dobbles

well at least i wont have to stay up late watching the game!

that was awful.

the wings are top 10 in the league in goals allowed with a rookie goaltender, yet for the last couple months, lebda, meech, and ericsson have logged a ton of minutes. they must be doing something right...

mayers would add nothing to this team. regardless of whether he is more valuable than leino, neither of them would be playing once the team gets healthy. his salary is awful for what he brings. it makes zero sense.

as is noted, this thread was more active at the beginning of the year. you know, the first 30 games when he had only 4 goals! he started off the year pretty slow and was still playing some pretty poor defensive hockey. several times i quoted good stats like gieaways/takeaways, +/- and points in relation to TOI, but some people still could not take off the blinders. yet, because of bertuzzi's better play recently, most all of the complaints have dried up because bertuzzi has pretty much performed up to his contract. yet this thread always gets bumped by poor sports who couldn't consider that bertuzzi was indeed underperforming in october in november and feel the need to say 'haha i told you so' like they are 6 years old. personally, i still will wait till the end of the season to form my final opinion, he has done a lot to turn around my feelings for him.

as one of the more critical people on bertuzzi, i am pretty neutral at this time. his 8 goals in 8 games stretch definitely bought him some slack with me. he had been cooling off after that, but the goal he had the other day was nice. assuming he can keep up moderately productive play down the stretch (last year he pretty much dissapeared for calgary as the season went on) then i think i would be supportive of keeping him. however, if he is committed to staying here, why give him a 3 or 4 year contract? give him a shorter contract so that if his health goes bad, its not such a big deal. additionally, i think keeping his cap number down to 1.5mil or so would allow him to be a good deal. getting up to 2mil makes his contract look much worse. in the cap era its all about having players give good value for their services. especially if bertuzzi says money is not as important, getting that cap hit lowered gives the team more flexibility.

if he does play in the olympics how do you guys feel about it? on one hand it will go a long way to getting him game ready when he does make it back, so at least he will be in game shape for march 1st instead of having to get his legs back while the wings are fighting for playoff position. yet on the other hand, is the extra rest more valuable? while i am sure he won't play unless doctors say he is ready, there still are lots of instances where players rushed back and end up having setbacks. i am sure he would love to play for his country and help them win gold, but as far as the wings are concerned, which way do you think is best?

i like my story even though some people think its lame... even though i am from illinois (though not near chicago) i didn't realyl know what hockey was until the 1992 olympics. i recall in my 5th grade class that we watched some medal round game that the u.s. was in. the only thing i remember was learning what a hat trick was. though that exposed me to hockey a bit, it wasn't until 2 years later that i got into hockey. the reason? nhl 94 for sega. my friends and i played that game all the time. it was super fun. my favorite team to play as? the red wings. the top line of yzerman, federov, and ciccarelli was unstoppable in that game! so because i enjoyed hockey in that game, i started watching it on espn. and from there a life long passion was born. even though i have still never had the chance to see the wings or any nhl game, i have been to about 100 minor league games in several leagues and was a season ticket holder when we had an ahl team here (quad cities flames) the explosion of the internet allowed me to really start following the team in 2000, but in the last few years with internet streams and center ice has finally allowed me to watch most wings games. i used to only get to see them when they were on national tv, or if they played the hawks and it was on the chicago channel. thats my evolution. all born out of a video game.

http://twitter.com/TSNBobMcKenzie (sorry for giving folks a heart attack with the title, i couldn't help myself!)

think he would be worth picking up? is he an upgrade on ledba/meech/janik?

i think it will be interesting to see what lines he plays on as people come back from injuries. i am not a big fan of the zetterberg-datsyuk-bertuzzi combo. however since bert had been gelling with datsyuk recently, that would require kicking zetterberg off the line. not really sure how i feel about that with the current roster. if bert could play well with filppula on the 2nd line that would be the best scenario IMO.

howard looked great. and helm hopefully taking another step forward from his early season lack of finish!

can i go bump the bertuzzi sucks thread? that turnover on the first goal was pretty brutal.

FWIW, the whole being a customer year thing is bubkus IMO. i called and threatened to leave less than 2 months after becoming a customer and they immediately gave me the free CI offer. a buddy of mine was also a new customer and got CI half off. i am not sure if they got wise to people using the excuse, but early on, they gave out the freebies to anyone and everyone. did you talk to the cancellation department? the key to getting the free stuff is to not waste time with the regular customer service reps. they can't give out much of anything. once you get the cancellation deptartment they have the authority to offer you great deals to get you to stay.

god this is annoying. we get it... he is playing well recently. you douchebags dont have to bump the thread every time... this thread was created back when bertuzzi was bad. he has had a great last 10 games, i don't think anyone denies that. but that doesn't erase the fact he was pretty brutal for the first couple months.

i mean this in the most heterosexual way possible.... i LOVE darren helm!

man jake ryan starts some awful threads...

wow, what an awful argument... ritola played 2 games in the spring of 2008. at the time he turned 21 the day before the first game. he played a grand total of 11 minutes and 33 seconds... at the time he had approximately 50 pro games under his belt. contrast that with newbury this year. he has 50 nhl games, is in his 7th pro season, and has hundreds of ahl games under his belt. he has gotten at least 7 and a half minutes in every game he has been in this year. tell me again how it is at all fair to compare the 2 short callups these two have had??? if you need a definition of an apples to oranges comparison, this is it. as has been mentioned before, its about the future. newbury has pretty much become an ahl player with only limited callup potential. ritola is still a young player that has not even gotten the chance to prove himself in the nhl.

i think its a matter of the future. newbury is an older player. you know what you are going to get. he has had several callups over the last few years and is a known quantity. whereas ritola is younger and still unknown in regards to nhl play. as we have seen with many guys this year, at some point you have to put them in the deep end to sink or swim. ritola is a prospect that the wings have invested resources into. whereas newbury is turning into a journeyman ahl'er that might not have any long term future in the organization. so while i think they will still very much factor in this seasons play, i think the long term effects weigh more heavily in this instance.

this topic is dumb. but i will play along: brad may

it has been explained many, many times already in this thread. if you still can't read, its not my job to explain it to you...

i think the big thing is bringing in may and miller. had they not brought them in, thats 2 additonal callups that would have been needed.

we get it, he's had a good 10 games. but the point of this thread was that for the first 30 he was pretty brutal. for all the whining that goes on about how absurd this thread is, there are 10 times more posts when he has 1 good game than when he had 10 bad ones.

i would like to touch on something that was brought up before the lidstrom debate. everyone comes in here and bashes the thread and the bertuzzi critics as totally wrong every time bert gets a point. but just because he is playing well right now, doesn't mean the thread wasn't justified, nor that overall for the season that he will end up as a productive player. bertuzzi has 9 points in his last 10 games; a great stretch. and even i think he has looked a lot better. he obviously still isn't going to win a selke for defensive play, but at least he has improved. however, it took him 24 games to get his first 9 points. and during many of those games he looked genuinely disinterested in defensive or neutral zone play. i think the big thing that can frustrate people when watching bertuzzi is just how streaky he is. last year with calgary he got 5 goals in the first 5 games and fans warmed up to him. but he really went cold down the stretch with only 2 points in the last 13 games. and when he goes cold offensively, it seems as if he doesn't try near as hard. i am not sure which is actually the cause, but to me there seems to be a correlation.