Nev

Remember when Smith was a lock to win the Calder........about 3 months ago? Wings fans, like all hockey fans, massively over-rate their own prospects. When they're not instant all-stars we throw them under the bus. In other news - congrats to James T Howard, you;ve deserved this.

Have you seen the list of players we've lost to retirement and free agency the last 3 years? Lidstrom, Rafalski, Osgood, Holmstrom, Draper, Maltby have all hung up the skates. That's 22 stanley cup rings by my count, including one all time great and a couple of borderline HOFers. 3 of our "Big 5", plus our starting goaltender from the Stanley Cup year have gone. Throw in the loss of Hudler and Stuart. Did I miss anyone? And yet we're still in a playoff spot, whilst rebuilding our pipeline to its highest level in 20 years.

He's gone from pre-season Calder Trophy favourite to whipping boy. Classic LGW superstar-or-useless mentality.

This I agree with This not so much.

3. Waiting too long to trade a player - Who? 4. Skipping the bridge contract - Who? 5. Paying on potential - Who? 6. Long-term contracts beyond a players' prime - OK, fair enough Franzen and Zetterberg, even though they can retire or be bought out for cheap the last few years, and they were the SOP for bringing down the cap hit across the NHL. And giving an extra year on Sammy and Berts contracts, but I don't think 1 year can be classed as "long term". And none of them are crippling us. 1. Handing out too many, over-restrictive no-movement clauses - I think this one can legitimately be pinned on Holland - Sammy, Bert, Cleary, Ericsson, Gustavson. Bert I can imagine was just formalising a gentlemans agreement ie "if you trade me, I'll refuse to report". His family are from just over the border and its clear he doesn't want to play anywhere else. But the rest? Having said that, its not like they're crippling us either.

In 1992 I came across the pond to study chemistry at the University of Toledo. I had a passing intrest in hockey already, so I started following the Wings, who everyone at that time still called the "Dead-things". Luckily they had a bunch of great young players, were exciting to watch, and my first game at JLA was a 5-1 defeat of the Canucks - some rookie by the name of Dallas Drake had 2 goals and an assist I came back home, suffered through the NJ and Colorado defeats, then watched them win in '97 on a Sunday afternoon at my girlfiends parents house in Australia. Came back to England again, watched them win in the middle of the night in '98 in my bedroom with the sound turned right down

So when he waived off a Homer goal for having his skate in the crease, 8 years after that rule was rescinded?

As was mentioned, he harboured an especial hatred for Holmstrom. So many good goals waived off for non-existent goaltender interference.

Yep, spring just arrived this side of the pond after the longest winter ever. Just got back from a lovely walk through the Lincolnshire Wolds with my 5 year old girl in the gorgeous spring sunshine GO WINGS!

I wonder if they'll be able to trade his rights on draft day to move up in the 1st round? Our 1st + Flip for, say, Edmontons 1st? Get to move up ~ 10 places in the draft.

Andersson will be our 4th line Center next year - Babs has a bromance with him, and he's the only one of our rookies to not yo-yo up and down or be benched. I wonder if the current Franzen experiment is to try him out for next season if/when we lose Flip. Emmerton will be traded/sent down/waived.

This is a great read btw, that I heartily recommend everyone to check out. Especially interesting how Holland changed his GM style post lockout, and how his success rate in the draft is so much higher than the league average.

Whilst I do agree that our top-six is undersized, by contrast our D-corps is the biggest I can remember us having. Our smallest D-man is Kronwall at 6-0, 190 and he's one of the most feared hitters in the league Ericsson:6-4, 221 Colo: 6-1, 200 Dekeyser: 6-3, 190 (he'll bulk up though) Kindl: 6-3, 216 Lashoff: 6-3, 212 Quincey: 6-2, 207 Smith: 6-2, 198 I think the fact that we have so many small, skilled forwards on the roster and in the pipeline, gives us the flexibilty to make a trade for 1 or 2 bigger forwards.

I've said it before, when Babs plays him at C it forces Franzen to skate.

Yeah, I did notice the colour guy bigging up Gus and Pav

Yes, its becoming obvious now how much we miss him. His defensive drop-off was largely due to the injuries he suffered in the 2009 playoffs, and he was never the same again - how often did we see him get beat to the outside after that? He himself cited it as a major factor why he retired a year early. Despite what the Holland bashers say, right-handed defencemen who can skate, pass and shoot like Rafalski don't grow on trees.

I guess you get to hear them a lot?

Just watched the highlights with the horrifically homerific Avs announcers........Edzo ain't got nothing on these guys.

Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a trend.

And lucky to have a great rival to test ourselves against every season too.

Babcock loves to tell the story about Fedorov going to Anaheim and complaining to him that the defencemen were just chipping the puck out of the defensive zone rather than passing it onto his stick as he skated through the neutral zone (familiar story this season eh?) Babs had to point out that he didn't have a Lidstrom or Chelios or Murphy or Coffey or Fetisov like Feds had been used to.

When we were #1 Jimmeh and Pav were playing absolutely lights out. They both got injured, they both came back, and neither was anywhere near close to their pre-injury form. Before they got injured we were playing like genuine contenders. After they came back we were the team that lost in 5. Thats not to say I disagree with your assessment that we're generally trending downwards - we've lost so many good players in such a short space that we can't not. But last year could have been so much more. Aw c'mon, you telling me that when the Lions were 0-15, you weren't rooting for Green Bay in that final game?

After Michel "Obstruction is French for overmatched" Therien the guy seems like a genius. Now that we no longer have a stacked team, he might just have a chance at winning it, but I won't be holding my breath. Worst trophy in the NHL.

Pretty hard to argue with it, although I would have Hitchcock over Quenville.

1000x the boldest part. Good young players on cheap contracts is the way to win cups. It helps if those players are franchise 1st round picks (Toews-Kane, Malkin-Crosby, Getzlaf-Perry) , but we did it a slightly different way. Zetterberg, Filpulla, Kronwall, Franzen, Hudler and Helm were all playing for peanuts in '08. Add in cheap veterans who can do a job like Cleary, Samuelsson, Drake, Hasek and Osgood. Keep your core big money guys like Lidstrom and Datsyuk. Use the spare cash to add marquee players like Rafalski and Stuart. The same template has worked for almost every cup winning roster in the cap era.