Nev

Thankyou, some positivity I'm nervous about it too, but he's gotta play sometime. I'm not so concerned about the B2B, its only down the road from Anaheim. Its not like they're going from Minnesota to Colorado like later in the month.

Thats right, the team is only good because of Holland, and Holland is only good cos he got lucky with Datsyuk & Zetterberg, and Datsyuk and zetterberg are only good because they play with Lidstrom, and Lidstrom is only good because of Howards goaltending, and Howard is only good because of the system Babcock has in place, and Babcock is only good because of the team Holland assembled....... Or at least, thats what NHL journalists seem to think.

People have always held that against the Leafs ownership, but the fact is they;ve always had one of the highest payrolls. They haven't underachieved/sucked because of tight-fistedness. Its because of persisant poor management by numerous different regimes, of which Burke is just the latest incarnation to be afraid to embrace the suck short-term, in order to build through high draft picks in the long term (cf. Chicago + Pittsburgh). The result? They still suck, but not enough to get better,

Yep, I've pointed this out before. Bowman won in twice his entire career. To put that in perspective Jacques Lemaire, Pat Quinn + Jacques Demers all won it twice and Pat Burns won it 3 times. Those 4 between them won a grand total of 3 cups. To win it Bowman had to produce the '77 Canadiens and the '96 Redwings (132 + 131 points respectively). Babcock couldn't even win it with the 2008 machine (1st in points, shots, shots against, goals against, 2nd in goals despite playing an entire month with Lebda-Lilja as our top pairing). He's going to have to produce a 60 win season, and even then its liable to be stolen by a coach who leads a team on a hot streak at the end of season to get in the playoffs. Sucks for Uncle Mike for sure, pretty much the only thing missing off his resume. The HOF is a certainty in a few years.

Fixed that for you He transformed Datsyuk from a puny little Russian with amazing stick handling skill into the best 2-way player in the world. Now he's transforming Bertuzzi, no doubt with one eye on the playoffs and possible matchups against Thornton/Iginla/Nash/Getzlaf

As good defensively as Pav & Z are, they've always struggled to shut down the top power forwards - Nash & Getzlaf have always given us fits. If Babcock is turning Bert into a shutdown forward its more proof that he's the best coach in the league.

I say this every single time an injury like this happens, but given the pace & intensity of the NHL I am amazed there are not more injuries like this. Sucks big style for Modano though.

I'm confused, you're saying that like its a bad thing? Pronger has no grounds for complaint, he should consider that a tiny fraction of payback for the 20 cross-checks he gets away with every game.

Actually, they did notice it, they just told one of the pens to get off the ice rather than call a penalty.... I don't really know what more can be said, I'm kinda at a loss for words other than to say its becoming harder and harder for people to say the Pens aren't favoured by the NHL. What was interesting was the Ref gave no explanation whatsoever, simply "its a goal". Clearly he was embaressed/didn't agree/didn't understand why that was a goal.

Colie would never encourage one of his players to embellish or dive to draw a penalty. His integrity and honesty is beyond question. I think Savard owes him an apology.

There was a great article in the Freep about 8 years ago where they interviewed Shanahan, Yzerman, Hull & Robitaille and asked them biggest reason for scoring going down, and every single one of them said "goaltender equipment". Firstly because there's obviously less room, but secondly because the fear factor for goalies had gone. Hull even admitted that on occasion he'd deliberately tried to hurt goalies in practise and they hadn't even noticed. So yeah, could that with the far superior technique and coaching these days and its night and day compared to the 80s. What I do think is that we have fewer high-level goalies in the game right now, goalies that you fear. 10 years ago you had Hasek, Roy, Brodeur, Belfour. Every single one of them was capable of beating you all by themselves, and you knew it. Facing them in the playoffs was a daunting prospect Now, is there really anyone like that around the league? I don't think there is. So many of the "top" goalies flatter in the regular season and deceive in the playoffs.

Yes, they appear to be called "journalists"

Are you questioning Colie? I think you owe him a personal apology Zetts.

The last time I remember Clearly being this hot was when he was on a line with your man Bobby Lang.

Doesn't Fraser retire this year? He's been one of their top refs for what? 10, 20 years. What they gunna do, say he suddenly sucks and fire him? Bit obvious methinks.

What did I say? To the point that Bob Mckenzie tells us in his article not once, but TWICE that he's from Tillsbrough, Ont. "He can't be corrupt & incompetent, he's from good Ontario farming stock!"

As long as Brian Burke is there I hope they continue to wallow in mediocrity and miss the playoffs year after year.

Except we have emails which directly call his integrity into question. And what are Campbells credentials for doing this job? He was an average NHL defenceman, a below average coach, with an intelligence level clearly below average. And no edumacation either. We may belittle Bettman for being a lawyer, but at least he has a level of education to do his job. Don't tell me that there aren't educated, intelligent* hockey people out there to run the game. You just might have to look outside the old boys club. * And yes, I know they aren't the same

I see Nick Kypreos dismissed the report as a "basement blogger". The Nick Kypreos who played 3 seasons under Campbell in NY and won a cup with him..... Meanwhile I have managed to obtain top secret footage of a Colin Campbell disciplinary hearing.... http://www.youtube.c...h?v=LiTNYEGztRE

I just hope the mainstream canadian & US media keep up the pressure on the NHL & Campbell, but I doubt it will happen. Even HNIC...after all, he's a good ole canadian boy, eh? The US media probly won't give a damn, after all, spring training starts in 4 months, right? This is all so depressing, proving the NHL fans of every team are entirely justified in their tinfoil hatness. Unproffesional, dishonest and corrupt? Nah, just a hockey dad venting - and there's another eyebrow raiser. Apparantly its ok for hockey dads to send abusive emails to officials if you hear (not see) that a weak call was made against your son. Disgraceful. Hopefully those refs books won't be too sanitised by the lawyers and blow the lid right off.

I don't know why anyone would want to sit in rinkside seats anyway...I've done it before, the view is crap and you can smell the players

Yep. And they bought their way to success.

Wow....just wow.....then you read further down and find him bitching because he heard on the radio (!) that a costly call against his son was weak. What staggers me the most is the complete lack of proffesionalism in those emails, Campbell especially. For someone so senior and so highly paid to be writing emails like he's in a chat room...and to do it when talking about potentially dismissing someone.....I'm lost for words. Thanks for finding this mate, further evidence of the lack of brains + class at the top of the NHL. Sadly I doubt anything will change

Uh, no. "The system" was the reason why the pens didn't have a single chance for the first 18 minutes of that 3rd period, until the refs called that BS hooking penalty on Hudler. The reason why the pens had that last second chance was because Datsyuk was blatantly tripped from behind in the neutral zone as he was about to go and score an ENG and the refs decided not to call it Oh, and for the record, we were also 1st in shots against in 2008. So as great as Osgood + Hasek played, our team defence that year was incredible. edit: And the reason we lost game 5 was because Franzen failed to clear the zone with 20 seconds left, and Fleury stood on his head.

Nyquist?