dobbles

i have no problem with sean avery, and despite the general hatred for him, the reason he isn't playing already is the awful contract dallas gave him. sure he runs his mouth and can be a distraction, but at a reasonable price theres nothing wrong with that. its just no one wants that huge salary for the next few years. they can probably get someone to take him on re-entry wavers or trade him if they agree to pay half his salary.

just got back from the game. was the typical QC game. we get tons of shots, but not a lot of good scoring chances. we give up a small number of shots but get bad goaltending and end up losing. really the only guys i was keeping a close eye on were kindl and abdelkader. abdelkader took a fairly rough hit along the boards by carsen germyn. he actually looked good in the defensive zone. i sit in the corner on the glass at the end GR only shoots at once, so i got to see less of him in the offensive end. kindl looked solid, but nothing stuck out either way. howard looked strong. last year he got shelled both games in QC and larsson played the previous one this year, so its the first time i have seen him play well. i was sad to miss out on leino, ritiola, ericsson, and helm, but thats life i guess. wish there were more people to report on. downey looked ok. he played a lot with abdelkader.

aussie - i notice you do a link to the box score. here is the actual link to it: http://stats.theahl.com/stats/official-gam...game_id=1005479 you can manually edit the game ID to find future games. makes it a little easier for people to get there. thought i would let you know!

hey guys, i don't post here a lot, but am a QC season ticket holder. i always love when GR comes to town. i will try my best to give some opinions of the game and if i get any good pictures will post them. i did want to post this though. for a couple other message boards i am on, i create a GDT with lots of stats. since its GR today, thought i would post it here for you as well.

i am from a blue collar town in illinois and i love the fact that the wings don't have fights that often. i am glad we don't carry a fighter/goon. so there are fans out here like me that are fine with the fighting thing and you can't dismiss me as from quebec or sweden. i unfortunately don't get to watch on tv or go to games as i live pretty far from detroit. i watch the games online through atdhe. if i was closer i would do my part to support the team. my personal thoughts on why ratings are down? complacency. the wings have been good for so long its just not a good story. there's nothing exciting about watching the wings beat down the predators or blue jackets. someone mentioned rivalry which is a big thing. hopefully chicago will become a good one. the problem with rivalries is it has to be 2 sided. so as wings fans we don't consider people rivalries because we generally always win. to columbus or nashville fans, playing the wings is a big deal, but to us, its just another easy division game. heck, look at all the success chicago is having. the reason everyone is watching is because its exciting. their team has been awful for a decade. so this is something they haven't seen in a while. hockey isn't popular enough in most american markets to have success no matter what. if the team sucks for a while, fans will give up. its not like the chicago cubs where people support the team regardless.

personally, i think the lack of quality goaltending this year leaves it open to criticism. sure we are winning games, but the goals allowed are awfully high. though it seems silly ot me to even talk about edmonton. they are looking to unload a goalie, not trade for another one. the only way that would ever work out is if there was a 3rd team willing to take a goalie and give a skater. thats just too much of a stretch to seem feasible. sure, calling up howard might ruffle some feathers, but he hasn't exactly been great either this year. its currently a problem, but there's no easy solution, so lets just let this play out and hopefully things will improve sooner rather than later. and on a personal preference, i would take a 5-4 game over a 2-1 game any day of the week. i still think this league needs significantly more offense.

adthe.net has worked great for me these last few weeks. though tonight is the first night i have experienced lag issues. so i went ahead and switched to the yahoo stream. been having real good luck with streams so far this year. don't have to download sopcast or any of that crud.

i would advise against ever trying this... as a season ticket holder for an ahl team, i know lots of folks that have tried to watch the qc away games via this service. most of them are unable to actually watch the games due to the awful service. they are never able to get their 6 bucks back either. they have proven to be a very very unreliable service. its only 6 bucks, but from everyone i have talked to, its just throwing money away...

don't have my pics uploaded yet, but my general thoughts after the game: larsson looked pretty good. howard got lit up here last year a couple times, so it was nice to see larsson do well. abdelkader looked good from what i saw. moved around very well and was always in good position for offense. i didn't notice anything great from the blueline. was really excited to see kindl and ericsson, but saw nothing of note. lots of other great forward play. i noticed that the team would enter the zone with lots of speed, which caused the defense to play back some, and then get nice wristers off. it seemed to be a good strategy for generating chances. helm i thought looked good though i didn't notice leino out there much. the flames have had an awful PP, and a decent PK, so i am not surprised that there were no special teams goals. the grifs moved the puck on the PP pretty decent.

hey everyone, no game day thread for tonight yet. wanted to post here.... i am a season ticket holder in qc. front row seats in the corner by the griffins entrance. i am going to try and take some pictures and will definitely let you guys know how the game looks.

i think this is overreaction just like with downey going down. the niec thing about mccarty is that no one is going to claim him. they can send him down, and if there's injuries during the season, call him back up. personally, i would rather see downey before mccarty, but rosters are fluid throughout the year. mccarty isn't worthless, and the team isn't going to fall apart and get beat up without him in detroit. remember folks, its not all black and white, there's shades of grey.

maybe their never ending coverage of poker? (which is entertaining, but not a sport) maybe when they are showing all those dumb movies they made. maybe when instead of showing actual live sports, they instead show has been athletes talking about sports. i guess they have an advantage that they do sports related programming, but they still do MUCH less actual sports than they used to. i remember when they used to have several games of mlb on a week and several hockey games on espn2. now we get 1 baseball game a week, 1 football game a week, and an overload of college basketball when winter comes...

maybe if you weren't always being an asshat people wouldn't always be getting on youtr case? the dude makes up some silly line combos for fun, and you insult him like he doesn't know basic geography. whats next, are you going to inform us that detroit is in michigan???

guys, we will still get just as many commercials... the nhl isn't going to start giving away revenue or anything... i think the main place we will notice a difference will be offsides calls. seems like offsides often don't spawn commercial breaks. but with icing out of the picture, i bet more of those will be the spot they take the break.

as has been mentioned, the title of this article is really dumb. it has nothing to do with the western conference elites such as detroit, dallas, or san jose. rather it just talks about who might sneak into the playoffs and quickly exit. personally, i think the blackhawks are really the only of the 3 with a decent chance of making it. edmonton got a ton of their points off of shootouts, and winning that many will be hard to replicate. additionally, they had lots of young players and its just not realistic to expect all of them to contribute the same level. the coyotes will be better, but i see them a year away from the playoffs. the interesting part will be if the hawks are better, can nashville still squeak in? i think minnesota will still make it as they always find a way to win without a roster that looks like it can. so i think either the hawks and preds will swap, or the hawks will push out the avalanche and the central will have 3 teams in the playoffs.

as someone who often rails against fighters in general, i do once again want to say how much i like downey as well. i really hope he has worked on being a better player. thats always been my personal objection, when teams have guys that can only fight. but if we can have both he and mccarty as players that can be the tough presence, but also still at least keep you honest on the ice with their skills, thats just another great dimension the team will have this year. downey is definitely a good guy to have around.

yeah, i wonder what the time of the game was? because every goal adds to it. thats at least 82 stoppages they had to endure.

it probably doesn't matter as the tickets all get bought up instantly and you have to pay about 700% markup on stubhub... if i am going to shell out big bucks for tickets, i would at least prefer my money go to the team so they can imrpove players and/or facilities. instead all the money goes to these glorified scalpers.

i just want to know where the sportsmanship was? i wouldn't even think it would be fun after a while. whats the point of embarrassing an obviously inferior opponent? not even a whole lot that can be gained by playing a team so over matched. probably learn more in practice.

he said IF they aren't cutting it he thinks that maybe sammy would get moved because lilja would be too valuable... he never said he did or didn't think they would. it was a hypothetical situation...

i think thats the important thing to remember and i know i personally forget that sometimes. the thing that bothers me though is that howard has plenty of ahl experience now. i really wonder if another year down there benefits him that much?

no disrespect to chelios, but this whole 'we need to keep him around for leadership' is really overrated. you have a 15 year veteran back there in lidstrom who has been the best dman in the league for a decade. i think the leadership angle is covered. its a team of veterans, i really think leadership is the least of their worries. a lot of people need to really go back and look at chelios's play. he's slowing down each year. but i guess if you guys think its better wait till he really is awful out there to make a move, then so be it.

i don't mind this too much. i hate all the scalping that goes on through places like stub hub. if i am going to pay $200 bucks for a ticket, it might as well go to the team. instead the team gets $30 and some company gets $170. so then the team still doesn't even that much money off of me.

though i am not one of those people you speak of, i think that perhaps adding stuart into the equation certainly changes the dynamic. he slots everyone down and makes it harder the keep cheli. additionally, i think there was a lot of positives in the young guys play when we had all those injuries. helped show that these young guys can play at a similar level as cheli/lebda/lilja.

though osgod already replied, its because he isn't right now better than osgood or hasek was. though personally, i think he would be better served as primary backup this year, which i doubt will happen with conklin. but every goalie has to start somewhere. few and far between ar the guys that can get called up and instantly be a #1. that doesn't mean he doesn't have talent or that he won't have a great career. but in order for that to happen, or even for it to proven otherwise, he needs to actually play.