titanium2

Just so he can get Double Dion-ed.

Bahah! Pwned.

Hopefully this will spark some quality discussion. St. James is obviously a lot more friendly of an evaluator than we are here on LGW, but she's not all wrong imo. The grades are obviously based on what the Wings expect of each player and how well they've met those expectations or perhaps surpassed them.

Yeah I noticed that too. But I don't think it was intentional. They were taking a faceoff and Z's stick just came up.

They'll have to overwork Jimmy again, sigh... Only this time Osgood is out with an injury.

Whoa, Zetterberg with the statements and then Babs and Nick with the politically correct ones.

Zetterberg to his countryman Lidstrom... A pair of 17s collide... SNIPE! Datsyukian Deke!

Wait I thought they placed him on the IR that lasts for seven days. It doesn't say anything about LTIR in that NHL article.

All captains have to be "big time whiners." To me the big difference on how fans perceive them basically comes down to how ugly they look when they do it. Whenever Stevie showed anger, you could say that perhaps a neutral obvserver would watch him and judge him in a "Ooh he's mad but he looks passionate" manner. With Gretzky, I mean... Eww... And with Mr. Marketing Tool in Pittsburgh, he's got the kind of whiny face that just makes you want to scream "STFU!" and then punch him every time he makes a facial expression. Maybe I'm oversimplifying but I feel like that's what it is.

Once Philly gets Pronger back I feel like they'll be at least near the top defensive teams in the league. The Pens are the Pens. If you don't respect them then you've probably already lost.

At 2:08 you see an inside joke between the Euro Twins. I wonder what it was.

A playoff series against the Canucks would be quite tough. Quite tough indeed. If I wasn't a fan of the Wings I'd love for the two teams to meet.

I like the idea someone had about picking who you want to serve the suspension. Or something along those lines. The leading scorer or defenseman with the highest average TOI must serve it. Bwahahahaha!

My own ratings really aren't all that different. Although if you were to ask me against tomorrow I'd probably adjust a few here and there. The evaluations from St. James and Khan are undoubtedly debatable but they're also close enough within range of what is fair imo. A - Excellent B - Does his job well, for the most part C - Bare Minimum D - Below Average F - Fail Justin Abdelkader (B) Todd Bertuzzi (B) Danny Cleary (A) Pavel Datsyuk (A) Kris Draper (B) Patrick Eaves (A-) Valtteri Filppula (B) Johan Franzen (B) Darren Helm (B+) Tomas Holmstrom (B-) Jiri Hudler (D) Drew Miller (C+) Mike Modano (C-) Henrik Zetterberg (A) Defensemen Jonathan Ericsson (B) Niklas Kronwall (B+) Nicklas Lidstrom (A) Brian Rafalski (B-) Ruslan Salei (B-) Brad Stuart (A-) Goaltenders Jimmy Howard (B) Chris Osgood (B)

Wow. Quite a review there of Kronner's play. I gotta start paying more attention to him when he's away from the puck.

Hehe.

We keep mentioning this but things change slowly but progressively. I mean, look at the Selke trophy. Last year Datsyuk had takeaways and perhaps the "hard minutes argument" but didn't have any significant PK time. I really don't know if he deserved it or not I'm just saying that the standards are changing. EDIT: "The hard minutes argument" -- http://www.coppernblue.com/2010/5/3/1455867/the-best-forwards-in-the-nhl-tough

They just pulled off a fantastic win. Now that the euphoria is all but gone I feel like LGW is going to expect that kind of effort every night from now on. You know what that means? A whole lotta bitchin' and cryin'. And not just from Mindfly.

Oooh...

And now Mlive.com's Ansar Kahn:

Before a whole mess of people go nuts over MM just know that it is TV, it is about ratings and presenting contrasting viewpoints.

If he does have surgery he'll be out 6 weeks. Yikes. If so, hope they can find a way to win and not overwork Jimmy.

Until players start coming back I expect the games to be as tight as it was against VAN last night. If they're going to allow themselves a chance to win then they really have to think about nothing else but team defense.

That's what we thought in 09.

I wish you were still The_Mule.