titanium2

This looks like a setup for one of those Edmonton, New York Islanders games we've seen this year with Koivu out and everything.

Ooooooh... King of the Filppula slappies versus the King of the Hudler slappies well Happy Birthday to me...

I can't see him being happy with having to play at least one year probably two in the minors. If he does it though then all the power to him.

Looks like Fil is winning this puck battle. He probably was for a second but then had it taken away.

Not really. The started out the season together for a significant amount of time but the Wings didn't start to play particularly well until Babs put together the Homer-Pav-Mule line. I remember reading that the stats on that line were incredible last season. If only I could find them.

Franzen is too good of a shooter to be a 5-on-5 net-front presence. With Homer in front of the net and Mule hovering around the slot or wherever, you have two guys that in theory create a lot of space for Pav to work his magic. The line though hasn't made as much noise as of late. I wonder if it's because Zetterberg's line gets to play with Nick and Rafi much of the time or if Homer is banged up again or maybe teams have found a way to neutralize the line's effectiveness by harassing Datsyuk at every opportunity or something.

I like this one. Henrik Todd Val

Maybe something to do with Sesame Street since you have Bert?

I feel like there's no point because Fil will eventually play center again. Names should go to lines that will be together for a while.

Nashville's really making some noise here late. I can't see Gary letting them win the cup though. NAS even a decent hockey market?

A part of Datsyuk's increase in points has to be attributed to the fact that the team back then truly needed him to provide secondary scoring. If I'm not mistaked Pav was officially the Wings' second line center. Fil knows that the team has Pav and Z and so he can have a mindset like "play good defense and be happy with whatever offense I can get."

I wouldn't make a big deal out of it yet even though that game sounds a lot like last year's Wings game against NAS. It's embarrassing but maybe this is what the Hawks need to straighten up.

Niiiiiiiiice.

Maybe he was going for age. Datsyuk was 23 at the start of the 01-02 season. Filppula was 23 at the start of 07-08. If you go by age you can compare Pav at 35 and 51 points to Fil at 36 and 40. The emphasis here is on ppg rate though. Pav was at 0.79 at age 24 while Fil was at 0.50 rate. The next year Pav had a rate of 0.907 while Fil today is at 0.74 ppg. With Fedorov gone, Pav had to produce more points and got consistent ice time with scoring line quality linemates. Fil still bounced between 3rd and 2nd this year and hasn't had as good of quality of linemates as Pav did back then. Now, I'm not trying to diminish or exaggerate either of their stats. The main point to take away from all this is that year by year Fil is progressing at a rate that is satisfactory for someone with a ceiling of 'quality second line center'. I wouldn't say he has tremendously exceeded the Wings' expectations but at the very least he has met them and his progress is right on schedule if not decently ahead of time.

I thought it was "I Believe I Can Fly"? Whenever Dan O'Halloran makes one of his bogus trademark phantom calls they play this fitting song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwCt0YQPn7g "I said hey yeah yeah yeah, hey yeah yeah, I said hey... What's going on?" They used to play Kalinka after Datsyuk scored: But now they play Calle Ocho: Whenever Zetterberg scores they play "The Hey Song" but instead of "Hey!" they chant "HANK!!!" That inspired me to create this:

:lol:

I just hope he gets nominated. I'll be happy enough with that.

Haha. 'My name is EZ and my penis is bigger than yours'.

Love the Mule's facial expression. "God, shut up, Babs." Means that his coaching is working.

Well, I mean, it's hard to be the smartest player on your team when Nick Lidstrom is your teammate. At the same time, I think he's second in that category. To me its Z's hockey sense that is his defining strength.

Babs is trying to put Bertuzzi into a Holmstrom like (net front, puck retrival) role instead of a Franzen like (shooter) role like earlier in the season. I think it's going well so far and I hope Bert is having fun with it.

Update: Against the Blues. 1g 1a +3 7 shots 9/15 on faceoffs 18:55 TOI 2:11 PP TOI 1:51 SH TOI 1 giveaway 1st Star He is now officially at a point per game rate.

5 of his goals this year were really nice for his standards.