dobbles

couple of things here: i actually agree in principle with what you are saying. when guys move around lines they get better/worse linemates, but often better/worse opponents that negate each other. however, the only thing i was referencing as far as bert riding others coattails was the fact that he got 5 points in 1 game almost entirely due to franzen. i am sure you watched that game as well; to me it was pretty darned apparent who was the magic on that line that night. and is wasnt bert. i am not trying to say that all of berts 44 points was due to playing with D & Z or anything like that. simply that his playoff total (which has been brought up several times) is inflated a lot due to franzen having that great night. however, i did mention other things like having the same even strength goals as eaves, or how he played so many minutes, and no one seems to have any answer for that. and the part about less PP minutes i think will be a factor. so many people try and say the only reason hudler gets points is because of PP time, so apparently in that case its a huge ordeal, yet with bert, its not a problem. to me though, i see him as the 7th best PP forward on the team, and not only will that limit his production for his nearly 2 mil cap hit, it also negates a lot of the need to keep him as a scorer when perhaps they could have brought in another guy like nystrom that would better fit a bottom 6, non PP role. sorry for the comment about disagreeing with the wings. i dont follow your posts much but it just seemed lately that everytime someone questions a move, you get all huffy and supportive. as you can tell by my post count, i don't make it into all the threads.

thats who i have been complaining about! i know you wouldn't dare ever question anything the red wings do, but to me this is a boneheaded move, just like getting williams last summer. also, a question i have for you and all the others that keep bringing up his size: why does his size matter at all? when was the last time he used it? its funny, all the bertuzzi supporters always say, "people that don't like him still expect him to be a physical power forward but he isn't that player anymore" or something very similar. yet now we are supposed to believe that his size is an attribute that makes him a better player? he doesn't play physical so his size is totally irrelevant! additionally, how are folks talking about his 'clutch' goal scoring?????? he scored 3 goals in the last 31 games of the season! he had 1 hot stretch in december and thats it. aside from the 8 goals in 8 games, he only scored 10 goals in the other 74 games! everyone talks about he was 3rd on the team in goals or had 44 points, he freaking should have, he played more minutes than just about everyone! heck, he was only 100 minutes behind Z. he only scored 2 more even strength goals than patrick eaves for craps sake! yet i doubt he will get anywhere near as good a deal. when you factor in hudler coming back, all of a sudden, bertuzzi doesn't get as many PP minutes either. and for those that love to talk about 11 playoff points, he can thank franzen for getting him a 5 point game. i think boogaard probably could have been out there on that line and ended up with 4 or 5 points. also, what many of us are saying is that while bert does have more offensive upside than many of the other guys mentioned as alternatives, that his all around game is not suited well for what the team needs.

never said it was. that is hollands job. and IMO he blew it with this signing. if he couldn't get bert to sign for less he should have let him walk. though bert set himself up for any ribbing he personally gets because of all of his statements about wanting to stay here and also being willing to play for less.

like a couple others have noted, we need to continue to educate our fellow fans and let them know that 2-way contact =/= waiver exemption. a 2-way contract just means you get a smaller salary in GR. the wings really aren't hurting for cash, so i doubt the saving would even be worth it. with the years played, i am pretty sure maltby would not have exemption from regular waivers or recall waivers. with that said, i doubt anyone would take him. but everyone shouldn't assume because they see the term '2-way deal' that he could easily be passed between DET and GR all season.

this is exactly the answer to the several people that say there was no better option. to me it stems from holland saying he wanted another 4th line drake type player. with bertuzzi back, all of a sudden you have another roster spot unavailable. i would much rather see someone like nystrom brought in over bertuzzi and then that would still gives spots to guys like eaves and miller. i was not totally against bringing bert back, but certainly not for the cap hit he now has. that severely limits the wings this year and next year. as has been mentioned, you have guys like lidstrom and holmstrom taking discounts, then you have bert getting a raise even though he has said he would take less to stay in detroit? in the cap era it is all about having players outperform their contract. Z & D did that for several years before their big deals kicked in. currently, other than howard, do we really have any 'value' contracts? sure our top end guys have manageable hits thanks to their super long deals, but its hard to say anyone is a 'value' contract when their hit is 5-7 million.

way too much for bertuzzi. the only reason he was a positive last year was because of his lower cap hit. he gets roughly a 30% raise even though he said he would only play for detroit or retire. also he said in the past that he would play for less money. so much for all of that.

seeing these 2 posts back to back made me laugh... i could really care less arguing about hossa, but the irony was too much for me to pass up...

what an awful thread. the hawks had to beat the 1 and 3 seeds to even get to the finals, yet they were lucky or had a weak schedule? they got through all their opponents which is all you can ask. and against vancouver and san jose they very much looked like the best team. they deserved to win most games, so i don't think they were lucky regarding the on ice issues, and they played decently tough opponents, so i don't think that they got lucky with their draw. threads like these make us look jealous.

Whats all this crap about this being a bad post or the OP being jealous? One of my good friends who is a die hard Hawks immediately messaged me after the CS was awarded and said it should have been Byfuglien. There are plenty of Hawks fans that thought it should have been players other than Toews. Its just differing opinions. That's what internet message boards are all about. For me personally, I was fine with the Toews choice. He didn't have the best finals, but 29 points is pretty darned good. I felt that Kieth was good throughout the run, but wasn't a game breaker most nights. Additionally, Niemi was streaky enough that I think he didn't have a chance.

thats what i am interested in. i know there is a clause that allows people to be waiver exempt if their ahl salary is low enough and they have some certain games played threshold met. most folks think 2-way contract means waiver exemption but thats not the case. if he isn't waiver exempt, then the 2-way just saves the wings some cash.

if anyone would have told me in october that the starting lineup for game 6 of the finals would include kopecky and leino, i would have laughed in their face. yet it happened. what a crazy crazy world...

i agree. the other thing that people still forget is that the flyers scratched leino half the regular season games they had him. and in the 13 games he did play he had 4 points. additionally, the flyers scratched him the first 4 playoff games. he only got to play because carter got hurt. people act as if holland was an idiot and made a horrible trade, yet the flyers also felt leino was pretty worthless up until april 22nd.

you guys do realize that ville leino played a grand total of 57 games in grand rapids right? he was there for 1 season and even had a decent callup the year he was there. its funny that so many people blame holland yet don't even know what they are talking about...

was this in response to my post? wtf? i just responded that i didn't think we would see many young players. and all of a sudden i am living in my moms basement? wtf? i started off saying i didn't think the thread would go well. i didn't say that because i thought your OP was bad; i said that because i assumed the arguing would get really ugly about the team. it actually has been pretty good though.

while i don't think your thread is going to go well, the bolded part i thought was kinda weird. i don't think there's a whole lot of GR guys that can expect time this year. ritola will most likely get his shot as he is out of options, but other than that, i can't think of any GR players that will get good time this year. assuming they try and bring back lilja or a comparable player, the 6 D are set. aside from ritola, there's really no room for another young forward either. am i missing something?

there's a couple things in this thread that keep making me think... just thought i would add in my 2 cents... Lidstrom's character: this got brought into play, and I actually think its at least a valid thing to discuss. The reason people expect a lot from Lidstrom is he has always shown great character throughout his career. So many fans expected this contract signing to be a continuation of that. Because Nick has set our expectations high, many fans thought he would take a nice discount to give the team a better chance at winning. So to me, its not that Nick all of a sudden lacks character, but he just isn't living up to the level of character that we have come to expect. It's not as if he totally betrayed fans and signed a 8 million dollar deal with the Panthers or something crazy, he just didn't live up to the lofty standards that he has built in many fans minds. That's my interpretation of many fans problem with the contract. 'I should take a pay cut too': How does this always get brought up? Lidstrom just agreed to a deal for more money than I will make in my entire life! Lets factor in he has been making a similar amount of money for the last decade and has been making a more than comfortable salary for more than 20 years now. I especially loved it when someone said after hockey he has no skills for other jobs. By reputation alone I am sure he could get pretty much any job in coaching, announcing, or management that he wanted. Players retire all the time and don't instantly become homeless because of it. The comparison between working folks and super rich athletes makes no sense. With leagues having salary caps these days, it is necessary to have players that outperform contracts. Many times this happens with young guys that are on entry level deals or are still RFA's. However, getting veterans to take discounts to help the team is a very common thing these days. So why in order for a fan to want that to happen do they need to emulate the pay decrease?

I still don't understand who in this thread is even hating on Bertuzzi? Half the posts support him and want him back, and the other half think his negatives (penalties, lazy defense, streaky play) outweigh his positives (low salary, decent production, big body). All that is occurring is discussion on the value of a player and if folks think he would be good to bring back. Heck there are more posts dissecting Andrew Ladd I think than Bertuzzi at this point in the thread. I realize that lots don't like Bertuzzi. However, the incessant whining about how much everyone hates him often occurs more than the hate itself.

i don't feel 6 million is a hometown discount at all. lidstrom has made more money in his career than 99% of the people on this board will ever see. if he seriously wants the wings to have a chance at a cup this year, he could have signed for less. bringing back lidstrom is obviously the right move, but to be excited over the reported cap number is pretty absurd.

I don't really see how making fans wait a week for the finals helps ratings at all. Sure weekend games are nice, but most casual fans probably think hockey is over since no one is talking about it. Its not like the super bowl where you can have ESPN hype it up for 2 weeks and the anticipation makes the fans more involved. I am sure not seeing any hockey news on ESPN, local news, or regional networks has just made most assume the season was over. I know there is a pretty thin line for trying to maximize weekend games, but the NHL is too far on the other side of the line at this point. Its similar to the crappy schedule last year rushing the games too early to try and squeeze in more weekend games. The NHL is wrong on this issue.

you very well may be right, and i personally don't want to get into another bertuzzi or hudler debate, i just feel like that "people expect him to be the guy he was 15 years ago" defense is way off. certainly there's room for a lot to debate about bertuzzi's season and how he fits into the wings plans.

i don't think thats it at all. i think most people that are down on bertuzzi just get frustrated by the penalties, the lack of hustle, the of consistency, the lack of defense, etc... with that said, i think most people ended up satisfied with the season he put in. personally i was worried as i think he was pretty bad for calgary the year before despite the point total he ended up with. i think this year he was looking very similar to that player through the first few months. like i said though, i think people realize he isn't going to get 90-100 points each season like he once did; i think many folks just think his negatives outweigh his positives. hopefully if they bring him back he can have another year like this one as i think overall it was pretty good.

it does all depend on the money. really the reason bert was tolerable this year was he was a good value. if the team loses that advantage he could quickly get into the doghouse again. also i recall reading last year that bert would continue to take a lower salary to play where he wanted to. does anyone else remember that?

i am not saying i think he is destined to a similar fate as carey, however you seem to be asserting that because of his last 10 games that all but guarantees he will have a long and productive nhl career. i find that more preposterous than the carey comparison myself. so i felt it prudent to remind you that lots of young players have hot stretches and then quickly fade. if anything, leino's good play last year followed up by a pretty bad year implies that maybe he is just going to be a streaky guy that gets hot for 10 games and then floats the rest of the season. the jury is still out though. however, aside from you, i still think most people are pretty pessimistic that the last 10 games has been the real ville leino.

i am not saying that there weren't good reasons for him not playing; i am implying that he wasn't anything special for most of his time in philly. he has had a good couple of weeks, no one disputes that. however, the nhl and all sports have had many players that appeared to be great early on and then flamed out. jim carey won the vezina in 1996 and was out of the nhl a couple of years later.

i think what people are forgetting is that leino didn't really play all too well in philly either until the last 2 weeks. he was scratched 50% of the regular season games with them. additionally, he didn't play the first 4 games of the playoffs and only was brought in after carter got hurt. he is on a hot streak, its great for him. but he also had a similar streak last year when called up. will he be able to translate the last 2 weeks success into an nhl career? who knows. i think there are a lot of people though that are making the assumptions that he was awful in detroit and great in philly and that it was something with the coaching, the motivation, the fans, etc... it took 30 team games with the flyers before he did anything noteworthy. i am happy leino is playing better and hope he has a good career. it sucks he is doing it for another team, but so goes life.