dobbles

shutout or not, conklin has been awful these last 2 games... bring in macdonald!!!

no problem at all for me...

are you ******* kidding me????

that new 5 on 3 PP formation is awful. aside from the one time the pass went through to the 3rd guy high, it basically takes a player out of the play. it turns a 5 on 3 into a 4 on 3. when they scored on the 2 man advantage tonight it was only because it was a broken play and that crappy formation had went away. they gotta stop using that pronto. its not a good idea. at all.

why the f*** cant i watch the game?!?!?! NHLN is showing HNIC and my CI channels both say the wings game is blacked out (because of NHLN) edit: nevermind. all of a sudden the wings are on... that was a close one!

i agree. obviously its early, but thats how its shaping up. though will babs and kenny be comfortable sitting a 3 mil player every night?

i agree. i think he brings more to the table than miller. and i think depending on how things go, holmstrom will soon need to be regularly scratched to give other guys the chance to play.

i guess we can finish this discussion up on nov. 6th then! realistically though, he has played 167 games in the nhl now. people are basing their opinions not only on the 4 games this year, but how those 4 games compare to the other 163 he has played. lots of people feel that he is continuing to show the same problems he has had. i am of the opinion he peaked in the 09 playoff run and has been pretty mediocre since. that was fine when he was the 6th dman making <1mil a year. but now he is paid like a top guy. and i think i remember ken and mick saying they had talked with babs who said he expected him to grow into a top 4 type guy because of the contract. to me, thats a scarey thought.

while overall i am critical of E, it does seem he has picked up his physicality a bit. anyone else have an opinion on that? it could honestly be selective memory, but i do feel like he is using his size at least a little more in the first few games this year. thoughts?

we have had several years to judge him. and IMO, he has shown nothing in the first 4 games to show he is any different from last year. additionally, IMO kindl has by far been the better player in the pairing and is the reason they haven't looked that bad. i don't think his contract allows us to take that opinion anymore. he is the 3rd highest cap hit for dmen and the 6th highest on the entire team. (those numbers drop to 4 and 8 respectively when looking at actual salary) he no longer has the luxury of being the bottom pairing guy that is successful by floating under the radar.

i think kindl has looked much better this year and that ericsson has just looked average. while he certainly isn't the worst ever, he is still showing he isn't a 3 mil player. i certainly hope he becomes that as the wings would certainly benefit from his improvement. i just don't think it will realistically happen.

so far, there are 3 reasons to move the wings to the east that i have seen mentioned: better for the fans less travel less time zone switching to me, each of those reasons is pretty tertiary. i will explain why: better for the fans? who cares! its a pretty minor inconvenience. 41 games are at home at whatever time the wings prefer. 10 more a year are already against the east. 10-20 more are in the central time zone which is a whole whopping hour behind. when you consider the wings start lots of home games at 730 eastern, and many teams start at 7pm central, its a whopping half hour difference for the start times. is it really that hard to adjust your tv watching schedule for a half hour later? less travel. IMO, this holds the most water, but let me play devils advocate as to why its not really an issue. the hardest part of travel is getting on the bus, getting to the airport, getting to the plane, getting loaded, etc. the EASY part of travel is the actual flight. teams in the east still have to deal with the headaches of getting to the airport and all that. the only difference is flight time. let me throw some hypothetical numbers in there... so teams in the east still take an hour or two post game to get to the airport and get loaded. in the east, their flight may only take 30 minutes. they still have to get off the plane, get their crap and get to the hotel or to home depending on the situation. so lets add an hour. so for an east team, it still is going to take almost 4 hours to get home. for a team in the west, they still get 1-2 hours to get to the plane, however their flight is 90 minutes, and then an hour to get home. so instead of 4 hours of travel time, its 5. and once again, the time on the plane is when you can relax, decompress, nap, etc. also, a lot of teams in the east bus around at times. that negates the time gain. is an hour on a bus really better than an hour on a plane? less time zone changes. this really falls in with the first one for me. sure detroit is in the eastern time zone. but is 1 hour difference really all that much? as i mentioned, teams vary between the on the hour start and the on the half hour start, so that adds to just as much variety. even in the east, there would still probably be 1 west coast trip a year to catch whichever division was on the rotation that year. right now they play about 50 games in the eastern time zone; switching to the east would change that to what? 70? and most of those gains would just be 1 hour difference. i guess to me i just dont see all the whining about how awful the west is. sorry for being long winded though. at least we arent dallas who has no division rivals within hundreds of miles... i would think its best for the nhl to be in the west. it leaves 2 original 6 teams in the conference instead of orphaning chicago. it allows the det-chi rivalry to build as both teams are good for the first time in decades. it allows the west to be stronger because of the wings success. it allows western teams to draw better when the wings come to town. i just think there are more quality reasons to stay than to go.

i agree about directv if its an option for you. the center ice package includes nhl network which is nice too. also, i think you only have to get the 2nd package to get versus. so it can allow you to see everything. the only downside i had was that they dont give the candaian feeds in HD most of the time. not sure if thats for everyone but i would have to watch the calgary and edmonton feeds in SD most of the time.

veterans can regain exemption based on lack of games played in previous seasons and also ahl salary threshold. i just can never remember the rules for them. for instance, jamie lundmark a couple years back signed contracts with lower ahl salaries so that he would be exempt from waivers and calgary could call him up without exposing him. allowed him to get more callups and eventually a more steady gig in the nhl again.

i thought he was waiver exempt?

wow, stay classy neal while it was nothing major, why do something like that in the preseason? god the penguins are douchey.

how can you be 'defenseless' when you are actively turning your back to the guy?!?!?!?

i can't speak for heaten, but for me its where they belong. other than the first few years after the original 6 era, they have been playing against western type teams. its been what, over 35 years since they first moved into the norris division? (and yes i realize it took time for it to actually become a division of midwestern teams) to me, there is just as much tradition playing in the west as there was playing against the 4 teams from the original 6 that are in the east now and we dont see as much. and lets look at the practicality of it. why would they want to leave the hawks as the only original 6 team in the west? why would they want to move the wings out of the midwest based footprint that they do fit pretty well into? why would they want to take the wings away from the western teams that they have developed rivalries against? to me, the only real reason to support the move is for convenience. and unfortunately because of geographic issues, half the league will travel a lot more than the other half. sure the time zone issue sucks for players and fans, but its not as if moving to the east would mean all games start at the exact same time anyways, so how much can be gained?

i believe the wings start at 730. though i am not seeing any channels listing it, so perhaps its not televised? is it only msg that sent a tv crew?

found it on another message board and snagged it.

what a terrible summer for hockey. lets just get some games started and get away from all this tragedy...

here is a weird one: Federov-Yzerman-Cicarelli My assumption is that it was never an actual line. However, that combo is the reason I started liking the Red Wings. The reason? NHL 94 on Sega. That was the starting line for the Wings in that game. They were dominant and became my favorite team to use. That is how I was first exposed to hockey aside from glimpses here and there as a kid. Its a weird reason to start liking a sport and a team, but you can thank EA for that! Thats how a non existent line became my favorite of all time! On a side note, Steve Chiasson started on D just ahead of a young Lidstrom.

its a cool analysis, but to imply a purely empirical breakdown of playoff success directly correlates to how easy it is to be a fan of a team is simply absurd. had they simply titled the article 'most playoff success in recent years' it would have been great. but the instant you bring in the factor of fans and emotions it is no longer a simple statistical breakdown. expectations play a factor. regular season success not leading to playoff success plays a factor. not being able to take the next step in the playoffs is a factor.

i saw quite a bit of conner when he was with the iowa stars and peoria riverman. he is one of those guys that works real hard out there. when i saw him with the penguins i kept an eye on him as i remembered him from the ahl. i thought he played pretty well up there last year. definitely could be a guy to fill in for an injured player and be able to contribute solidly.

personally i see exelby filling the same role janik has the last 2 years. he has lots more nhl experience, produced in the nhl at a slightly better rate, and is even 18 months younger. so if there are injuries he is a guy that can slot in pretty easily. and to me, someone with that much nhl experience can at least fill in as a top 4 guy for a short period.