titanium2

Yeesh.

Babcock somewhat disagrees in attitude.

Where do you get that impression?

Holy crap you're right. How could I forget about him? Jeeez. Well he did get bumped down to the bottom six, which is part of the reason why he isn't scoring as much, which is why some have lost track on his progress and why we haven't heard all that much about him recently.

The Sharks really don't want the Wings in the playoffs.

Oohhhhhhh. Whoops. Well, yeah, what he said. Shutout. Yeah. What the...? Thanks a lot San Jose. f***in' useless.

Well yeah I thought that was how the "jinx" worked is it not?

....What do you mean? And holy crap Lilja was a second round pick? Guess that was a draft of sexiness. Waiting for GMR's response in 5, 4, 3...

Hey, Flames goalie, what starts with an S and rhymes with cutout? SHOUTOUT! Yay...

I'm not sure what to think about the pairing. By the time I came in to watch it I saw Bert-Z-Bear cycling the puck for a good 45 seconds and thought Babs scrapped it. Any thoughts on the Fil-Z pairing?

ZDC, Fox News? And I don't think he's waiting for it to happen. I actually think he's deferring to Datsyuk and Zetterberg. Somehow he has to be challenged to expand and believing that he can play well on offense without having to sacrifice any increment of his quality defense.

EAVES!!!! It's awesome how spazzy he gets after a goal/win.

... I don't get it.

This is pretty much a Zetterberg Watch thread. Yeah he had a good game. I guess is feisty Zetterberg makes for a better Zetterberg. He seemed pissed when giving interviews after it. Why is that?

Emma probably cheated on him. With Nicklas Backstrom. She wanted to "upgrade."

I do think that Z needs to not just work harder but just do whatever is required to be better, whether it's acknowledging that he's not moving as quickly as he's used to or just moving the puck a little quicker. However the closest I remember Z 'creating on his own' was the Holmstrom-Zetterberg-Samuelsson line in '07 and that was a good one while it lasted. Sammy was Sammy, a 2nd/3rd line tweener and Holmstrom was I'd say a little better back then and I think that with his presence he definitely created more room for Z. Opponents see Cleary and Filppula and they don't give them as much respect because most of the time they don't have to. He's always had Datsyuk, Holmstrom, Franzen or in years past (Hull, Shanahan, Hossa, etc.).

Great stuff, Matt! Looking forward to the rotating banners as well.

Now a fat discussion and no mention of Hitchcock or Boudreau?

And this one.

I'm trying to complain or anything. I know Matt is awesome and everything. I just can't help but think that... Man this forum feels really different. It was the same for so long and now it's like wow this is so weird.

I think it'll just be a faceoff thing. Zetterberg will take them but I hope that Filppula will generally be the one who skates through the center of the ice, which allows him to be more aggressive. Zetterberg isn't skating that great these days anyways. I don't care what he says to the media. He is not fine and has got to be hurting somewhere.

Last year they only played together for like 1 1/2 games. I'm sure you're thinking, "That's because the idea sucks" but we need to see more time with it than that.

This is pretty much what I would do. It would really kill the flow of the power play.

If this idea is going to work at all then Filppula must be aggressive in his own right. He can't defer to Zetterberg and wait for him to make plays just because he's Z and he "has dibs on every puck". Don't get me wrong, Fil should definitely play with some respect for Z, but he's also there to do a job. If Z is getting beat all over the ice then Fil has to use his speed and so forth to more or less take over.