dobbles

what a dumb post. contributes nothing to the thread... on topic - having seen a lot of ahl hockey the last few years, both rinne and pavelec have bright futures. while neither is old enough to have established himself as a legit #1, there was also a time when the 3rd guy on the list (kipper) was just a 3rd stringer languishing in the san jose system. i honestly love when people have no idea who a player is so they instantly assume they suck.

i think we need to be a little more honest with ourselves here guys... this "he might have slightly left his feet this one time when he accidentally hit someone slightly too hard" stuff is not being honest. while i don't think he is a dirty player by any means, he has left his feet to hit several times. a couple of them may have even merited short suspensions. honestly, its things like that that cause fans of pretty much every other team to think that the wings get favorable calls. however, i think there is a big difference between kronwalls hits and what laraque did. with hitting, things happen so fast, that often you catch a guy the wrong way and a clean hit becomes a penalized hit in milliseconds. however, what laraque did is dirty no matter how you slice it.

as someone that could care less of the moore incident, i can still say i hate bertuzzi. mostly because he is a bad hockey player. his lazy defensive play, stupid back passes for turnovers, and lack of finish all combine to put him in my dog house. i was not a big fan of the deadline deal that brought him here the first time, but i really think bringing him back was a terrible decision. there were other options out there at the time. just for example afinogenov was available. while i am not saying he was the best signing, too many people cop out behind the "he was the only player available for 1.5 million" crap. there are lots of guys on this team that make as little as bertuzzi and they aren't out ther constantly fumbling the puck and ruining scoring chances. i think i would rather see maltby playing with datsyuk at this point...

todd bertuzzi is awful.

chunky, i would argue that lots of people literally can't watch hockey because of the limits of satellite. lots of people in large cities cannot have directv or dish because they have no access to the satellite thanks to the obstructions. it is a pretty widespread problem for a lot of people. so without access to satellite, many folks are literally unable to watch most hockey coverage. many cable operators in the u.s. don't offer center ice at all. many don't offer the nhl network at all. some offer versus, but many put it in obscure packages that cost quite a bit more. so what are those people to do? the point of this thread isn't that you need to take some absolutist moral high road about how evil people are that watch streams, its about the fact that the nhl does a terribly piss poor job at providing folks an avenue to watch hockey via tv and internet. obviously, the nhl isn't popular enough to garner as much network broadcast coverage, but they make it hard even for folks with a semi decent cable or satellite package to see games. everyone on this message board loves hockey, so many of us are willing to shell out lots of money to make sure we can see games. but the nhl needs to grow as a sport, and making itself incredibly complicated to watch is not the way to do that. sure you can pick on some people in the thread and say its their choice not to spend hundreds of dollars a season to watch games, but its not really productive. redwingmachine - pretty much everyone around here is familiar with hockeystreams, there is quite a long thread about it around here somewhere.

while the hawks did dangle khabibulin on waivers he never played a game in rockford. as a matter of fact i don't think he was ever actually assigned to rockford. he was just waived so that he was eligible, but the trigger was never pulled. there is a big difference between that situation, and hiding a contract in the minors for an entire year. doing that to huet would put them at a competitive disadvantage for free agents for many years to come.

you don't own this board either, so either put up with her posts or shut up. you're being a total hypocrite.

oh shut up. if you don't like her telling people how to act, why are you telling her how to act? pot meet kettle; you're both black.

the funniest part? fans of every other team think that refs/league favor the wings. yet then you have wings fans whining about everything going against them. funny how perspective changes things... personally, i feel the refs in the league are HORRIBLE. however, they are horrible all around. its not as if they are particularly more horrible depending on teams; it just takes a while for the randomness of their bad calls to make it around to all the teams.

i hate todd bertuzzi. could any player be more lazy?

that is an AWFUL call. those refs deserve to be fired. if i was that bad at my job i would be unemployed by the end of the week.

i agree that if the nhl would be more flexible with what they offer, they could get more customers. i think they need to be mindful of their price of center ice with the bad economy; i think they should offer team specific plans for folks that are interested; and i think they need to expand what they do online. with the nhl still having a small market share, i think it pays them more dividends to lower their prices in an attempt to get more viewers.

the wings have ericsson, helm, abdelkader, howard, and leino that moved up from grand rapids to detroit in the last 12 months. what more do you want from them? i am not a regular here by any means, but damn you are such a troll.

but when is this going to ever change? he has been hitting posts and just missing pretty much since day 1 of the season. we are now a quarter of the way through the season and still waiting. as i have mentioned before, calgary fans are still waiting to see him get into a groove from last year. sure the guy can put up an average amount of points. sure he isn't making too much relevant to the cap. but that doesn't change the fact that he is just not a very good player. as noted before, robert lang was a very similar player and was pretty much universally hated. with all the injuries guys need to step it up. that doesn't mean hitting 4 posts a night instead of 2. that means actually finishing some plays and not turning the puck over so darn much. there are 2 phrases i have heard way too much this year concerning bertuzzi: "wow what a horrible turnover on that back pass, he needs to just get it deep" and "he held that puck way too long, he has to make a pass/decision quicker"

sweden?

there's the key. though i do think holmstrom has upped his level of play a ton compared to the last couple years. instead of just being a role player like he was for years, he is actually the one generating some good chances and goals. i still think bertuzzi is a bum. that was great when he couldn't even put in those open net chances last night. if you look at his last 100 games, all those posts and near misses aren't indicative of him breaking out, they are indicative of a guy that just doesn't have a very good skill set anymore. as someone mentioned, wouldn't it be nice to have franzen there who could actually finish once in a while?

if you take out the crappy sweden games, the wings have been 8-3-3 since. that record isn't too shabby. and if they kept that up for the rest of the year would still end with 108 or 109 points. also the team managed to score 9 goals last night without filppula, franzen, and williams! for all the whining people did about losing hossa, hudler, and sammy, the wings have still managed to score pretty well. thanks to last nights outburst, the wings are back up to 7th in the leagues in goals/game. also, as i mentioned, even with the sweden games in there, the wings are 12th in the league in points/game. so the situation IMO opinion is not that dire. if anything, we just need to continue to get our defensive game together. i think we are around 21st in goals allowed per game. thats just not going to cut it long term with all of our injuries.

my recollection was that it would increase the effectiveness of dumping the puck in as golaies couldn't go play the puck and ruin offensive opportunities. it means forwards only have to beat defenders and not the goalie too if they dump into the corner.

i have directv and was able to watch last nights FSN-D feed in HD. though i did notice with a game last week it was listed as being HD but was very much a sd feed. i never seem to get any HD for canadian games. not sure why.

i gotta agree with detroit #1 fan, who is going to put a claim on janik? though teams might have injuries, i am sure most all of them have guys they would rather bring up than bring in a guy that looks to be turning into a career minor leaguer. re-entry waivers are always nice as then you get out of half the salary, but i still doubt he would attract much attention there. as mentioned, the emergency callup rules negate and waiver worries this week, but i think they could send him through waivers with no worries as the season goes on.

todd bertuzzi sucks.

in all fairness, calgary has not been struggling to score goals. the game before they played us they were limited to 2 by colorado, but in the 3 before that they scored 16 goals. i think before they played us, they were still at the top of the league for goals per game. i do agree that boston has had trouble scoring with all their injuries and such.

dear Jim Morrison, go back to the box you crawled out from under! (was that racist too?)

hahahahaha! fwiw, i do grow a pretty awful beard! i love the wings. i just think bertuzzi was a bad signing. with all the injuries we've had, its great to have an extra body, but i would have preferred keeping a lot for younger players and/or getting 1 player of higher caliber instead of both williams and bertuzzi. the hudler thing kinda messed up the offseason, i just recall there being other guys out there i would have preferred over bert. and would like to note, i actually support him in regards to the moore incident. just think hes a shell of his former self.

say what you want about plus minus being a misleading fact, but the fact remains that he is last on the team in that stat. sure its a small sample size, so lets look at last year... last year, he was worst on the flames in that stat as well. what it tells me is that he must not be too good in his zone to end up a minus all the time. sure players are always victim to someones elses bad plays, but that generally averages itself over time. please, go ask a calgary fan if they want him back or think he was a good player for them. sure he might put up 40ish points, but many players have been hated while producing at that level. think about guys like lang. thats why i thought that old thread was so apt. right now bertuzzi is the 6th ranked forward for scoring. while thats not bad, he's also 7th in atoi just behind williams. so he isn't exactly excelling over the chances he has been given. additionally, 2 of his 5 points are on the PP. getting PP time is always a way to boost your stats compared to others. anywho, bertuzzi still sucks in my book. having watched him play quite a bit over the last 2 years, i think the bad outweighs the good in his case. edit: for those that think he will snap out of his snafu with hitting posts and such, calgary waited 82 games last year for him to snap out of it.