Nev

You guys are taking this way too seriously, its clearly meant as a humourous piece. But in many ways Draper was "average", thats why he spent nearly his entire career on the 3rd and 4th lines. Thats why we have "role players", players who aren't good enough to play on the top 2 lines but manage to carve out a niche for himself. Draper despite his substandard passing, stickhandling, shooting and size (all of which were well below NHL level) managed to use his skating, face-offs, work ethic and runaway mouth to make himself into a very useful 3rd liner. As Bowman said, "The safest place on the ice is between the pipes when Kris Draper is on a breakaway"

I don't doubt that many players in the NHL are taking substances they shouldn't. As opposed to say, the NFL, where everyone bar the kicker is on something.

Its a reasonable assesment. In the cap world you need to get good players playing for cheap, before they sign massive contracts once they are established stars. Look at the teams that have won in the Cap era, they almost all had good young players playing for less than they were worth. Anaheim (Getzlaf, Perry), Chicago (Kane, Toews), Pittsburgh (Crosby, Malkin). Even our 2008 team had a lot of players earning less than they do now - Zetterberg, Flip, Hudler, Sammuelson etc.

Feels wrong seeing another player wearing #18, not sure if I'll ever get used to it.

Looks totally awesome, fantastic style. Shame about the lightweigh schedule to start the year - shades of last season

The other thing is he is an unbelievably streaky player. All his points seem to come in 8 or 10 game stretches when he's on fire, the rest of the time he's ice-cold. And a lot can depend on his line-mates. Is Zetterberg going to be fit and healthy or skating in treacle because of his back? Is Franzen going to be the motivated goal machine he can be or will he mail it in like he did the 2nd half of last season?

A typical move by Pavs, I just hope this isn't affecting him too much now. He's always been much more thoughtful, much more emotional & sensitive than your average hockey player. Grief effects us all differently and there is no right or wrong way to react to it, but this tragedy seems to be a real weight he's carrying round.

Put me down for Franzen and the contract that hangs round his neck like the albatross from the ancient mariner. Funny thing is, when we had the "whipping boy 2010-11 thread" no-one picked Hudler.

And don't forget those 2 magic words - Contract and Year.

I imagine Cleary is next in line when Lidstrom retires. Possibly Helm.

"The rules of aviation are written in the blood of dead men" Having said that, Russia is far behind the west in terms of aviation safety, the rate of fatal accidents is 3 times the worldwide average. International Russian airlines are fine because they have to conform to western aviation standards, its the internal, domestic carriers that are the problem. Expect pilot error to be the official cause, its a favourite cop-out of the Russian authorities because it means they don't actually have to change anything.

Saw this on the news yesterday, that days tragedy in a world full of tragedys, and absently mindedly wondered if Pavel knew any of the players. But to come on here and learn that McCrimmon, Salei, Liv, Demitra were on there.....suddenly it hits home. All the stories last year of Salei's pregnant wife in California....

Datsyuk, purely because of Hank's back

Because from day 1 in the NHL Babcock has been beasting him about his defensive play.

He sells insurance door-to-door with Max Kuznetzov

Compare Datsyuk's puny chicken legs to Lidstroms tree-trunks

2008 Ozzie? Yes. But Hasek was in incredible in that Colorado series, especially on the road in games 3 + 6. They weren't stand-on-your-head 48 save performances, but they were mistake-free in ultra-high pressure games against top, top quality opponents.

It sounds a lot, but in the unreal world of executive salaries it really isn't. The CEO of my employers got a $27M bonus last year

Sad, sad day. Draper was a true warrior and one of those players who took what little he had and through sheer hard work, determination and sacrifice made it into a glorious NHL career. Although his on-ice product had been in decline for a couple of years, off-ice he is going to be missed enormously. He was one of the few vocal leaders on a team of quiet leaders, and his commitment to off-ice fitness was both an inspiration and lesson to everyone else in the locker-room. When he came back to Detroit after bouncing around the league for a few years, JWill said that Draper (and Datsyuk) were the best conditioned athletes he'd ever seen.

Avro Arrow FTW!

I like it, but then again I am an airplane geek

Actually no, just pointing out that those guys put up much better numbers in the AHL than our current bunch of prospects have so far

The article makes a valid point - other than Smith (and it remains to be seen how good he will be) we don't have any valid blue-chip prospects right now. The likes of Tatar and Nyquist may turn out to be good NHLers, but we don't know yet (and a little perspective, Filpulla and Kopecky were 70 point players in the AHL and Hudler was a 90 point player, and we know what lighning rods they are for opinion) In the early 2000s when fans/media were predicting our demise post Shanny/Yzerman Wings fans knew we had Datsyuk, Zetterberg and Kronwall waiting in the background. Right now I can't say we have players of that calibre.

Indeed. As Agatha Christie would have said "And then there were three"

Have I missed Draper's retirement??