dobbles

thank you for saying that. as a mathemitician the logic of this thread made me puke in my mouth a little bit!

oh, thats an even better response. since we aren't hockey GM's we can't argue with holland... nice one! guess that elimiates like 97% of the posts on here. no more complaining about williams. no more complaining about maltby. no more complaining about the wings not having a fighter. ITS ALL OK FOLKS!!! according to mors, we don't argue with what holland does! might as well shut down lgw from june till october then.... as for it being a pointless argument, i actually pointed out several reasons i think bertuzzi is a bad signing. but i just happened to be agreeing with the gentleman that said his +/- was awful. since you so stunningly had no counter argument i felt the need to interject and show support. now if you want to debate whether or not bertuzzi is a bad signing because he is a gigantic definsive liability, be my guest. but quit being a putz and turning it into 'well draper sucks too' or 'holland makes no bad decisions ever' type threads.

wow way to keep deflecting the real topic. if you feel like draper sucks and his +/- is an indicator he should be off the team, then do it. but quit trying to make it your lame assed straw man argument for bertuzzi. all you strokes ask for reasons why people don't like bertuzzi, then people give you reasons and you just start being trolls about it.

well since i was a season ticket holder for the QC flames last year, i closely followed Calgary to watch our former players up there. and in that time, i don't think i talked with 1 Flames fan that liked Bertuzzi. he was infamous for his back passes that led to turnovers. he was infamous for his lack of effort. he was infamous for his stupid penalties; his lazy defensive play; his lack of chemistry with anyone on the roster. shall i go on? and just to be on the record, the moore incident has NOTHING to do with my opinion. i actually think he got a raw deal out of all that. but thats not for this thread. i did want to say that my opinion wasn't some tarnished one because i am steve moore's 3rd cousin and will forever hate bertuzzi or something. i think this team would be better served by keeping his roster spot open for young players. i think the team would be better served by keeping more cap space available. p.s. he may be big and beefy, but hasn't been physical for a while now. he can't have a physcial presence because every time he touches someone he ends up in the box. also, i don't like this move because i don't think he fit very well here the 1st time. it was a limited amount of games, so thats why that reasoning is down here at the end. but i think its a factor as well.

this is an AWFUL signing. way worse than williams. bertuzzi is just bad. so much for young players getting to finally join the team... lets keep signing these washed up losers... who's next? lang? calder?

whether or not detroit is hockeytown may be different depending on who you ask, it really baffles me when people try to use the red wings on ice success as justification. i much prefer someone like echolalia who can give reasoning. to me its not about how many cups the wings have won. its about fan passion and support. in a baseball example, i would argue the chicago cubs are more of 'baseballtown' than the yankees. sure the yankees are hands down the most successful team on the field, but the cubs have a fan support across the country seconded by no one. the cubs also have a strong element i feel is crucial: supportig the team when they suck. thats why places like chicago and pittsburgh will not be able to be in the hockeytown discussion anytime soon. because just a few years ago no one cared about either team. on a personal note, i have always liked to tell people that the reason i got into hockey was because of nhl 94 on sega. my favorite team was the red wings, so i stuck with them in real life. i have become a passionate fan over the years despite not being able to go to a game in person. as people have mentioned, the nationwide fan base goes a long way to show that the wings are a very popular team, but i don't know if that really helps make detroit, or michigan in general, hockeytown. then again my city couldn't keep our ahl team since all our stupid fans just want to see fights. so now we get the goonishness of the ihl... fun! /rant

i disagree with that. as a fan, i am happy if we win 6 playoff games. that is a successful season to me. that means we made it out of the first round and didn't get swept/embarrased in the second round. i am not selfish, i know we won't win the cup every year. obviously i would love it if we did, but i don't expect it. i do agree the players and organization need to always want to win the cup, or else what are they doing out there? but as a fan that has little to no impact on how the team performs, i find it works much better with realistic expectations.

i personally am hoping that maltby and holmstrom are done after this year. or at least they don't re-sign with the wings. i love then for what they have done for this team, but feel their time has come. though draper is also becoming a shadow of his former self, i feel he still has some to offer; i think he plays another year to finish out his contract. personally, i wonder what lidstrom will do. obviously we don't know him personally, but i get the feeling he could retire and walk away and go home to sweden after this year and be entirely happy. but for the teams sake, i hope he is willing to take a salary reduction and remain with the team for a couple more years. obviously when his decision is made next summer he will have an addiitonal season to judge how he feels, but i think right now he could stay 2 more years after this upcoming season and still be a very good defenseman.

i think the biggest difference was earlier round opponents. in the 08 run, the wings got the avalanche that forgot to show up to the 2nd round. they got a pretty easy series that allowed them to rest up and stay healthy. this year, the penguins got the hurricanes who totally ran out of gas after game 7 against the bruins. while we had a relatively easy opponent in the conf finals, i think the penguins ability to pretty much coast through that 3rd round helped give them the edge needed to win. the sad thing is that we are tied with pit. for most playoff wins in the last 2 seasons with 31... yet people are acting like we are the coyotes or something...

this is not a rebuilding year. the player hardest to replace is hossa. yet we won the cup in 08 without him! hudler did put up a lot of points last year, but i think a guy like leino can start to fill his role. and i think eaves and williams are upgrades over kopecky and sammy. so while it hurts to lose hossa, this is still a team that is very comparable to 07-08 when we won the cup. you can't keep the same roster forever, you have to have young guys fill in eventually. i actually think the injuries in the playoffs this year helped get guys like helm and ericsson the nhl experience to hit the ground running this year and not be typical rookies. obviously howard is the unknown. hopefully he can get more playing time up here and play better than he has in the past.

i agree about maltby. i think most everyone realizes his time is almost up. i personally was still neutral last year, but had really hoped he would retire this summer. for what he brings to the table now, i would have preferred to give his spot to a youngster. now, with losing 4 forwards from last year, that makes it a bit easier to keep him. i am not a big advocate of trying to solve a teams problem through free agency, and there are only so many people to promote from GR. i do disagree that datsyuk and zetterberg on the PK is a bad thing. they are there because both are great defensive forwards. now this past year, it is hard to say anyone was really that great on the PK, but i still think Z & D are both real good at the pk. it doesn't mean guys like draper and maltby are necessarily bad though. i don't see it as a cause adn effect relationship myself.

so i guess we need to dump those worthless hacks like zetterberg and datyuk since they played a lot on the PK as well...

if he's in grand rapids, he's not eating up any cap space...

but the sharks had shelley. so even though they had a fighter/tough guy/goon it didn't stop this from happening. and personally i think thats one of the big misconceptions about having a fighter. i think idiot players that take chap shots are going to do it regardless. it doesn't matter if the other team has a fighter. because most of the people that take cheap shots are going to turtle away from fights anyways. so why would someone need to be scared of downey/godard/shelley? its not like kronwall or stuart are afraid to go for big hits because the wings don't have an enforcer to protect them.

well played sir!

So, I am thinking of switching to satellite from cable. And I have a question about getting the addon of all the FSN channels. I live in Illinois and only get to watch the Wings on TV if its on Versus or NBC. While I could get Center Ice on the satellite I was wondering if I could just get the FSN package and watch all the games that way? I wasn't sure if they would be blacked out though since I am not a local market? Is anyone familiar with how that works? Having always had cable, I have never really had that option. Thanks in advance for any information!

thanks for the responses guys. i kind of figured that was the case.

having seen howard and larsson play in QC these last few years i have at least gotten to see them live a few times. howard has had some bad luck in QC and got lit up a couple times. i still think he has the ability to be a solid nhl'er. the thing about larsson is he seemed much more flashey. would make saves he seemed to have no business making. howard seemed like a much more percentage based goalie. unfortunately i won't get to see anyone play this year since our team folded...

i am doing something i hate and repying without reading all of the comments on this thread. but its friday and i want to be lazy. i think this loyalty concept has very little to do with our current problems. sure i think maltby has become a shell of his former self. but think about how little he makes. if he suddenly retires, that frees up 600k, but that money has to be reused to fill his roster spot. even if you get a minimum contract you are saving what? 150k? same with draper. while he makes a little more, its not like his salary is an albatross. for what he can bring to the table with faceoffs and leadership, you are hard pressed to replace his value to the team and save much money. even if you felt that a minimum contract player you still aren't saving much more than 500k. holmstrom is a bit of a different story. i don't see him as much as a loyalty issue, but someone that turned out to be a bad contract. i just don't think we saw things catching up so fast and turning him into a less useful player. additionally, i don't think people saw guys like franzen or even cleary to be able to be the same type of player homer is and making him more easily replaceable. every gm ends up giving out contracts that look bad in retrospect. its just now in the cap world, they are harder to swallow. but i really don't see any of these contracts as problems because of loyalty. and certainly they aren't the reason that we have cap problems. the reason we have cap problems is because we have so many great players with big contracts. lidstrom, rafalski, zetterberg, datsyuk, franzen. the thing about the cap is that every team runs out fo space for good players. getting hometown discounts helps. but we can't expect to keep everyone these days. saving a couple hundred thousand by dumping these veterans for rookies wouldn't have saved enough money to really keep any of the players we lost. and arguably could have hurt the team just as much or more than losing who we did.

it seems the biggest thorn in your side seems to be about losing hossa. but you do remember when we won the cup without him last year right? so if you take that out of the equation, we have essentially lost kopecky and samuelson from that team. kopecky is totally replaceable, and if the wings aren't able to replace a player like samuelson with a guy from the farm, then how is this team supposed to keep being successful? you simultaneously criticize the team for having old useless players AND criticize the young players as inadequate. the team can't be built entirely from FA signings... i will say i agree the older guys are really starting to be a hindrance to the team. but with maltby and draper, its still hard to find players that can contribute more and make so little money.

we had also won the stanley cup 3 weeks earlier... i would say thats what caused us to be a contender again this year, not the addition of hossa.

i agree that reffing gets blamed way too much. the main reason i think its funny about the reaction of this board about how the nhl wants the wings to win is because most non wings fans think that the nhl favors the wings. so i find it hard to believe that either group knows what they are talking about. i myself am of the opinion that officiating is random. all teams get screwed at times and get lucky at times. with that all said, i think its a shame that the refs have taken a 'let them play' attitude. if the nhl wants its officiating to not look bush league, it has to once and for all decide that a penalty in early october is the same thing as a penalty in june. until that happens, officiating will continue to be a joke.

my favorite part of this is that this troll says he's been a fan since 79 but then in the post from letsgopens that was shown, he says he posted before going to school. so i am going to assume that he is indeed a junior high kid after all and is also a liar. that or maybe he is a bit behind and still in high school at age 40?

OP - sorry you got attacked dude. i have been victim of getting food thrown on me at ahl games but avoided fights as i am a pretty big dude. shoreline - you are an idiot. first off you condone a drunk pack of fans attacking people and vandalizing property. then you go on some holier than thou rant about california. just stfu dude.