digitaljohn88

I would really like that line. Filppula and Bertuzzi will hopefully both be 20/30+ guys and Franzen is getting close to being a 40 goal scorer. 150+ points between them would be a fairly potent second line. It won't be anywhere close to Naslund-Morrison-Bertuzzi though.

I don't get VS on basic cable, and my most-used way to see those games was mooching off people with DirecTV. I'd rather have s***ty coverage on an available network. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It's really sad... it seemed like Lilja had just broken out and found his place on the team. Hopefully we can give him 6 more months off, have him back and in game shape in time for the playoffs.

Draper did score our only goal in game 6... but I do agree that we should have left Abdelkader in.

Google "Bertuzzi Moore incident forums" You can read five years of the same argument/discussion in one hundred different forums.

That signing makes the Williams signing look like ASS. but... it's possible Prospal wasn't interested in the Wings.

Remember the 07-08 playoff goal off his face, or how he scored our only goal in game 6 of the 08-09 SCF... his quota is one important goal per year.

The Wings will play better because they'll NEED to play better. The offense will score about 240-250 goals instead of 290+. The defense will be much better than last year. They know they can't coast through games on an insane offense anymore. Also, I think Ericsson helps our core more than expected. Osgood showed in the playoffs that the last regular season was a fluke. He'll be back, motivated and he'll have a much better year - closer to his performance in 07-08. 104-110 points. 1st in the central, 2nd in the west. Chicago will be between 96-102 points. Not far back, but never seriously challenging for the Central. I don't see how they've improved so much. Instead of a full season of Havlat, they'll have half a season of Hossa. Havlat had more points than Hossa last year. Huet/unknown instead of Khabibulin/Huet. Go look at Khabi's record vs. Huet's record last year. Of course their kids will improve, but I just don't see that overcoming the other obstacles. Playoffs I won't try to predict. For the Wings, I think with our long playoff runs and the olympics coming up, playoff success COMPLETELY depends upon which of our guys are healthy.

Brodeur sucks.

In an argument centering around long-term contracts past 40, why in the hell wouldn't we cut the field down to stars or superstars? How many 10+ year contracts have been given to players who aren't easily identifiable top players? In this situation, it doesn't make sense to figure EVERY player into the numbers, when it's plainly obvious that the top 50 players in the NHL will play much longer on average.

Ovechkin - Datsyuk - Kovalchuk Malkin - Gonchar That powerplay should make opposing goaltenders s*** themselves. (Malkin sometimes plays the point IIRC)

All of that math is flawed - nobody cares about whether 2nd, 3rd, 4th line forwards and 2nd or 3rd pairing defenseman play until 40. We already know that if a player makes it to 40 and is still effective, he was likely a really good player in his prime. It makes no sense to compare them to the 85% of the NHL that would have never had a realistic shot at playing that long. It makes more sense to compare them to the other top players of their time. What I'm saying is this - lowering Zetterberg's chances of playing to 40 because Maltby won't makes no sense. Compare stars to stars and the figure is probably closer to 10-15%. The only guys getting signed to those long-term contracts are top-50 NHL players under the age of 32.

I don't have to watch it... I was there! Definitely my favorite game I've been to live. Best part was that in the first ten minutes, Osgood showed that playoff-Ozzy >>> season-Ozzy. Set us all at ease for the rest of the run.

I might be a bit biased because of this, but a friend and I went down to Columbus in December 2007 to see a Blue Jackets/Hurricanes game. Zherdev completely took over that game. He scored two beautiful end-to-end goals, assisted on another, and then passed to a teammate to put in the empty netter instead of taking the trick. Found the box for that game: http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/boxscore?gid=2007122929 He's a great talent and I'd love to see him on our team. I know he has work ethic issues, but at 24 I think Detroit would be the perfect place for him to mature into a more complete player, especially with Datsyuk here to show him how it's done. If we signed him at a reasonable price I'd be very happy.

Draper had more goals than Hossa in the finals. Draper did score a huge goal in Game 6, but I agree. I thought Abby should have stayed in for the entire series.

Luckily, all of those minutes from the players we lost don't just float into a black hole. SOMEONE will get the first, second, fourth line plus two giant powerplay spots. They may not make up all the production, but they should be able to achieve 07-08 offensive numbers.

Larsson played half of last year in the AHL... but yes, I don't think it makes any sense trading Howard.

Conklin's not a starter, and he proved that as soon as he got the opportunity to be.

We still have a near-100pt Selke winner. We still have a PPG Selke-calibur Conn-Smythe winner. We still have the best defenseman of this generation. We still have a guy signed at 3.9m that could come close to or even surpass 40 goals. We still have a 1.4m goaltender that plays like a guy paid three times that when it matters. We still have the top coaching staff in the NHL. We have three or four rookies that will finally get regular time after being good enough to crack our playoff roster. We finally get to see if the guy we've been developing for four years can become our next franchise goaltender. Without an INSANE amount of offensive talent, we can try to get back to the 2007/08 grinding defensive style. We have a team infused with old and new talent that will be twice as hungry for the cup next year. 2009/10 is going to be an exciting season. Go Wings!

Even if he leaves, Hossa still left a ton of money on the table to come here. He had an 80m/10 year offer last year. Nobody will come close to that this year. Our best offer is probably 47.5m over 10 years for 4.75m/year. If we factor in that we paid him 7.45 already, that's 54.75 over 11 years, or 5.00m/year.

do we get extra cap space for signing him?

I think we can get him to settle for a deal just under 5mil per season, which is more than fair for a scorer like Hossa. The question is whether it will be good for us to stay in cap hell for one year for the long-term benefit.

We don't need to carry 23 guys on the roster, correct? I could be wrong. I thought we had 21 most of last year. 12 forwards and 7 defensemen. My modified roster version: FORWARDS Pavel Datsyuk $6,700,000 Henrik Zetterberg $6,083,333 Marian Hossa $4,500,000 Johan Franzen $3,954,545 Valtteri Filppula $3,000,000 Daniel Cleary $2,800,000 Kris Draper $1,583,333 Ville Leino $1,100,000 Kirk Maltby $883,333 Justin Abdelkader $850,000 Tomas Kopecky $650,000 Darren Helm $599,444 DEFENSEMEN Nicklas Lidstrom $7,450,000 Brian Rafalaski $6,000,000 Brad Stuart $3,750,000 Niklas Kronwall $3,000,000 Jonathan Ericsson $900,000 Brett Lebda $650,000 Derek Meech $483,333 GOALTENDERS Chris Osgood $1,416,666 Jimmy Howard $716,666 ROSTER SIZE 21 SALARY CAP $57,000,000 PAYROLL $57,070,653 CAP ROOM -$70,653 This is assuming Lilja is on long term IR next season (hope he's not), Holmstrom somehow... disappears (which I don't think would happen), and that Sammy and Hudler are let go. I put Hossa's salary at 4.5 mil, I think he could be pretty close to that. I still couldn't fit it under an assumed $57mil cap, but it came close. Especially if we got Hossa for less than the 4.5 I penciled in. IMO, we lose too much depth in any scenario to sign Hossa unless we make some major moves. Our lines with the above configuration: Zetterberg - Datsyuk - Cleary Franzen - Filppula - Hossa Leino - Helm - Abdelkader Kopecky - Draper - Maltby Lidstrom - Rafalski Stuart - Kronwall Ericsson - Meech/Lebda Osgood Howard I'm not sure that I like it. Especially with an all-rookie third line, though all of them are promising. I really like Hossa, but we may have to just let him go. If anyone got injured on this roster... would we have decent replacements? (sorry if any of my math is off)

I'm excited to see Howard get a real shot. While his career record with the Wings is terrible (1-5-0), he's usually been called up when we're at our worst. His sv% on the Wings is a solid .907%. I think he'll be alright. Maybe he's just bored of the AHL by now. While Conklin had a few really good months with us and was a solid backup, I wasn't particularly happy that he went to s*** from March on when Babcock announced that the starter position for the playoffs was up in the air. I believe that Howard has starter potential while Conklin is just a great backup. But we'll have to wait and see what really happens. He's learned from the best.

Not that I care either way, but it's just a generic script that pulls keywords from the thread and places a relevant ad on the page from a pool of thousands of ads...