T.Low

I have enough "class" and "respect" to stay on the forums of my own team. I personally have no interest in what Preds fans have to say during a playoff matchup when we are playing against them, and the best way to avoid conflict is to stay where you belong, on a Preds fan site not on a Wings fan site. The only way that can be considered class and respect is if you cannot control yourself on another team's forum, so then, yeah, you are doing them a kindness by staying off their forum. I get on other teams forums all the time if I want to know something about that team or what the fans think of something. Not sure what the big deal is.

I've never been a fan of these silly 'more votes mean you are better" poles (or the x amount of posts for a win threads for that matter). But it's pretty obvious that the Nashville fans create a way more awesome atmosphere at their arena than the Wings fans do at the Joe. I don't want to hear any s*** about Nashville finally having something to cheer about; it doesn't matter; their crowd is way better than our crowd. I would venture to list their crowd in the top 3-5 in the NHL. And while were at it, I roll my eyes everytime I hear Ken Daniels say it's another sellout crowd at the Joe and you see tons of empty seats on tv. So, all the seats have been sold, tickets are all paid for, yet people would rather not go? That's embarrassing. People always respond with "Well, they are corporate tickets"; Yeah, no s***, and nobody wnats them so they are just sitting in a drawer at the office? WTF. The best games at the Joe are when the Canadians come over from Toronto and and yell agsinst their Canadian Wing fan counterparts from Windsor, or the games that the college kids came to last year when they started the Todd Ber TU Zi chant. Face it, other than that, the crowd is too quiet too often.

Love Todd. Who would have thought: the Canucks could have had Bertuzzi and Schneider and about $4m , and would be better off without Luongo.

i understand that Pavel is a huge part of the defensive system, but I can't help wanting him to be a 40 goal scorer, 65 assist guy.

No doubt. THe thing is, even Canadian teams homer Kelly Hrudey said it on HNIC after the first period of the first game; The Canucks have not brought their "compete", they think they will not need it in the first couple of rounds because they are the two time President's Trophy winners. Apparently, Denial aint just a river in Africa, it runs right through downtown Vancouver, too. If I were a Canuck fan, I'd want to hear, "We got to find another gear and find it right away. We got to open up the shooting gallery and make it rain pucks. We've got to bring an all out assault the likes of something this league ahs never seen before. For just one game, we've got to Get It Done. Then regroup and hammer at away at Game 5".

Did you guys see him knocking on the door for help, OMG, that was a nasty hit. That's exactly what Sugar Ray Leonard termed being in the dark closet.

Cleary won me over a long time ago, and now i'm in it for better or worse with that guy. it's amazing to see him play this way with his knee. My only question is; how long can he keep it going befor ehis wheels come off?

Good post. Since Helmer went down, I wanted to link a Helm video to an acquaintance, a Canadian transplant living in SC, who doesn't really know Helm or get to see him. There are no good Helm highlight videos> There are a few that have a highlihgt or two, but none that include enough of his work, one that includes his "Shift for the Ages" PK vs Chicago along with the OT goal, and the Phoenix series hits and goals, and his numerous steals and breakaways, etc. Hopefully, someone with more computer talent than I will put one together. He definitely has the material for a great video.

My thoughts exactly. Preds came out with a ton of jump, crowd was as intimidating as any crowd ever, Wings were flat as luke warm month old diet Vernors, and still it was 2 flukey goals and one breakdown. Go Wings, put this s*** to rest and move on to round two. And no Wings jersey for Weber; he lost my vote for a future roster spot in Detroit.

Good stuff. You get the feeliing he stops because he can't afford a bigger fine if he keeps going. The 2nd time he I think he gets "blanked" out casue there is a silence as if he said "their two whiny ass stars". Or maybe just wishful thinking on my part. http://blueshirtsunited.com/videos/1108/tortorella-postgame

Ha! I remember seeing that one live. Thanks for the memories.

With all due respect, I can't agree with that. Remember, he was drafted as a checking forward and after a considerable amount of work, he blossomed into a scorer, much to everyone's suprise. Now, yes, he gets paid to score, but not in the Lang or Hull sense of "just put the puck in the net"; We expect a lot more out of his game than that.

Too bad you could not have seen Pavel work the puck in the 2nd half of the third period; unbelievable, even for a Datsyuk fan. I was disappointed to not see it on the NHL.com game highlight video and can only hope some of those shifts end up on youtube. He was looking for passing lanes and an open teammate while spinning away from the defense over and over again. He was making moves you can only make on two good knees; things are looking up.

It seems like Pavel leaned over to Johan on the bench and said, "You get in scoring position; I get you puck no matter what. We win game. Now, go". There are more than a few guys in the league who could have done what Franzen did at the end of the game. No one else could have done what Datsyuk did. No one.

I've never seen the problem with Milbury; he's an old school guy that calls it like he sees it. He's genuine, doesn't try to be anything that he's not, and is not politcally correct and overly professional and polished like too many of the other guys. I like his intolerence for bulls***. And more often than not, he's right. Props to Milbury.

I'm in Europe this week, way ahead of you guys in time, so I've already seen this game. PM me if you want to know the score.

Show me the demographics of Atlanta and then explain to me how that equals hockey fans. As a UofM econ major, I'm not seeing it.

You do of course know that CLeary is hampered by a bad knee that gets drained every couple of weeks or so and will have surgery in the off season. That is the reason for his lesser performance this season, but to an extent, I agree. There was 6 and a half minutes left in the game by the time the announcers finally had a reason to say his name. I'd still ride him over Mursak at this point.

With Duncan Keith's blatant elbow to the head of Danrik(? I didn't pay attention to which twin) after he said something like that would happen, I had to listen to Vancouver's Team 1040 this morning. Then I did some surfing and found this little chocolate donut on HF Boards: A poll on who is Chicago's best rivalry with now. 75% went with Vancouver. This is a copy of the very first reply in the thread. Vancouver by miles. While Detroit is our more natural rival I have a great amount of respect for that organization. From the front office, coaches, and many of their players while they usually beat the hell out of the Hawks they always did it the right way. Yzerman, Listrom, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, are class players who I have tons of respect for. Even most of their fans have always been good when I have gone there. The Canucks, are the most classess, D bag filled, piece of garbage team on the planet. Everything about them screams A holes. From their whining and moaning GM, we aren't getting any penalties. To their jackoff coach, to their twin sister team leaders, maybe you two faires should dive some more. To Burrows and his biting routine to Lapierre who is one of the biggest morons not only in sports but in human existence. To that oil slick manning the pipes acting like he is gods gift to man, maybe if you showed up in the clutch you would have won something ok greasy, even LeBron thinks you choke in the clutch. Even their self righteous idiot fans, go start another riot. This is the worst team in any sport on the planet in every aspect. Edit: http://hfboards.hockeysfuture.com/showthread.php?t=1137469

I totally get it. I'll use the anology of a Harley riding, steroid pumping, super badass buddy of mine. He's one of the toughest guys I know and likes to work as a bouncer at strip clubs so he can get paid to kick people's asses. However, there is this one Asian guy who is kinda big (but not as big as the Harley guy) and a mixed martial arts instructor of some sort. My buddy says he will not ever fight the guy, he will just sit in his monster truck and yell things at him. That is akin to Chicago always chanting Detroit Sucks.

I SO hear you. I live 60 minutes south of Vancouver. It's a really cool place, until you get to talking hockey with them. But it's a super tough choice for me. Someone posted San Jose and I thought "Oh Yeah yeah yeah yeah, San Jose, not Thornton, no way, God please don't let them win it." But then someone else posted Chicago and I thought "NO way, two Cups to Zero in the last few years, no God, don't let them win" The someone posted Pittsburgh and i thought, "God, don't make me deal with that! Not the 'I never want to be there again" No!" I guess for me, it's between Vancouver, Chicago, San Jose, and Pittsburgh. C'mon Detroit!

Being a fan is a very weird thing in itself: I will sit here and watch while you perform. I have a fantastic image of you the player even though we most likely have not met, but you have a really vague and even faceless image of me, the fan. But I will be there for you. That is just weird. I generally don't watch a whole lot of stuff, I'm still pretty active myself and never really got into sitting around watching other guys perform. (Way back in the day my girlfriend got mad at me because i never wanted to sit around every Thursday nite to watch "Friends" on tv, I wanted to get 6 of our own friends and go out and have our own good times.) So for me to become a fan of a team that i have never played on, well, it's going to take something pretty powerful for me to invest my emotion, my concern, and my very limited time. I played baseball with Pat LaFontaine and was disappointed that he got drafted and the Wings were left with this Yzerman kid. So, again, I didn't really have any reason to tune in and watch. Then they started getting tough, getting better, and making some noise. And then they became characters and personalities that I could relate to. You could see thier efforts and thier progress. They started getting close and I was hooked. And then they won. Football was my favorite sport growing up in Michigan, but I can't tell you who the Lions running back is now. Luved the Bad Boys, but I can't tell you the starting five of the Pistons or the coache's name. They don't seem to be that good and all the guys that i could relate to are gone. Why watch? Why spend the time and effort to get to know all these new guys? They are not coming over for a BBQ (like Greg Kelser did when he was a Piston). Sure, lots of bandwagon fans are dumbasses, but a lot just have other priorities in life than committ to watching other people do things. For a person who is trying to match their circle of concern with their circle of influence, being a sports fan is certainly counter productive. But the Wings got me.

I don't know what is wrong with being a "bandwagon" fan. I am a Wings fan because they are a great organisation with great people involved and have had a lot of success, and have a long storied history. Sure, I was raised in the Detroit metro area, and followed the team a bit in the '70's and '80's, but I didn't become a fan until they became a team worth flowing. If they were just starting out and sucked and had a bunch of jokers skating around the ice, why would I waste my valueable time paying good money to sit thru that kinda crap? I hardly have time to watch the Wings as it is?

Exactly. I need to put more thought into my thread titles.