dobbles

just fyi, there is no more uhl. the other major player in mid level minors in the states is the chl. they absorbed a good chunk of ihl version 2.0 which was a lot of the remnants of the old uhl. as far as the chl goes, they are pretty close to the echl in terms of skill. they have a lot more veteran players compared to the younger guys the echl attracts due to their affiliation agreements.

good point f2. total terminology meltdown on my part for not correcting it. having been in the midwest surrounded by ushl teams for so long, i didn't even think of it.

as someone that was a fan in another of those former ihl markets (quad cities) i might say major junior. i say that because the ihl last year was painful to watch. though the players were paid professionals, i don't feel the on ice quality was very good. i would rather have the younger and hungrier junior players personally. however a ton of people get caught up on the fact that something is or isn't 'professional.' luckily for the quad cities, they made it to the chl this year with the other ihl teams that didn't fold. this should be a good move as the chl is close to equivalent with the echl as far as talent. i saw a few chl games last year while in tulsa and it was a much better product. if i were to choose between junior and chl, i would take chl.

calgary puck is a pretty good site. i have been over there for several years. they have a lot of very knowledgeable fans. they have 2 problems: 1)a decent amount of people there have an irrational hatred of the wings based on jealousy. though most people can be impartial, whenever the wings play the flames several trolls come out of the woodwork and can make it rough. 2)after their great run in 04 they havent won a playoffs series and even choked away their playoff spot last year. its made their fan base very bitter. so they have a civil war going on over people that are still supportive and those that want to see the whole org blown up and rebuilt. so they often fight amongst themselves.

oh its the classic can't disagree with anything holland does defense! such a great counter point! how dare anyone think that its time to let a player go that has not had more than 11 points in a season since the lockout and is a combined -34 since the lockout?!?!?! i respect what maltby did, but there comes a point where you need to say goodbye to players. there are other ways for an organization to be loyal and supportive of their long time players aside from giving them contracts several years after they hit their expiration dates. maybe maltby can be a good mentor in grand rapids by teaching our prospects how to play dirty and then not stand up for themselves and hide behind linesmen??? thats a good skill for any young player! and maltby in the playoffs? thats just scary! if he is on our bench, then we might as well be ready for a long summer because it will be due to about 10 significant injuries. leadership? how many hundreds of playoff games does our roster have without him? PK? how many forwards are ahead of him on the pk depth chart at this point? regardless of opinion on this signing, even holland acknowledges that the odds of maltby playing in detroit are slim. why not just do the right thing and retire?

i agree with mindfly. i hope maltby sees 0 games this year. there is nothing he brings to the table that other players in the system do. i don't even want to see him in the playoffs. its not as if this team lacks veterans or leadership. any minutes he plays takes away from younger players with futures in the organization. this is a bad signing all around. they should have just had grand rapids sign him to an ahl only deal. they could have made the deal well over the ahl salary he will make now. the wings could have offered to pay the entire salary so that GR wouldn't have to take on that burden. then if things got armageddon bad, they could have signed him to an nhl deal.

always exciting to see the ice getting ready. however, i miss the days without logos on the ice. kind of detracts from whats going on when you have miller light and other ones so close.

to me what is most needed is a switch up of pairings. its not so much about who gets the most minutes, but switching pairings up so players can compliment each others skill sets and also so that younger players can play with and learn from the older players.

yeah as newfy says, you just have to download a free program from the blackberry website. then just figure it out. to me the program is fairly easy, just making the graphics if you aren't able to find exactly what you want can be time consuming.

i have a super old bb 8310. i was never able to find any decent wings themes. so i actually made my own. you might have better luck though as when i used to look, the only themes i could find were for the newer models. heres an example of what i made:

i know a lot of people like to mention nylander as a comparable, however, i feel its a bit apples to oranges. nylander had injury issues that significantly affected his value between the time the contract was signed and the time they unloaded him to a european team. with huet though, the hawks just signed a bad contract and are looking to unload him.

forgot to mention that out of the 11 times the wings will be on versus, they play 10 different teams. their last 2 are both against the hawks. but they plays a pretty good variety of teams on the national stage. i am sure that if they get on nbc it will be against the hawks. thats really the only matchup that nbc will ever break the east only rule for.

here is the breakdown of how many times each team will be on versus: Boston 11 Chicago 11 Detroit 11 NY Rangers 11 Pittsburgh 11 Washington 11 Buffalo 9 Minnesota 9 Philadelphia 9 San Jose 8 New Jersey 7 Montreal 6 Tampa Bay 6 Colorado 5 Los Angeles 5 Phoenix 5 St. Louis 5 Carolina 4 Columbus 3 Dallas 3 NY Islanders 2 Anaheim 1 Atlanta 1 Calgary 1 Nashville 1 Toronto 1 Vancouver 1 Edmonton 0 Florida 0 Ottawa 0

i know you are most likely just joking, but i did want to touch on this area. lots of people try and dismiss any claims that we would have benefited from asham. yet many of the same people talk about how critical dallas drake was to the 08 cup. obviously theres people all across the spectrum of opinions. however, i find it funny that a pretty wide majority of folks think drake was such a big part of the cup season, yet it seems a majority also feel a player very very similar in asham would be worthless.

the funny part for me about this whole angle is we have no idea how Holland even feels on the issue. its been stated that Asham apparently wanted to stay in PA. so Holland could have thought Asham was the X factor, but it didn't matter because Asham didn't want to play here. there seems to be an automatic assumption that every player in the nhl wants to sign here first and if he doesn't, its because the wings passed on the player; not the other way around.

holy back-peddle batman! on the first page you were gushing about how much of a steal it was and how you would prefer him to eaves or miller. yet then when people call you out on the absurdity of the statement, you try to play semantics and pretend you never said things. worst of all you basically admit you haven't watched the guy in several years, yet you then go on to pretend you know all about his career. make up your mind! IMO, this signing may be a slight upgrade over some random AHL guy, but certainly not anything noteworthy. and definitely not the type of great signing multiple posters on the first page claimed. the guy has put up maltby like numbers the last couple years and we all know how popular he is around here...

to me its not the picks like chara that are disappointing. there is a reason guys go lower; they are unknown guys that may or may not blossom into something. considering how successful the wings have been with low round gems, i don't fret at all. to me, what sucks is missing on a much better player like sarich by just 1 pick. i am sure both guys were rated very close on draft boards and it could have been a coin flip type situation.

the morning replay of last nights game is on now. a few minutes ago lidstrom scored the first goal. the mccarty goal should be coming up soon. edit: man i forgot how nice of a play that was. then tonight is the 98 series against the caps. that series was much less exciting IMO.

the wings have played in 81 playoff games since the lockout. the next closest is the penguins with 62. that means the wings have played in almost 25% more games than any other team. i think that makes them pretty much top dog when talking about playoff success recently. sure we would all love to have more than 1 cup. but implying that chicago is one and done is really not that absurd. i do think a more accurate statement would be 2 and done since they did have a pretty nice run last year as well. but many fans feel that they won't be capable of getting back to the conference finals. so if their window of getting into the 3rd or 4th round is already closed, then its an applicable statement. sure we may all disagree if it is true, but its certainly debatable and not as absurd as you seem to think.

i'm with you. the article doesn't go anywhere near implying the blues are winning anything. just that they are trending upwards. and when you finished 9th the previous year, there's lots of room to go up and still not win the division. i do agree the article is poorly written with lots of contradictions; however, this thread is mis-titled and there was a lot of misunderstanding by the OP in my opinion.

just want to reiterate that i realize that it is a very slippery slope to start analyzing how people get points. but i think it this very specific 1 game segment it can be done in a fairly accurate way. the whole reason that the concept can't be used most of the time is because its hard to make sweeping generalizations. using your example, one could say 'Z gets way more EN goals than anyone else' and for the short term that may be right, but given enough games and enough seasons, it all kind of averages out. whereas if you look at a very small sample size or a very specific issue, it can be easier to draw conclusions. and i think anyone that watched that game has to realize that there was 1 player on the ice that was playing head and shoulders above the others and it was franzen. so i think a logical conclusion can be drawn that bert had inflated playoff numbers based on mules beastly game. so to me that should be important in salary negotiations. just as bert not having any goals in the last 31 games while the team was clawing their way into the playoffs and all the way up to the 5 seed. to me its about giving the statistics some context. its like folks that say lidstrom is on the decline because he was only +22 this year. yet he was still at the top of the team that finished pretty poor in goal differential. so when you look more into things, the +22 can mean more or less depending on what you find. i have too.