Nev

As bad as it is playing with three 4th lines, it was the 2nd PP unit that scared the hell out of me last night. Because it was, well, another 4th line Lets hope Datsyuk isn't too tired after carrying the team last night. He looked knackered the last 10 mins.

Mickey and Ken are a great combo. Redmond is like the uncle or grandad you wish you had (or would wish to be as you get older! ) Anyone calling him a homer is an idiot. One of the things about Mickey and Ken is that they do try to be fair "Redwings got away with one there" etc. You wanna listen to homerism, listen to Nashville, Columbus and Anaheim broadcasts, or any HNIC commentary featuring a Canadian team against a US one.

Because Quenville sucks?

Ironically, this may be Babcocks best chance in his career to win a Jack Adams. Because of the flawed way its judged by voters (like MVP), it doesn't go to the best coach, it goes to a coach of an average team thats had an above average season, or made a late rush to get into the playoffs. It rarely goes to the best coach or the best team. In 35 years, the coach of the Presidents Trophy winner has won it a meagre 7 times. Pat Burns has won more Jack Adams (3) than Scotty Bowman!!(2) Pat Quinn and Jacques Demers have also managed to win 2!! Mike Babcock will never have a better regular season than 2008. His team were a machine from start to finish. 1st in points, shots against, goals against, shots taken, 2nd in goals scored, despite having literally half the team injured for a month. But apparantly that didn't make him the best coach in the NHL that year. The last Presidents Trophy coach to win the JA was ironically the great Joel Quenville in 2000!

Not so sure I'm happy about Franzen being back on the ice. Knee ligaments are one injury that rushing back from does you no good. As for Filpulla, expect him to be a slightly slower version of Darren Helm when he first comes back. The muscles around his wrist will be all withered and wasted from wearing the cast and its going to take a lot of physio for him to get back to where he was. Until then he going to have an even weaker wrist shot than normal

Wsa this the least impressive (winning) boxscore in Redwings history? Gotta be honest with you, it doesn't even feel like I'm watching the wings right now. Still 8th place!!! If we make the playoffs, this could be the season that Babs finally wins coach of the year.

Maybe Mrs Datsyuk is the 8th woman in his little black book?

Its not so much the games played as lack of an off-season. Most players are done in April, they get 2 months to rest, recuperate, and then they can launch into a long personal fitness regime before they start pre-season. Detroit have had 3 straight seasons of a few weeks rest, then pretty much straight into pre-season. There's a similar effect in Soccer in summers where its the European Championships or World Cup. Players that go deep in those tournaments play until the end of June, pre-season starts in July, and competetive games start in August. Sir Alex Ferguson who is arguably the best coach in any sport in the world, gives his players who've gone deep in the WC August off.

Wow, the level of immaturity shown by multiple posters in this thread is truly staggering. It makes me wonder a) The age of many of the posters here and b) Whether the ones who are old enough to know better have ever actually been in a real relationship with a woman. We don't know that its true, but it would explain a lot. I don't care how much money you earn, you're still human, and if you're having problems with the missus, it DOES affect you at work. Trust me, I've seen it myself far too often. Pavel seems like the kind of quiet "nice-guy" who would internalise all this and carry it around with him, so I can believe it would affect his play [/pseudo psychoanalysis]

Although still not quite as bad as Feb 2008 when we had 10 starters out injured, including our top-4 D. Unsurprisingly we were terrible then too.

But we could have afforded what he wanted for one year, just not for the second. Anyway, I do remember it.

Actually, I remember that the reason he wasn't resigned (according to Holland) was because he wanted a 2 year deal - we had a lot of cap space the first year and anticipated none the second year IIRC. Remember all the bitching and moaning all through that season that we had all that cap space that wasn't filled? Holland couldn't get anyone to sign a 1 year deal who wasn't called Greg Johnson or Dallas Drake.

I laughed, because the only other alternative is to cry

I agree and disagree. With all our injuries, staying in a playoff spot, or within touching distance of a playoff spot, is what our objective should be, and hopefully once all our players are back after the Olympic break we should be able to push for a 4th or 5th seed. But I disagree about hovering around 10th. Its not about being 1 or 2 places out of the playoffs, its about staying 1 or 2 points out of the playoffs. If we're 10th come the Olympics, but 7 points out of 8th spot, then we're shagged. But as others have said, if we make the playoffs and everyone is healthy, no-one but no-one will want to face us, 8th seed or not. I recall one of the Bulls championship runs, they struggled during the regular season with a lot of injuries. Phil Jackson was happy just to make the playoffs as long as everyone was healthy, knowing the seeding wasn't a true reflection of his teams quality.

I remember watching a documentary a few years back on the last Avs Stanley Cup season. Early doors they were struggling, and it showed the players having it out in the locker room. The one guy standing up doing all the shouting and finger pointing? Adam Foote. Joe Sakic just sat there and nodded his head. I'm a big believer that great teams don't just have one inspirational captain, thats BS propagated by hack columnists and bad commentators because it makes for a great "story" The best teams have numerous leaders who are prepared to say what needs to be said, and more crucially, walk the talk, where it matters - on the ice. As for what Draper says, I liked this the best Proffesional athletes rarely talk like this. Despite what fans think or like to think, they are much more detached emotionally than we want to admit. Draper is not one of those athletes, and I deeply hope that he passes on some of the identity of the Detroit Redwings to the likes of Helm and Abdelkader. An identity he helped forge. Oh, and shouting and screaming is over-rated. Players soon switch off at that.

I'm reminded of a comment Ken Holland made in Toronto during an interview, basically along the lines of "the second season is always the toughest. Guys come in and play for a season and think they've made it. Then they struggle the second season, and thats when they realise they really need to take it seriously. Watch what they eat, live the right lifestyle, seriously hit the weights in the off-season" As soon as he said it I thought of Leino, Ericsson, Abdelkader and Helm, all of whom have played bits of the last season or two and are finding life in the NHL a lot tougher full time.

I would have probably said no to Osgood - until the last 2 playoff runs. He was our 2nd best player in 08 and our best player and would have won the Conn Smythe in 09 if we could have found a way to win a 4th game. That tips him over the edge for me.

No question Lindros was an utterly dominant player. His PPG is phenomenal when you consider he played most of his career in the dead puck era. Even more so when his best season (94-95) was only half of what it should be - without the lockout he gets 130-140 points that year. Even when his body was falling to pieces on a disfunctional NYR team, I remember Rags fans gushing over his skillset. Personally, I would rather have a player in the HOF who has had a short but spectacular career (lindros, Bure) than someone with a good but not great career whose longevity has allowed them to rack up big points totals (Cicarelli) Oh and btw, Lindros had 57 pts in 53 playoff games. Some "choker".

Thats the funniest analogy I've read in a loooong time But you're a month too early with it

I just love the first comment on MLive "Lebda + Rafalski = Armegeddon" Still, it could be worse - remember when we had all those injuries in 08 and our top pairing was Lilja-Lebda? And that was the "is lazy and he sucks" Lilja in his pre-cult hero days.

Apart from Lilja and Kopecky last season

I'm just pointing out that the whole "hockey players shouldn't get tired because they get millions of dollars" line of thinking is a fallacy. Everyone seems to forget that both sets of players in a hockey game are paid millions of dollars. If one team has had 2 days off and slept in their own beds, and the other played last night and didn't get to bed till 4am its a no brainer which team will have more energy. For all that that is done to keep the players fresh its still a widely accepted fact that a team playing the 2nd game in a back to back is at a serious disadvantage. Just like the first game back after a long road trip- remember the appaling 3-1 loss to Montreal last season after a long road trip out west? Babcock wasn't even bothered about it and said he'd had it circled as a loss from the day the schedule was announced.

Yes, I expect they'll survive it too. But how much they or you get paid is irrelevant And for the record, as I said at the top, I don't think its that bad a stretch anyway.

What I've really noticed the last few games is that he's really shooting the puck. I don't just mean letting go wristers from the blue line, but really winding up and cranking a slap-shot. His shot accuracy has always been one of his weak points, but he seems to have really worked on it.

Do you finish work at around 10pm, hang around for an hour answering the same questions every night, catch a flight around midnight, arrive at your destination 3am, get to bed 4am, have a few hours sleep, and start the day again? Do you have to give 100% maximum effort every single time you go to work? Do you have a boss like Mike Babcock who can end your life with just a single Babcockian Death Stare? One of the things that really annoys me about fans is how little they take account of travel upon top athletes. It's a lot like working shifts, and anyone who works them knows that sometimes, and it can't be helped, is that sometimes you just feel like ****. I don't care how much you're paid, if there's no gas in the tank, there's no gas in the tank.