StormJH1

I live in Minnesota now and am going to tonight's game (to root for Detroit, of course). I've been to past Wings/Wild games where it's almost 30% Wings fans, despite the fact that Minnesota has a very good fanbase with sell-outs or near sell-outs every game. I expect that Osgood will start tonight. If it were B2B home games, maaayyybe Babcock throws Howard back out there to get some confidence back. But on the road against a team with an outside shot at competing for that 8th spot, I don't think so. Nicklas Backstrom missed some practice time with a sore back, but is apparently OK and also may be playing tonight. I had thought they might play Josh Harding tonight (which would've been good news for us) b/c the Wild also play tomorrow night in Colorado (a division opponent), but that may not be the case.

The only reason it hasn't been his way is because the team has traditionally played well enough that the Playoffs (and even the Central) have been a foregone conclusion. The "hot hand" arrangement was certainly the case when Hasek got yanked from the Nashville series in '08 and Osgood became the guy from then on (people basically remember that as "Osgood's Cup" now and forget that Hasek was even on the team). The difference between now and any other year Babcock has coached is that our "Playoffs" are going to start around the trading deadline. If we're still 3 points out of the 8th spot come March, Babcock won't have the luxury of taking a peek to see if Osgood is on his game. 80% of the arguments on this board operate on the assumption that the Wings will make the playoffs (which they very well might). But with the point system the way it is, it can be a pain in the ass trying to make up even the slightest of margins when Bettman is handing out free points for overtime losses to the teams ahead of you. Whoever plays better in goal NEEDS to keep playing. And even if you concern is that Osgood HAS to be the guy in the Playoffs so we need to get him ready, you need to forget about that. I think people also forget how unlikely it was that Chris Osgood played as well as he did in the '09 playoffs, given the fact that he was arguably the worst starting or platoon goaltender in the NHL during the regular season. He was basically Hasek's understudy in 2008 and Osgood and Conklin were 1 and 1A in 2009, so obviously Ozzie is not dependent on "steady" regular season work to prepare for the playoffs.

I think the grades are well done (I like all of Khan's work on MLive, and he's probably the most frequent cite on this board). The grades are supposed to be relative to what you'd EXPECT out of each player coming into the year. They aren't saying that Brad Stuart is a better player than Pavel Datsyuk, for example. I think the B+ for Lidstrom is a little generous given that half of his entire game (the offense) has all but disappeared. That said, I don't think that Lidstrom is doing too much different, but that we're seeing how much of a beneficiary he was of our puck possession system (particularly on that top power play unit)...but without Filppula and Zetterberg (and minus guys like Hossa and Hudler), this team has lost a lot of the guys that like to possess the puck.

I linked to this post b/c you hit a nerve with the potential HoF'er jab, but as someone who has argued that he's a strong candidate for the HoF, it pains me to say that you're right. The more we see of this, the tougher it is to use "elite" and "Osgood" anywhere in the same sentence. I think Howard has to play right now. If you watch the games, he IS playing better. Sitting Osgood now keeps him fresh for later AND lights a fire under his ass, which is critical since "the playoffs" are going to start for this team in February, not April. If we're fighting for an 8th seed, we don't have the luxury of waiting for Chris Osgood to be interested enough to play great in goal. Howard has done his part over the past month or two to keep the team competitive, and we can only hope that he continues to do so when the other skill players return, so that we can become something better than a .500 team.

Exactly. May has played better than I expected, and is worthy of a roster spot. But he also has one freakin' assist in 28 games (and, yes, one waived off goal). And the rationale for bringing him in was that it would "make us tougher" (and presumably more injury-resistent), and yet his arrival was accompanied by multiple long-term injuries (of both the purposeful and accidental variety) and weeks of terrible play. How "tough" you are ultimately has very little to do with the scoreboard, and it certainly isn't dictated by guys who are lucky to play 8 minutes a night. Toughness only matters if you have guys who are tough and can actually PLAY. When people think of the lack of toughness on this team, they're probably thinking about guys like Datsyuk and Zetterberg, but Datsyuk is actually an impressively physical player in the corners (which he was not in 2002)...he just doesn't choose to fly around checking guys or get into fights. This whole toughness/fighting thing is an obvious straw man for frustrated Wings fans to beat up on b/c they needed some explaination as to why their team wasn't just walking into the playoffs like they do every year...

May/Boll was pretty even, with Boll losing his balance a couple of times but ultimately getting a few quality shots in. Janik's fight was garbage and apparently for no other reason than to salvage pride after getting rocked by a clean hit. Under LGW logic, the Wings must have played well because the dingleberries of our forward and defense rosters asserted themselves in fights. Wait, 1-0 OT loss to Columbus? Nevermind.

Slovakia is kinda like Russia, in that they always look sweet on paper, until you see it on the ice and realize either (a) their goaltending sucks; or (b) They have a bunch of offensive minded defensemen that have no real concept of playing team defense together. That said, the emergence of Chara is a huge asset for them, but unless your team is just so loaded (2002 Canadian) that it doesn't matter, it seems like some of the teams with less percieved "talent" (1998 Czech; 2002 Belarus) do better b/c they have guys in roles they are used to. IIRC, that was a big help to the 2002 Canadian team too, b/c they had guys like Draper on there that made it because of their value in situational hockey.

Palffy was ALWAYS productive in the NHL. I'm not exactly sure if it's his name, the European-ness, or the crappy teams he played for, but as a pure one-dimensional goal scorer, he was a Top 20, if not Top 10 talent at times.

I watched Lidstrom live at the 12/23 game against Chicago, and it just strikes you how slow he is. He's probably been pretty slow for years, but since he's Nick Lidstrom, you rarely see him in a situation where he has to even try to skate hard. His shot was never really that HARD, it was more the fact that he was so accurate with it, fired it effortlessly off the one-timer, and had tons of help in front from Holmer and Franzen. If Chris Chelios can be even a serviceable NHL defenseman at age 45, then Lidstrom can still be an elite defensive player at Age 40. But we need to acknowledge not only that Lidstrom is getting older, but that he (perhaps almost as much as someone like Chris Osgood) is the beneficiary of the Red Wings system (which has been broken this year due to loss of players and injuries). In other words, Lidstrom has never been Mike Green deking around 2 guys and scoring en route to a 30-goal season. Lidstrom's goals usually come after extended Wings possessions on power plays, thanks to the cycling of the skill players and the interference by Holmstrom and Franzen in front. With those piece no longer functioning as usual, it's not really shocking that his pedestrian slap shots from the point aren't going in.

Yeah, but it's even more arbitrary for that. They only need to defend until OT starts to get the point. I thought 4 on 4 was great before they had shootouts...they should've made it longer or even looked at 3 on 3. People may laugh at that idea, but how is playing 3 on 3 hockey LESS representative of the actual sport than a shootout?

Well, Kozlov, or the guy drafted ahead of him that year, Keith Primeau. We also let go of Martin Lapointe, said for many years to be the "next captain" of the Wings when he wanted too much money. There's other guys, like Fedorov and Kopecky who left in free agency, but yes, the Wings are more "loyal" than most organizations. So, I guess the actual rule is more like: "The Wings don't give up on homegrown talent, unless they can get a guy like Shanahan or Hasek in return." And since Kovalchuk is at that level of talent, that is what we're talking about. But Kovalchuk's also a dick and a very one-dimensional player. He's a total personality clash with Datsyuk, and except for the year he played with Marc Savard, he's never really worked with a top-level setup man to get him the puck. He's more of a Ovechkin-type scorer who likes to carry the puck. Even Brett Hull, one of the greatest snipers of all time, didn't work well with Gretzky, one of the greatest assist guys of all time, b/c of the chemistry and differences in their games. I think Kovalchuk plays pretty much the same game whether he's on a line with Datsyuk or Todd White, but some guys (like Jonathan Cheechoo) are 50-goal scorers if they have Joe Thornton setting them up, and fringe NHL'ers if they don't.

Yet, again, he sucker punched him during an all-out brawl on the ice that even the goalies were involved in. How do expect to avoid fighting or any kind of physical contact when even Igor freakin' Larionov is in the middle of a scrum? Lemieux had to have known that a fight was coming (this guy had 100 PIM's like 9 times in his career up to that), but he wanted to do it on his own terms. That simply wasn't realistic.

Also, that McCarty hit on the Dallas player was, again, not even close to Bertuzzi's. Bertuzzi (IIRC) was a sucker punch followed by driving him face first into the ice. That's what caused so much damage. In the video posted at the beginning of this thread, the guy cheapshots Yzerman and leaves him in an unresponsive heap in the corner (consider him "on notice" at that point). McCarty catches up to him from behind, but instead of pile driving him into the ice, he basically gives him a facewash that turns into a tackle. No, it wasn't a "fair fight" in the sense that the two guys were face to face with equal opportunity to hit each other, but it also was not a violation of "The Code". People run these YouTube clips completely out of context and want to compare dirty offenses to one another. There's no justification for over-the-top violence, but chasing some IMMEDIATELY after he left your captain dead on the ice is not the same as putting a finishing move on Moore two weeks after he ran Naslund. Also, there's a reason Moore got so badly hurt and this guy didn't, and what McCarty did was actually pretty restrained, given the circumstances.

To those people who say that the McCarty/Lemieux incident wasn't "premeditated", were you alive in 1997? There was so much build-up to that rivalry and particularly that regular season game (which I believe was the 4th between the Wings and Avs that year, but the FIRST where Lemieux actually dressed) that anyone listening to AM radio or following the Wings in any way, shape, or form was talking about "revenge" against Lemieux. But there's no way that hit was "dirty" in the way Bertuzzi's was. The Bertuzzi hit was a cheap shot during live play. Lemieux's fight happened 5-10 seconds into an ice-wide brawl that started with Larionov/Forsberg, followed by Roy making a beeline for the ruckus, only to be intercepted by Shanahan at mid-ice. How is your head not on a swivel when even the GOALTENDERS are already fighting in an all-out brawl!?!

The man games lost tally doesn't look that impressive compared to other teams, but it's the circumstances here that make it worse. When you consider that we lost 28% of our goal scoring to FREE AGENCY (or whatever the exact figure was) before the season even began, and then you delete from that two Top 6 forwards (Cleary's injury is more recent) and one or two Top 4 defenseman (depending how you look at it), it literally feels like we're watching the Euro Twins and Lidstrom play with the Grand Rapids Griffins. If this degree of injuries happens to the 2008-09 team (or going outside of the cap era, the 2001-02 team, haha), they would've just absorbed it and thrown in the "Black Aces". But the fact is that we were already behind the 8 ball as it was, which makes our injury situation feel all the worse. (However, it's bad all around the league, too).

And if we keep playing crappy, Here's John Vigilante!

I'd be for it, except his cap hit is $2.5 million per year. If the Wings can't even afford to call someone up to be a healthy scratch (with all the looming contracts going to hit the books when our five injured guys come back), then how could possibly pay Ward that. If he cleared waivers, we could work out a minimum deal with him, but again, I don't think Holland will (or can) add anyone. Such is the new NHL...

I don't believe so, but I'm not at home to check. I am Comcast (not Time Warner) but I'm hopeful this will happen with NHL Network for me. MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA networks were ALL added to my cable package without me upgrading or paying additional fees this year. Also, NBA Network randomly got an HD channel a few weeks before the season, so I'm hopeful that they do the same thing with NHL soon. NHL On the Fly is awesome, as are the additional out-of-market games. And the classic stuff is great too for DVR. The on-air personalities are weak, but they largely get out of the way and emphasize the highlights, love it. Huge for out-of-market Detroit fan, too.

Unfreakinbelievable. The only thing that hasn't happened is an injury to Datsyuk, Zetterberg, or Lidstrom...but to make things worse, none of those 3 is playing anywhere close to their usual selves! This is the worst part of salary cap hockey--there's nothing Holland can do. We can't even fill out a roster, let alone "buy our way out of the problem" b/c all those contracts are coming back later in the year. I can't believe we were in Game 7 in June and now there's guys on our 2nd line who couldn't even crack our 4th line last year. I would seriously be relieved and happy for this team just to make the playoffs right now. We are in BIG trouble if you understand how the NHL points system works. The teams ahead of us can pretty much fend us off just by making it to overtime a bunch of games.

Well, it's a good thing we locked up his cap hit until he's about 40 then! This would be the downside to all these stupid long-term deals around the league. The Islanders are already realizing the DiPietrio disaster, and teams like Chicago and Detroit will regret it too. It's only really worthwhile to make a deal that long if it's a once-in-a-generation player (like Crosby or Ovechkin) and you're almost certain that you'll be at risk of losing him if you don't lock him up.

He's certainly turned a corner. Put it this way: at the beginning of the year, I was pretty sure we were going to need to acquire (or call up) a goaltender or we'd be in big trouble. Now, even though the team has continued to struggle, I no longer feel that goaltending is a primary issue for concern. Especially compared to the goaltending we were getting from Osgood in 08-09 (he was one of the league's worst in the regular season).

That game was terrible to watch. One of the worst Wings losses I can remember. Not only a subpar opponent, but a rookie goalie with terrible numbers, yet WE were the team that looked back on our heels. I understand that we have the 4 injuries (plus a 5th in Rafalski day-to-day) and that this is a rough stretch. But the whole strength of this organization is supposed to be that we play a style of hockey (puck possession, poise, etc.) that is taught from the stars to the healthy scratches and down through Grand Rapids. Datysuk and Zetterberg need help, but as critical of Hossa as people are for his playoff play (at which point his shoulder was basically destroyed), people forget that there were long stretches of 08-09 where the other scorers disappeared like this, and Hossa basically carried the team. Having a 3rd defensive combo of Lebda & Kindl (just up from the minors) and Derek Meech as a 4th defenseman scares the s*** out of me. Our team got physically manhandled, the defenseman played terrible (and shot more at our goalie than the opposing goalie), and I saw no resemblance of the puck-control team that I've been accustomed to watching in front of a home crowd. If we have to have to limp into the playoffs this year, I can live with that, but I hope we don't plan on doing it like that.

Isn't he like 6'6"? I saw a clip with him getting caught out of net and ultimately getting scored on where he looked BAD. Happens to everyone, but just saying.l Yeah, I'm intrigued, but I think with Howard showing that he belongs in this mix and Osgood presumably showing up for the playoffs (again), I don't know that we need to add another goalie. Plus, Daniel Larsson is older than I thought, and he'll probably warrant a look one of these days.

The only alternative to Bertuzzi being "lazy" is that he's just "slow". Neither one is good, but at least with the former, there's some indication that he COULD be faster. Anybody (even Holland) can make a mistake once, but I have no idea what they remembered from his 2007 play that would make the Wings brass want to say "Yeah, we need THAT guy on our team!" He's NOT a power forward anymore, his foot speed forces him to take costly penalties, and the combination of guilt/sedatives related to the Steve Moore incident has neutered any motivation he has to play tough, physical hockey. He looks like a forward version of Derian Hatcher out there.

I don't agree with trading for a goalie mid-season. There's no question that goaltending is and will be an issue this year, but the Wings haven't had elite goaltending since probably Hasek in 2002. And with the cap the way it is, we have basically no money tied up in goaltenders now, but there's nobody of consequence you could bring in without taking on significantly more of a cap hit. The defense needs to play better (though the Kronwall injury doesn't hurt).