StormJH1

I moved away from Detroit to the Twin Cities area in Minnesota in 2003, and my sports loyalties are split. I kept some of my Detroit roots but not all. My rule is that if you were the team that got me into the sport, rewarded me with great memories, and then sustained that interest, I'll keep you through the good times and follow you into the "darkness". I became a Minnesota Twins fan because I pretty much lost all my baseball interest after the '94 work stoppage, and even through college. The Twins revived that, and then some, so I'm a Twins fan for life, even though I still have a special place in my heart for the Tigers. I don't know how anybody aged about, say, 25-40 could have experienced what the Wings did in the 90's and 2000's and not remained a loyal fan. In addition to losing touch with a lot of (former) Detroit fans, it was sad to see how many of them were diehard Wings fans 15 years ago, and now could be described as "casual" at best. When they start missing the playoffs, you'll see a whole new wave of people jump off. I think the organization is a run with class and is emblematic of all the good parts of my Detroit heritage, of which I am still proud. And from a historical hockey aspect, it's tough to beat Original Six, Production Line, Russian Five, etc. Even if you strip away all of the "Detroit" stuff and the history, I also like that they've had an identity as a hockey team for about 20 years. They've brought a finesse style emphasizing puck possession, and it can be very satisfying to watch when it works well.

I don't consider it "hate" at all. Virtually everyone here wants him back, and that was by no means a foregone conclusion when we took a flier on him. The comparison to Zetterberg is not particularly useful. First of all, Z is playmaker and an elite 2-way player. It's pretty well established that Z's goal totals over a full season are going to be in the low 20's. But he has twice as many assists as that, and is extremely valuable defensively. Brunner is the inverse of Zetterberg - he's the guy that should be on the receiving end of those passes, and he arguably is one of the most "shot first" players on the team (2nd on the team, actually to Z, which surprised me), and I like that about him. But his overall game is nothing like Z's. Dan Cleary has more goals than Z also, and nobody in their right mind would argue Cleary has been better than Zetterberg this year. (Hockey statistics are incredibly flawed across the board...Zetterberg is a minus-3, while Kindl is a plus-13. The best players get the toughest matchups, and +/- holds individuals accountable for something one of the other 5 guys on the ice might have screwed up). The debate here is because we are almost certain he will be on the Wings next year, so I don't want him saddled with an unreasonable contract that will: (a) Hurt the Wings against the Cap and prevent us from making other moves; and (b) Turn the fanbase against him because of his bad deal. The hate for guys like Quincey and (previously) Ericsson isn't so much that they're the worst hockey players ever, it was that people didn't perceive the cap hits they carried as being consistent with their actual contribution.

Well, yeah, but the NHL isn't a skills competition. (Except when it ends in a shootout!...ba-ZING!) Yes, there are some players that excel statistically because of a particular skill they have that makes them "elite" in that regard. For example, it helps that Zdeno Chara shoots 100mph. That's a useful skill when you shoot from the point. But there are other guys that have absolute cannons (Kurtis Foster comes to mind, but so do a bunch of AHL defenseman that burned out) that never become elite offensive defenseman because they lack some other parts of their game, and can't "put it all together". You say that you watch Brunner and he "already has the skillset". That may be true - I've seen a lot of those same flashes also. But I've also watched hockey long enough to see guys like Joe Juneau, Maxim Afinogenov, the Kostitsyn brothers, etc....guys that plenty of people watched and said "that guy's gonna be a perennial 30 goal scorer", and it just didn't happen. It's not just about Brunner "catching up to the league", the league is catching onto him too. When I watch him, I see a guy who has a bag of tricks that probably would've gotten him 25 goals (instead of 11) if he had played these NHL games in the Swiss league instead. The goalies are better here, and the defenses are more skilled and organized, and they also operate in tighter dimensions. This isn't an attack on Brunner, personally, it's the same thing we've seen with Brunnstrom, Leino, and 95% of the guys who were just STUDS in Europe, and were somewhere between "forgettable" and "slightly above ordinary" in the NHL, save for a few flashes of brilliance here and there. And I just don't buy the conditioning thing. It's certainly true that some NHL players hold up better over the course of the season, but there's no evidence that Brunner's conditioning was "poor" coming into this season. If anything, his speed and conditioning are the strongest parts of what he offers. When I compared him to Hudler, that wasn't an insult. If the Wings could find a legit NHL'er from overseas outside of the draft (and without sacrificing any picks or players), a free Jiri Hudler would be a HUGE deal. I'm just warning that the odds of him becoming better than what we saw earlier this year, or even sustaining that level of play for any length of time, are not that good.

I hadn't addressed the point about the condensed season and additional travel. That probably is a contributing factor. But between Zug and the Wings, he's played 68 games thus far. It will end up being roughly the same as a regular NHL season, which he hasn't done before. But I do think fans forget that he's 27, not 22 or 24. Does Jay Bouwmeester break down if the Blues make a 20-game run into the Playoffs, since he's only accustomed to playing 82 every year? At some point, you are what you are as an athlete. He's been a professional hockey player for many years, playing games every few days. It just so happens that he'll be asked to play 82 (next year) instead of around 50. Is Brunner going to do something different in the offeseason to prepare for that difference in length? Is there anything you can do months in advance that would make a difference? Maybe Datsyuk will show him his "secret workouts". Agreed on the 2-year deal. I think get him to do that because having Zetterberg as a fixture here was part of the draw here to begin with. If the deal were unbelievably reasonable (under $3 mil AAV), I'd consider 3 or 4 years, but if I'm his agent, I'd probably advise him against that. I've missed a few of the recent Wings games but what I saw from him earlier in the year looked like a guy that could be a 30 goal scorer, but was just having a little trouble finishing. The overall quality of goaltending in the NHL is one of the underappreciated differences between our league and the European leagues. Yes, absolutely not. Most people were of the opinion that Yzerman got FLEECED in that deal, especially given that Martin St. Louis was probably the perfect person to help Conacher overcome his small size. Lightning were frustrated with his two-way game a little, but dude has skill.

I really don't know what's going to happen but if we have to use the amenesty buyouts on two guys just acquired last offseason...Yikes. The purpose of the amnesty buyouts (and, IMO, their best use) is to get out from underneath some of these killer long-term deals that looked like a good idea under the 2005 CBA, but now appear like long-term burdens. The one guy that really strikes me as an amnesty candidate is Mule. On the one hand, his contract is a backdiver, such that his cap hit isn't horrible. On the other hand, he's hurt a lot, and he's kind drifted into that Dany Heatley role of the guy who can maybe score 20 goals for you, but really can't be depended on as a top-line scorer. And we have a LONG way left to go on that deal (2020). His cap hit, while not gigantic, is still considerably higher than Coliacovo or Sammy, and will bruden us for much longer.

I usually defer to the locals on issues involving JLA and live game attendance (having moved away when I was 22), but there's an increasing sentiment around the league that JLA is a dump. Of course, it's hard to sever some of that from the usual anti-Detroit sentiment, but if you follow other teams around the league (namely beat writers, travelling fans, etc.), JLA gets a lot of complaints. I'm usually pretty neutral on this issue, in part because it only affects me personally once in a blue moon. But also because I just don't see what "problem" it is that will be solved by a new arena. The "it" ticket in Detroit right now, as I see it anyway, is Comerica Park. That's almost comical to me in the sense that they built that place and almost immediately...nobody cared. Then 2006 happened and it was finally "cool" to be a Tigers fan again. I don't view hockey as being the same as baseball, where there's loads of would-be fans that will show up just for the experience of the facility. They might in the first year, but prices will invariably go up, and that's already a major problem with the Wings. I understand that many of the vacant lower bowl seats are corporate ones where the tickets are paid for, but nobody shows up, but it looks really bad on TV. A new rink isn't going to help that problem, especially if the team starts missing the Playoffs. On the other side of it, you could argue that Detroit's days as a "major metorpolitan area" are long gone, and that this is just the new normal. People waiting for the big "turnaround" where a new tax burden to fund the new stadium will be viewed as "reasonable" may be waiting for a long time. Since we will eventually need a new arena, maybe it's just as well to do it now before things get worse.

Wow, if you told a 2004 Wings fan that we would be replacing Todd Bertuzzi with Dany Heatley in 2013, they'd have burned JLA to the ground. I live in MN and watch Wild games. You want no part of Heatley. I don't know if he was poisoned by the "chill" culture of San Jose or if he just lost the foot speed due to age, but he's a very ordinary player who will get too much money, and I could see his skills falling off even more. Sent on iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah, I'm think the success is a bit of fool's gold in the following respects. First, the product wasn't "broken" to begin with, it was actually doing quite well. I think there's a number of reasons why people still enjoy live hockey, not the least of which is that, unlike football, hockey is still BETTER in person. They were turning $3.3 billion annual profits, supposedly, so there was considerable momentum behind the product. Also, it's only a 48-game season. As @jeff48109 pointed out, if you have considerably shorter seasons in basketball, baseball, and hockey, attendance and the intensity of interest in any particular game would definitely go up. Many families have fixed budgets for that type of entertainment, or loose rules like "I try to got to 2 or 3 games each season". Well, if Family X, Y, and Z all intend on going to 3 games, but there's half as many games, you're going to fill those arenas more easily. But the league is not going to shorten it's season, and next season will not be like this one. I don't think it's even reasonable to look at attendance figures and interest level from a 48-game season as if you could maintain that over 82 games. It's kind of the way I feel about my GameCenter Live subscription...yeah, I bought it for the first time this year, but it was only $49.99. It still has a problems with it, so I can't say for sure I'd pay $150 for it next season, once things are "back to normal"

This thread is drifting more into the economic issues of whether it was better for owners before 2004. While poor finances can cripple a franchise, I've never bought the argument that the post-2005 NHL is particularly friendly to the struggling markets. The relatively increase in value of the Canadian dollar certainly helped, as did a bunch of other things. But the salary cap comes with a salary floor, and that floor is now significantly higher than the CAP was in 2005-06. Some teams (like the Islanders) find creative ways to "spend" money to satisfy the rules without actually making their team any better. Teams like Nashville get backed into gigantic deals for players like Weber (RFA match) and Rinne (re-signing), without which they wouldn't even be close to the salary floor. And teams like Buffalo spent absurd amounts of money on guys like Ville Leino just because of pressure to "keep" up with what the Cap dictates a "competitive" team should be spending. But I think the on-ice product gets credited as being "better" for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do with the lockout changes. No 2-line passes was a good idea, and I like 4-on-4 overtime. You could argue that the obstruction penalties opened up the game, but that's also lead to terrible injuries and concussions. The other "advances" are mostly due to athletic evolution and improvements in equipment that have nothing to do with the rules. I don't feel as if more people are tuning in specifically becasue of shootouts, the trapezoid, or 2 minutes for firing the puck over the glass. The biggest change I see in being a devout Red Wings and NHL fan since the early 90's are the blocked shots. Skating equipment and dedication to shot blocking has really changed the game, and I think it's for the worse. If you watched a Wings game in the late 90's and the Wings were setting up from the points and shooting into traffic, that felt like an imminent chance for a goal. Now, it's a non-event - that puck, more likely or not, isn't getting anywhere near the net. I don't have a "fix" for it, it's just one of those things that evolves out a game with more athletic players, more sophisticated defensive schemes, and defenseman who are as well protected as some goalies were in the 70's.

What you are saying is technically accurate, and I think it will occur sooner than later. But the Kings won the Cup last year and were a +15 in goal differential. Florida had an inspired run in the playoffs, and was a THIRD seed with a -24 differential. Like it or not, the Salary Cap, 3-point games, and the current configuration of this game are designed to keep the teams as similar as possible in the regular season. There doesn't even seem to be much of a correlation with which teams were great in the regular season and which teams "flash" in the Playoffs. Given that backdrop, it is entirely conceivable that the Wings sneak into the playoffs and win a series or two. I don't think that will happen, but it certainly could. If that happens, you'd have to consider it a "successful" season, given everything that's happened since July 1st. The fact is, the Wings are not going to "bottom out" next season, or maybe even the one after that. Not with Datsyuk's possible last season, and Zetterberg still at the helm. I think it's easy for Wings fans who are both spoiled and accustomed to being serious contenders for the Cup to say that they don't want to do this anymore, but I also look at that half-empty lower deck at JLA and think: "If this were a 12th place team, wouldn't this only get worse?" You have to get REALLY bad to appreciably benefit in the draft (13th to 15th, and for multiple seasons), and this team isn't constructed to do that, even if they dumped a few Franzen-like players. Since we're stuck in the middle anyway, my view is that it's better to get better than get worse.

Standings are deceptive because most of the teams we are competing with have had a game in hand (or two) on us for virtually the whole season. I'm very concerned, but if you had to ask me to decide point blank if we're getting in, I still think we're in as the 7th or 8th seed. COL in the 12th spot is arguably more scary than PHO, DAL, or EDM b/c they have goaltending and loaded up a bit with Gaborik. It's also funny how persepctives differ on this. Yes, the Wings' minus-2 goal differential is pathetic. But I live in Minnesota, and while people really think of that team as "surging", they're only a +6. So, how do you look at that? Minny adds $196 million of firepower and Detroit loses tons of key players in the offseason (paired with tons of man hours due to injury)...and the Wild have scored 4 more goals than the Wings (though in one less game). The difference between most teams in this league is alarmingly insignificant, even though the results on particular evenings can make it feel as if one team is clearly better than the others around it in the standings.

Agreed with a lot of what @haroldsnepsts wrote about parity... I'm really conflicted on this issue. The 2012 lockout might have changed a lot of my views about the 2005 lockout, which I originally considered to be a "success". Now, I wonder if the perceived success of the post-lockout was really limited to three factors, which were either wholly unrelated to the lockout, or a self-fulfilling prophecy therefrom: (1) The lockout carpet-bombed the popularity of the league so badly (and reset salaries, TV ratings, etc.) that the perceived "growth" from 2005-08 was really just the league naturally recovering where it was pre-lockout. (2) The growth of HDTV coincided perfectly with the post-lockout era and while hockey is still arguably a "bad" TV sport, the argument has also been made that hockey benefits the most from SD --> HD versus all the "major" sports. (3) A unique class of colorful and super-talented new faces for the league, such as Crosby, Malkin, and Ovechkin. If you listen to fans/media from other markets, or even neutral sources (such as the Marek v. Wyshinski podcast), you get a real sense that the BEST years as a Wings fan were an absolute dark period for the league and its fans. When we think of Yzerman, Fedorov scoring 5 goals, Vladdy throwing checks, Hasek standing on his head, and 4th lines stuffed with Hall of Famers, the rest of the team thinks of the "dead puck" era, 2-1 double overtime games, and goalies with absurdly large equipment and jerseys. Still, I LOVED the sport in that era. I loved watching other teams. Even though I hated the Avalanche, they were easily my 2nd favorite team to watch (and they got tons of coverage on "The Deuce", ESPN2). But I'll never be able to say if the NHL seemed to "big" to me because of what an exciting time that was for the Red Wings, or if the product really was that good. I love to remind people the year before we blew the whole thing up to achieve "parity" and "cost certainty", the two teams in the Stanley Cup Finals were Calgary and Tampa Bay. I don't know that parity necessarily is good for the league. Baseball is doing pretty well right now (and has had almost two decades of labor peace), and I don't know if the product "works" the same if New York, Boston, and L.A. don't get to spend into oblivion.

St. Louis and Detroit are in completely different situations. St. Louis and 2012 Los Angeles are teams loaded with young talent. You can send picks for Bouwmeester (who still has many years left to play, by the way) when you have an excellent young defensive corps and a number of forwards (Tarasenko, Oshie, etc.) that look promising. You can trade picks for Iginla if you already have mega-stars like Crosby and Malkin (not to mention a ton of other great forwards). That philopsophy is the reason Calagry has remained mediocre or worse since the '04 Lockout. It defies logic that the same approach should apply to the Wings EVERY season, even as the team declines and the farm system fails to pull superstars out of thin air. The strategy has to change. If you think Ken Holland "wasted away" Lidstrom's carrers as they won 4 Cups and 3 Cups, respectively, I can't rationalize with you. Countless 1st rounders that could've been the Wings' next big "steal" were shipped away to bring in "NOW!" guys like Bertuzzi and Quincey. Those moves arguably made sense at the time, but we're paying for them now. Jaromir Jagr would make the Wings incrmentally better for a handful of games late in the season, and would make Wings fans feel good about themselves on deadline day. Beyond that, he does nothing to address the long-term issues facing this team, and acquiring him would be quite antithetical to addressing those concerns.

All true, except that age does play into that also, because you're getting a rental who isn't even that valuable if you COULD retain him. Even with Hossa, people forget that it wasn't written in stone that he was gone after a year. It was clearly expected that would be a likely outcome, but Alexander Semin just transformed a very similar situation into a 5-year extension. The combination of disappointment over losing in Game 7, Hossa's playoff performance declining as his shoulder went to tatters (which Wings fans also tend to ignore), and Chicago's stunning agressiveness in courting Hossa while retaining their own young core with (now illegal) backdiving contracts created the situation where were forced to part ways. But Hossa was still a very productive player in his prime. There's literally a few weeks left in the season. If we lose literally one more key player to injury and slide out of the playoffs, then we're screwed on multiple fronts. We just gave up a 1st or 2nd round pick that is higher becasue we finished in the bottom 14, and we comprimised our ability to improve for a short-term fix that didn't work. I actually don't think it would take a 1st rounder for a (potentially) 3-week rental of Jagr, he isn't at the price level of a Bouwmeester or Iginla. A conditional pick arrangement would probably make more sense. But I just can't advocate Jagr on this team given the uncertainties about our future. If this Wings team doesn't make a significant move and misses the Playoffs as presently constructed, that sucks. But that team that can't even crack the Top 8 in the West probably didn't have the horsepower to do anything in the Playoffs anyway, so let's not bet the farm.

The Flyers freakin' love Couturier. They may trade him for the right deal, and for Cap-related issues, but not unless the return is better than Jonathan Ericsson. This isn't a thread about Jimmy Howard, but I really don't believe in "elite" goaltenders anymore. There are guys like Kiprusoff, Giguere, and Cam Ward who have won Cups and were considered "elite-level" netminders at points in their career....and then look completely ordinary at other times. Team defense and system certainly has a lot to do with that. I think there's minimum level of competency and consistency you need to prove as a goaltender that places you in the first or second "tier" of goaltenders, and any one of those guys could be good enough to do the job in the right circumstance. Problem is, I think there's literally 15 of those guys. Lundquist, Rinne, Luongo, Niemi, Price, Ryan Miller....all those guys are capable of playing at at top level, and I think Jimmy Howard is somewhere in that group. At the same time, I could easily see a guy like Rinne or Price not being nearly has well regarded in 3 years, if their performances tail off a bit. I feel like in the "dead puck" era, the combination of a defensively-oriented game and no salary cap (which allowed teams like Detroit, Colorado, etc. to restock) helped breed these "super goalies" like Roy, Brodeur, Belfour, Hasek, etc. All of them were greats, but I'm not sure you could have dropped them into this era and expected 10-15 year careers of sustained superstardom. With those adjusted expectations in mind, we're damn lucky to have Jimmy Howard, and luckier still that he doesn't cost what Luongo costs (yet, anyway).

Boumeester is one of the more confusing players to evaluate. On the one hand, the guy is an absolute freakin' ironman, having played EVERY game since the lockout. And he does it logging serious ice time in a key role for his teams, and most consider him a good, if not imposing, defender. On the other hand, his offense game basically disappeared after going to Calgary, and you wonder if the Florida numbers weren't just smoke and mirrors. And you can call it bad luck or whatever you want that the guy has played 700+ games without a playoff appearance, but in a salary cap era where make big bucks to anchor a defense, and haven't even been able to sneak in to the 8th seed once, that can't just be an annual coincidence. For what it's worth, he did play 18 AHL playoff games with the Chicago Wolves...and didn't score a point. I don't like Bouwmeester as that deadline addition where you won the bidding war and are hoping to ride him into the Playoffs. Had we traded for him in the offseason and marked out our plans carefully, for some reason, I like that better. But as it is, taking on that $6.6 mil cap hit for just next season WOULD have severe consequences for us to re-sign the guys worth keeping, and possibly add another piece.

I'm an out-of-market fan, so I don't always catch the cold opens on GameCenter. For whatever reason, I caught that Nashvillle one. It was creepy and weird, but I blamed 95% of that on a stupid idea by FSN staffers. At no point did it even occur to me he might have been drinking. Especially since they probably taped it a 1:30pm on a game day with a camera crew following him around. (Was pretty funny when Ken Daniels was walking in the crowd of Wings fans - male and female - and you couldn't even find him because he's like 5'5"). I understand this is message board forum, that Murph got fired, and people are just going to toss out possible reasons why that happened. There's just no evidence of it, and it doesn't do any good. People are losing sight of the fact this was a MID-season firing. If FSD has a meeting in August and decides, "Look, Murphy's just too akward on camera, we have better options for that job", I would have had zero problem with that. Letting him go before a road trip in March in the midst of a truncated 99-day season is either indicitive of some type of misconduct, or is a HUGE slap in the face.

This is really sad and classless. As an out-of-market Wings fan, it's pretty jarring to see how low-quality that broadcast has become. Everything from the 80's era looking studio work to selling out the entire broadcast to an ambulance chaser law firm...and they blame Murph for the ratings. Right. Anyone with a GameCenter Live account who watches other broadcasts can see what i'm talking about. What I hate most is that ex-players on the broadcast (like Mick and Verbeek also) is a way of keeping players "in the family". Murph actually WANTS to live in Detroit and wanted to keep covering the team, and FSD decided they don't need him. Sad. Sent on iPhone using Tapatalk

My buddies at work are both pretty big Wild fans. I happened to be visiting Detroit for a wedding on July 4th, but the taunting and absurd wave of optimism after they landed Parise/Suter that day was pretty rough. Whereas the Wings/Wild game used to be a cute little novelty, now they seem like serious business. Wild and Wings have also been almost identical in the standings all year, so there's a realistic chance that one of these teams makes the Top 8 at the other's expense. Wild are see-sawing with VAN for the division league, but if they don't win the division, they're in a horse race with everyone else to get in. Go Wings!

I disagreed momentarily on Abdelkader, then I remembered that we signed him for 4 years with an AAC of $1.8 million. Gulp. Anyone care to argue that this team isn't at least the same or instantly better dropping Andersson or Tatar into Abdelkader's minutes? No wonder it was like banging my head against a wall trying to talk bad about Tootoo's contract, Abdelkader's deal makes Tootoo look right a downright "bargain"!

This move infuriates me. My rage was slightly reduced upon learning that they did it to call up Nyquist. But Nyquist is 23, and probably should've been up here on Day 1. Tatar is 22 years old but he has a skill set that many NHL'ers will never have. The fact that Abdelkader and Cleary continue to destroy Pavel Datsyuk on the top line while we drop two in a row to Columbus...and then send down Tatar? Makes no sense to me. The problem with "overripe" is that just as soon as these guys get established on the Wings, you look up and Valterri Filppula is turning 29 next week. The longer you string these guys out, the more tempted you become to fill the roster with padding like Samuelsson, Cleary, and Tootoo that cost more than young players and have little to no hope of making us a better offensive team. Hope he's back sooner than later, he felt like he was on the verge of becoming a difference maker.

This is almost impossible for me to answer. If pressed, I would have to say that Howard's open market value is about $4.5 to $5.25 million. Nobody around the NHL really considers him elite, but then again, outside of Pekka Rinne and a few others (Lundquist?) who are the elite goaltenders? It seems like such a fleeting thing given the state of the game nowadays. Guys like Luongo and Kiprusoff who were the "elite" in 2004 have remained great goalies since then, but have sort of slipped into a "2nd tier" status. I don't really look at ANY goalie (Rinne, Quick, etc.) and feel like they'll be considered among the best in the game for a decade or more, as we had with Brodeur, Roy, and Belfour in the 90's. Wings have gotten lucky with Howard not just in the reasonable size of his cap hit, but in that he hasn't demanded that gigantic long-term deal yet. I think that Howard has enough of a track record where he's "earned" a 5 to 8-year deal now, but I still can't say I'd be all that comfortable with that. I am a fan of Howard, though, so I do want him resigned. I'd love a $4 to $5 million AAC for 4 years, but realistically, I assume he'll get longer. This is exactly towards my point. It's not that Fleury or Ward are "bad" goalies now, it's just that it's so easy go from "solid goalie" to "Stanley Cup Champion/elite netmider" and then back again, that you really can't commit long-term to goaltenders and expect to get your money's worth. That being said, the debacle that is Rick DiPietro is a extreme example (and no longer even possible). More often, the long-term deals end up like Luongo or Nicklas Backstrom, where the guy plays well, but perhaps you come to regret the money a bit later on when it comes time to improve other parts of your team.

Finally seeing mid-level prospects getting a change to be significant contributors on the Wings instead of running out and trading more picks for veterans (well, even if it took injuries to Helm, Bertuzzi, and Coliaccovo to do it) Damien Brunner's shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach Datsyuk arguably playing as well or better due to his insane skill and incredible intelligence, even where his age suggests his physical tools should be winding down Jimmy Howard standing on his head at several points this season, and Wings fans generally unified behind the quality of his play (even with GAA and SV% numbers that prompt non-Wings fans to claim he's struggling) Any Wings game where GameCenter Live doesn't excessively buffer, pixelate, or cause Comcast to throttle my ethernet connection, requiring me to have to restart my modem and router for no apparent reason.

I almost spontaneously combuted when I read that AAC value. I agree that there are players who could get $10 million per year, but the idea that Getzlaf is an upper-end trend-setter for that trend is borderline absurd. This guy had 11 goals in 82 games last year. His playmaking is unquestionably elite, but his numbers are basically Saku Koivu. I know the guy won a Cup, but you can't contribute that kind of money to a guy. As was said above, how do you Corey Perry or Bobby Ryan for LESS than that now? I'm pretty sure anyone who had to guess who would be the most productive out of those 3 in the next 8 years would have Getzlaf 3rd in that discussion (I would, anyway).

Wow, White scratched again tonight, that's like 4 in a row, right? What is the deal with this guy? Can they flip him for a conditional pick or something? Dude was a +22 last year and had pretty good production numbers. I've never been much of a fan of him, but his play must have been unusually infuriating that he can't crack THIS defensive corps. I feel like every was pooping all over Quincey and Kindl earlier this year, and it's White who can't even play now.