injured groin so he could suit up, and he was a 4th liner. Anybody who thinks that Fedorov was soft is an absolute moron.

First of all, ESPN3 carried KHL games last year, yet nobody seems to know/remember that. I don't think the interest level in this country is a Russian hockey league (which would probably also have to be tape delayed) could justify putting it on even the ancillary ESPN TV channels, let alone ESPN or ESPN2. There's no way. Second, ESPN3 is not a "premium" service. It's basically the same as HBO Go, which is HBO's excellent web/tablet/smartphone portal to on-demand content. If you already have ESPN through one of the major service providers (including Comcast), you literally put your account login information online and you can stream it. I think this concept is pretty alien to a lot of people, but became pretty familiar during the 2012 London Olympics. Download the WatchESPN app for iOS, or its also carried on streaming devices like an XBox 360. I've used it to watch on-demand MLS games, IndyCar races, etc., but they have TONS of obscure European stuff. If you're already paying for these services, you might as well get your money's worth!

No kidding. I couldn't even imagine Radulov being a captain on a beer league team. Guess the KHL rewards guys that bail mid-contract on the NHL. Sent on iPhone using Tapatalk

Here's what really irks me - people debate the labor dispute and complain about how hockey is being taken from them and, oh, the poor arena workers and all the jobs being affected... Then they turn around and say: "if there's a lockout, I won't ever watch hockey or pay a dime to the NHL again". Aren't those positions antithetical? Aren't you harming the sport, the players, and the workers just to get back at Bettman and the owners? While also depriving yourself of the greatest sport on Earth? I put this almost all on the owners and Bettman. But I'll be back. And so will you. Sent on iPhone using Tapatalk

Whew, see, there you go! Glad we got that misconception cleared up, but it does make you wonder what percentage of people dumping on Holland this offseason is based on outright inaccuracies or impossibilities. (Including, by the way, that there was any sales pitch or reasonable structuring of money that could've talked either Parise or Suter into playing for Detroit next year). Seriously, the pendulum has swung WAY too far in the opposite direction on Holland. Four Stanley Cups, turning super-talented players like Yzerman, Lidstrom, Datsyuk, and Zetterberg into Winged Wheel "lifers", and pulling a Hossa signing out of a hat in a season when nobody even dreamed about it....and then one offseason of relative inactivity/bad luck and the man is absolute garbage. I don't get. The ONLY guy this offseason that I thought we could reasonably get and who seemed interested in playing here that disappointed me was Alex Semin. I was bummed to see him sign a short-term deal somewhere else, when it wasn't even certain if that was possible. But given what we know now about the lockout, and the fact that another major CBA shakeup (with possible revisions to the salary cap and even retroactive adjustments to contracts) seems very likely, I'm somewhat glad go around the free agent market making it rain. Are we as strong as we've been in recent years? No. Do I think we still have a very good team with quality players at goaltending, defense, and forward? Absolutely I do.

Not just the other fans, but the other Russian players, as well. You can pretty much figure out that a lot of the Russian players don't like each other (Malkin, Ovie, etc.), but they all talk with admiration of Datsyuk. Glad to see that Datsyuk is a role model for young players now the way I felt like Larionov was such a good influence on a young Datsyuk 10 years ago.

I guess we have so many other problems before this one (even with it being only two years away), that I hadn't thought much about it, and kind of assumed that we'd re-up him on something between 1-3 years. But I also didn't expect that would happen until the summer after the contract's up. I think Datsyuk's one of those Larionov-type players who could succeed into his 40's because of his sheer hockey IQ. He's incredibly skilled at everything he does, but it's not like it's his game to just blow around defenders anyway. He's welcome to be a Wing as long as he wants in my book, but if he decides to go play in Russia in a couple of years will I be mad at him? No. Disappointed, yes, but not mad. I also think it's kind of strange people would be so much more accepting of Datsyuk moving on from the wings "too early" for personal reasons than Fedorov, but that just goes to show how much perception of personality factors into these things more than pure hockey value/financials. I will say that while the KHL is still a mess in many ways (and the Lokomotiv tragedy sure didn't help), one of the more harmful side effects of the 04-05 lockout was to give all these players a "taste" of playing in the KHL for a full season. I would think that would only serve to make the concept of playing there (sometimes for more money and closer to home) much more tangible for these guys.

I'm beginning to feel absolutely sick about this. The idea that we had a realighment plan that actually made sense, and an interesting offseason (well, outside of Detroit), plus an epic Winter Classic and Alumni Game set with players flying in from all over the world to take place....and it could be pissed away by another labor squabble. It's worse than how I felt in 2004 because at that point there wasn't even precedent for losing an entire year. I really think that Bettman and many of the owners feel like they'll do better in a new system, even if they miss games. For the bad franchises, they're saving money by NOT playing hockey. But not only will Bettman have the precedent of the league bouncing back from the '04-05 lockout, but also the recent precedent of what happened in the NFL and NBA. Except that I don't really think the league "bounced back" all the way from 2004-05...it just grew into something different, aiding largely by external circumstances (the growth of the Canadian dollar) and a few shot-in-the-arm gimmicks like the Winter Classic. I have friends that were HUGE NHL fans 10 years ago, and now they either don't care, or only care about their team. I think the TEAMS have many loyal fans, but the NHL has a very weak sense of a "league" compared to the NFL or MLB. And if you do this to fans again....wow.

Exactly. I think people really forget what he was in the early and mid-90's. They remember the washed up guy who ended up in ANA, COL, and WAS, and not the guy who was every bit as feared as Ovechkin, Malkin, Stamkos, and the snipers of today. Except Fedorov had a two-way game too. It's tempting to look at what Yzerman's teams did in the 80's versus what a more team-oriented Yzerman did in the 90's with help from guys like Fedorov, but there were so many other factors in those 90's teams that isn't exactly fair. Bowman and Lidstrom obviously had a ton to do with that, along with the sheer depth of veteran talent we had filling out our lines. But Fedorov was huge.

I interpreted this topic differently - I thought you meant "Start over a career that looked so promising but then something happened and went horribly wrong". The first guy I thought of was Igor Grigorenko, who was the prospect who flamed out after a car crash derailed his career. Fischer wouldn't work because his problem was congenital and just a part of who he is.

The Red Wings' famed 1989 draft, in which we drafted Lidstrom (3rd) and Fedorov (4th) in back to back middle rounds, could have been even better. The Wings planned on taking Pavel Bure in the 6th round, but were sniped by 3 picks instead. The Wings selected Dallas Drake instead (still a pretty damn good pick for the 6th round), and Bure scored 437 NHL goals, despite the fact his knees basically didn't work by the time he was 30. Could you imagine what a Russian Five might have looked like if it were Fedorov, Bure, and Larionov/Kozlov. Then again, given the problems that would LATER arise between Fedorov, Bure, and a certain Russian tennis player, who knows what that might have done to Fedorov and team chemistry.

The NBA has both max contract lengths and amounts (...well, kind of). The NHL has the $14 million compensation rule, but the cap calculations and bonus structure are messed up to the point where Weber, Parise, and Suter are basically making $25 million next year to play hockey. I think it's time to put real limits on what the upper end players can make in a single deal. I think the long-term deals are counter-productive, and I think the doubling of the salary cap over 7 seasons is a mirage. Agreed. And what's sad is that while all of the CBA issues matter significantly to the financial health of the game (and, more noticeably, to competitive balance), this potential lockout kind of snuck up on people and swallowed the whole realignment effort, which I thought was a legitimate improvement that would help FANS see their teams play at reasonable hours, and foster realistic rivalries. I got the sense that everyone just assumed there was NO WAY the two sides would get close to a lockout again after losing a year, and then the realignment thing got quashed and I thought "uh oh".

Can't disagree with that. But I've never really felt that hockey was a true national, network television competitor with those other sports anyway. In my opinion, that was a myth propagated by Bettman and fueled by a perfect storm of short-term East Coast hype (Rangers in '94, and Devils in '95), the heyday of SportsCenter coverage, and Bettman's ill-advised westward expansion. Hockey doesn't look, play, or feel anything like the other sports. The only sports season that it really "competes" with from start to finish is the NBA, which is as about as opposite of hockey as you can get. In the late 90's, when hockey was getting play on FOX (glow puck, etc.), the majority of America who don't know this sport turn on the channel, see the white ice in the background, and quickly turn it off. It might as well be figure skating or equestrian to those people. There's really no point in pandering to that type of audience, pretending that your sport could ever be as big as football or basketball here. It can't. At the same time, the league has done a lot of good things since the lockout to evolve into the type of sport that it needs to be going forward. Bettman deserves some credit for that, yes, but I'd have no problem seeing him gone as soon as possible - you could lose sleep thinking about how much better the league could have been with the direction of someone actually passionate about the product and its fans. Think about it as a television analogy - I hear a lot of NHL fans still stuck in the 1990's, and Bettman is guilty of this too. They want the game to be "Friends" or "Seinfeld" - a central experience accessible to everyone that gets tens of millions of viewers on television. Well, guess what? The world has changed. Does anyone here like "Mad Men", "Breaking Bad", or "Game of Thrones"? Those shows get a fraction of the viewers that crap like the "CSI Miami" gets, yet they're considered some of the best shows on television, are extremely profitable for their networks, and are appreciated by a loyal collection of obsessed fans. Why does the NHL need to be "CSI Miami" or "Friends"? Why can't we keep costs within reason, and create a CBA without loopholes that result in star players making NFL or MLB-type money? Bettman is totally ripable, but I think should be noted that public support in the 04-05 lockout was largely on the side of the OWNERS, despite the fact that the players are the actual face of the league and the source of the "product".

Sabermetrics are problematic in BASEBALL, which is a largely individualistic sport with set pieces and measurable starts and stops. I can't even imagine them being useful in hockey, which is much more continuous, chaotic, and team-based. My rule of thumb is that more you struggle to even explain how a statistic is calculated, the less likely I'm inclined to think that it measures anything useful. Ask yourself this question, could you read the definition above and purposefully alter your play to improve your Corsi rating (without actually playing better)? I'd have to think the answer is probably yes.

I think I saw that Shanahan/female fan thing one time, and then completely lost it from memory. Could you imagine VP of Player Safety Shanahan breaking down a fine/suspension in a video for his own infraction? Haha. The Osgood/Roy fight was awesome too. I do remember watching at time and thinking "Yes, this is awesome, but awesome in a kind of overblown sequel to an action movie" sort of way. Still, while it was a fairly even fight (Osgood scoring points with the immediacy effect for the first few shots and the takedown at the end), it was impressive to see the much smaller Osgood stand up to him.

I recall an interview with Holland where they talked about acquiring him at the deadline (I feel like this was '09, but could have been '08), and he referred to there being "mixed feelings" in the organization about bringing him back. But again, we're talking about post-lockout Fedorov, who I fully admit, was more or less washed up. I think the way he played for other teams from '05 to '09 did more to damage his reputation than any of the residual stuff from when he was here. There's an entire generation of new fans that only know him as that non-descript Russian who was hurt all the time and scored 15 goals a year. Then again, keep in mind that Bobby Orr's career was basically done by the time he was 29. What if Orr's knees had been just good enough to let him play through the year, but rendered him a below average defenseman for 5 more years? It's the Sandy Koufax effect.

No, I looked online, but I did run into a Bleacher Report listing that had Yzerman 5th all time...behind Lemieux and Sakic. What?! Messier I can understand, not just because of the Rangers '94, but because of the Gretzky-less Cup he won with the '90 Oilers, which tends to get overlooked in hockey history lessons, I think.

I won't get annoyed because I don't think you exactly read what I wrote. I never said that Ciccarelli should get in to the HHOF because he's one of my favorite players. Nor did I say he should have his number retired on the Wings or anywhere else. The point is that "unanimity of opinion" is NOT the standard, nor should it be. The baseball HOF lets people in after years of debate and a 75% vote, and there's always a few people who can argue anything. You're arguing for a higher standard in the HHOF and especially for the Wings # retirements. I respect that. And no, I would not retire Osgood's number or Shanahan's. I actually place Fedorov ahead of both of those two, and by quite a wide margin. If Fedorov is the "line", and an example of what you have to be "better" than to get a retired number in JLA, then so be it. But if so, please recognize that neither Datsyuk or Zetterberg (both already beyond the physical "peaks" of their career) have virtually no shot of earning that honor either. Neither of them is as important of a player as Fedorov was, and it's unlikely that they will do anything in the next 5 years to change my mind (even another Cup). Again, if you're fine with a standard where only the blatantly freaking obvious guys receive that honor, your opinion is as good as mine. My view of the number retirement is that there is a minimum level of accomplishment you need to have to be considered, but that the number retirements should ideally reflect the important players of different eras of competitive Wings teams. The reason the Wings were able to be so selective, frankly, is that the team wasn't all that good from about 1960 to the late 1980's. Other teams like Montreal and Toronto have had to do the "ring of honor" thing or just have a crapload of retired numbers for sustained success.

I'm going to throw a somewhat obscure one out that I've never forgotten - 2002 Playoffs against Vancouver, those Vancouver teams with pre-suspension Bertuzzi were particularly dirty, so after Chelios had a great game and we won, he decided to do this after being named 1st star: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9V6Y7a9dbo Awesome. On a much less lighter note, one that I refuse to post the video of (but you can go find if you want to remember) was one I didn't see live because I was in grad school in Minnesota, but heard about afterwards - Fischer collapsing on the bench. Came absolutely out of nowhere in a somewhat non-descript regular season game. Absolutely terrifying television - glad I didn't see it live.