Nev

You think you guys have it bad with Doc - you should try listening to him do the Overseas broadcast every year for the Stanley Cup finals (with Micheletti). The NHL seems to think that fans who've been watching the NHL all season suddenly need to be treated like 3 years olds who have no knowledge of the game or its rules. So Doc has to explain what Icing, Offsides, line-changes etc etc etc are every single time one happens. And every player has to be prefaced with "The Great" So you get "The great Sergei Gonchar" and "The great Ryan Malone"

Well it looks like this whole argument is moot because Babs has done the classy thing and announced he's dressing 11 forwards and 7 defenceman (Sammy may be the one to sit following his flu)

You have to remember that a lot of the local broadcast teams are actually employed by the Hockey clubs, so they have to have their heads up their own teams ass - Colombus springs to mind here. Olcyk and the Chicago broadcast team are also terrible homers. Whats inexcusable is when the likes of Olcyk carry their bias over into national broadcasts on VS.

Incredibly, thats Bowman's 11th ring - the guy has run out of fingers and now has to use toes!

No, he has an no-trade-clause. As for Huddles remember he's an RFA - below is the compensation Detroit would receive for him $863,156 - $1,307,811 3rd round pick $1,307,811 - $2,615,623 2nd round pick $2,615,623 - $3,923,434 1st and 3rd round pick $3,923,434 - $5,231,246 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round pick Is any GM in the league really going to give up a 1st & a 3rd AND pay him more than $2.6M per year? Which obviously gives you an idea of what Holland would be prepared to pay him.

Quite frankly we're going to struggle to keep 2 of the 3. The combined cap figure for Sammy, Huds and Mule is only $3.15M - to resign Z & Hossa we will need to find at least $5M in cap space. And don't forget the players that leave will still need to be replaced on the roster. If the 3 above are let go and we call up Leino, Helm and Abdelkader they will eat up $1.5-2M so we won't even be creating that much cap room. Add in Ericsson and his $1M salary and to me it seems the only way to keep Hossa AND Z is to trade Kronwall or Filpulla (as the only players without a NTC whose departure will create enough cap space) and you still need to let Sammy, Huds, Mule, Kopecky and Chelios go.

Well, one swallow doesn't make a summer. They need to start playing like that on a regular basis before we can officially say the 07-08 Wings are back. But it does go to show just what they are capable of when they can be bothered

Hey thanks for proving yourself wrong - We had an enforcer in the line-up and yet Lidstrom still got run-over. What gives? We had McCarty in the line-up in the Nashville series and Tootoo still stomped on Kris Drapers back and spent the entire series being a little *****. Having a fighter in the line-up did NOTHING to stop that. If you think having Downey and/or McCarty in the line-up is going to solve this teams problems by making the rest of the team more physical you're sorely mistaken. In fact it would make it worse. One of our greatest strengths last season was that whilst no-one dropped the gloves, the players stood up for themselves physically and were not intimidated by the opposition - guys like Hudler and Sammy getting involved in scrums and facewashing - they weren't going to scare anyone, but they were prepared to stand up and not run away and hide. Every single opponent in the playoffs tried goonery at some point in each series and what good did it do them? None whatsoever, the wings shrugged it off and continued to outwork and outplay them. This year, the shying away from physical stuff is just one of a myriad of problems this team faces as a result of "we won the cup" syndrome. Adding a fighter will only worsen the lack of "one-for-all, all-for-one" attitude of last year because why stand up for yourself when you can get someone to do it for you? People are mentioning the Zetterberg roughing against Calgary - quite rightly - he got pushed around and no-one came to his defense. Last season all the skaters would have piled into a scrum, this year everyone stood around and let it happen. Having Downey on the bench though (lets be honest, he wouldn't be on the ice with Z) would not have prevented it one little bit, and even if he was on the ice, he's not going to pile in and drop the gloves because he'd probly get the extra penalty. Which leads me on the instigator rule.....deserving of its own thread......in its current format it makes it nearly impossible for enforcers to be the policeman on the ice that you all describe.

Only in your own head I don't know how many times I have to repeat this, but what the likes of me and Z&D are saying is NOT "no to fighting", its "yes, pugilists are nice, but they have to be worthy of a roster spot by themselves." Its the Redwings way and its the Babcock way. So yes to 90s Lapointe & McCarty, no to Downey. And please fight fans, try not to constantly insult your opponents, it doesn't strengthen your argument in any way shape or form - calling me an idiot who knows nothing about hockey doesn't change the fact that Downey never played in the playoffs and Mac was the 13th forward.

No, but my point is that Kenny didn't plan on having them BOTH, which is what we ended up with. BTW, all this talk of trading Stuart, doesn't he have a NTC? The only D-man we can realistically trade for anything of value and get some cap relief is Kronner. Kronwall & Maltby for Volchenkov & Neil anyone?

1992 Lets flip that shall we? How many times have the wings had an enforcer and FAILED to win the cup? Hmm? How many Stanley Cups did the Detroit Red Wings win with Bob Probert - the greatest enforcer of all time - in their line-up?

I think the Lilja/Stuart contracts really hamstrung us more tbh. Lilja was resigned because it was thought we wouldn't keep Stuart. When we did it left us with a glut of D-men and no wriggle room - because lets be honest if we were $1M under the cap then 1 or 2 of Leino/Helm/Abdelkader/Ericsson would be on the team and providing some much needed energy and enthusiasm.

lol, such fantastic reasoning - The fact that we won the cup without an enforcer proves the fact that the enforcer was key. Bravo! I'd like for us to have a little bit more toughness on the team and 1 or 2 guys who are prepared to drop the gloves - but as 1 of 18 regular skaters, not a 2-shift-per-game passenger like Downey. Any fighter on our roster needs to be able hold his place as a player first and foremost and a fighter second. Shanny, McCarty and Lapointe were all on the team because they could play. That they fought was an added bonus.

If you've read The Game, Dryden talks about the same thing with the 70s Canadiens. They had to set themselves targets like breaking the record for points, then breaking their own record for points to motivate themselves during the regular season.

To be fair, that was the case last season - I regularly said it when pimping Ozzie for the Conn Smythe. Difference was last year Ozzie was a wall, this year he's a sieve You know, that sounds almost identical to a quote in Roy Keane's autobiography when talking about the great Manchester United team that won the Champions League in '99 and their decline in the early 2000s. All these hugely talented, very rich, multiple championship winning superstars going through the motions and waiting for someone else to be The Man. And failing to win anything.

About the only good thing that came out of this game is that 20 minutes of effort didn't pull out a win yet again. Someone said it after the Dallas loss - we need to score 3+ goals to win. I'm not even sure that calling up Downey or trading away a player or 2 will change things - the entire roster needs to pull their head out of their asses and get back to Redwings hockey. I fear the only way that will happen is a 4-5 game losing streak.

Huds is his little ***** - and has proved he can put up points on the 3rd & 4th lines, a rare "gift". BTW NHL.com has changed the wings goal to Homer from Rafalski and Datsyuk.

If Flip is between Mule and Hossa (which I've wanted all season long) who's centering the 3rd line?

UK Night shift reporting in and......wtf? Oh wait, its the Wings and its the 1st period. Will they pull out another win tonight with 20 minutes of effort?

VERY surprised if this is true - when the Kings & Ducks played in London Babcock was extremely critical of the idea and said he would never want to do it (ie bang goes my chances of seeing the Wings play over here )

I also remember a lot of complaints about last year - but most of them were unfounded.

Whats that got to do with the price of fish? Can't win the cup without it Wow, so I'm a fair weather fan because I point out that 4 GA every night won't get it done in the playoffs? Not that I have to defend myself to anyone but FWIW I've been following this team since '92 - half the people on this board weren't even born then. And another sport I understand a little better? Is that until I have a different opinion to yours on that one as well? Still, aren't England doing well in India? Huh, what are you talking about? Are you just going to insult me, or would you care to name another game, apart from Anaheim 2-1, were we played like the 07-08 Wings? I assure you I was not one of the Chicken Lickens last year - I was totally confident that we would win the Cup because the team were playing with a chip on their shoulder, to prove that they weren't too old, too soft and too European to win the Cup and Babs had them playing Playoff style hockey ALL SEASON LONG. Right now I do not believe this team has the heart or the desire to make a long playoff run (Hossa excepted). Of course I will keep watching them - one hopes the players will wake up and play like we know they can, but its nearly Christmas now and still no change. Time is running out because as of now this team is a San Jose elimination waiting to happen. Now, are you going to constructively argue how we can win the cup playing like this, or are you going to continue with the baseless insults?

You know why we're the defending stanley cup champs? Because last season, game in and game out, night after night, we brought our A game - 60 minutes of effort, a ferocious forecheck, tireless backchecking, suffocating defense and rock-solid goaltending. How many times this season have we brought our A game from last year? Anaheim? Uh, and that's about it? Anyone other ones? Bueller? I see you fail to mention our atrocious goals-against this season in your post. Until that is fixed we ain't winning jack in the playoffs.

My hopes for this game remain the same as all season 1) Win 2) 1 goal or less conceded 3) 20 shots or fewer conceded. I've been disapointed a lot

Enough with the "its only december" mantra. Its now 1/3 of the way through the season and the Wings are still shipping way, way, way too many goals. Don't tell me December doesn't matter because the last 2 seasons Babcock has had this team playing Playoff Hockey from September, and our post-season success the last 2 years has been no coincidence. I was not one little bit surprised when we steamrolled our way to the cup because we had been playing like that ALL YEAR. Can you honestly say that our current level of goaltending, defence and effort will cut it in April (who knows if we'll make it May)?