dobbles

what ever happened to everyone saying the west was super tough and the east was the skill conference???? outside of boston, who does everyone anticipate being so hard to play against???

i think this is an upgrade for detroit. they get weiss for slightyl less than what flip ended up getting, and weiss has been a slightly better scorer over his career (.52ppg vs .6ppg) which will be an upgrade. and of course the anecdotal evidence would say that weiss will be much better at scoring playing with the top 6 detroit has when you are out there with 13 and 40 creating space. weiss is only 1 year older so not a huge deal.

i think you guys are looking at it all wrong. its not an issue of supply and demand. its an issue of cap circumvention. GM's still are not held accountable for bad contracts. sign a bad contract? bury it in the minors, loan the player to europe, amnesty buyout, regular buyout,place on LTIR for multipler years, etc etc... or even structure the contract to take advantage of the cap rules. now, many of those things were taken care of in the new CBA. so maybe it will get better. but huge contracts to overrated free agents will immediately end once teams like NYR, PHI, TOR, and MTL don't have the cap room to offer insanely stupid contracts. but since players like redden, pronger, huet, and many others can get off the cap, free agency will continue to be stupid crazy.

love that trade.lose out on the possibility of 2 players and pick up a top 60 pick. good asset management.

he had a great series against us, but he is definitely not someone i would put as a high value target. he is a depth guy. the wings need a legit top 6 guy.

i still wouldnt mind ryder. i actually really wanted him 2 years ago. he scored 51 goals in the last 2 seasons with a cap hit of 3.5. thats not too shabby. he also stays healthy having played at least 70 games every year since he got in the league. i was a bigger fan 2 years ago when he was 2 years younger. but could still be a quality complimentary player for the top 6. but with all the guys we have under contract and all the young guys we need to cycle in, its probably not worth it.

i disagree. at the start of the playoffs the 4th line was worthless and was allowing anaheims 4th line to create all sorts of momentum and energy when they were out there. once miller got back, the 4th line was much better and helped give us momentum when out there instead of taking it away. sure, championships arent won by 4th lines, but having one that is able to contribute is a huge bonus. i think miller is the perfect fit for that role and has even shown the ability in the past to step up a line or two when injuries occur.

thats just not true. he has 4 playoff shutouts to lead the league. he has been the reason they won many of their games. he is 5th in save percentage and goals against. (and 3 of the 4 guys ahead of him have less than 5 games played. awfully small sample size) and yes i do watch the games including getting to see game 4 in the okc series in person. mrazek shouldnt be in the nhl next year because it would do him no good to hold the clipboard most games. but he has shown every indication in the ahl that he can be a good nhl goalie.

i have been crazy busy, but i havent forgot! i still have my thoughts on the players as well.

Sorry if this is deemed to be the wrong place for this, but wanted to ask. With the Griffins still in the AHL playoffs, who can we send down to bolster the roster? I recall that we wasted all of our post deadline roster transactions on a few players so that they would be eligible for the AHL playoffs. Am I wrong in how I am remembering things?

get to see game 4 instead of game 5 now... debating heading back down tomorrow for game 5 as well. hoping we can get around ok in OKC with all the damage. i will try to get some pics with my crappy digital camera and let everyone know how the boys look.

disagree 100%. the team in front of crawford is better. the number of quality chances that howard faced was insanely higher than crawford. if the hawks had someone turning it over as much as smith, we would have destroyed them.

planning on going to game 5. hope they can get things going now that the wings are done!

maybe its because statistics indicate an overwhelming majority of teams that score first in game 7 go on to win? and shouldnt you have something better to do than critique the way others post? go play outside or something :-P

I am a big fan of tootoo and didn't like seeing him sit in the first round while the 4th line was getting outplayed by a mile. however, since miller came back a couple games ago, i think the 4th line has looked solid. i wouldn't mess with it right now. it went from being a liability in the first round to being a contributor in the last couple games. if theres injuries or someone has to move up a line, i would love to see tootoo back in, especially before bert or sammy, but unless the line goes super cold in the next couple games, i think hes s.o.l.

and thats exactly why i am on the fence personally. when i think about the number of times a game a team ices the puck intentionally just to relieve the pressure, it seems like its only a few times. so im not sure it would incite an epidemic of puck over glass incidents. i just hate when the argument centers around the 'i didn't do it on purpose' angle. and thats all pierre ever talks about on those national broadcasts. and it negatively influences the ability to have a legit discussion on the issue.

i saw a good post in a gdt thread on this topic the other day, and it was replying to pierre whining about this issue. pierre said its a stupid rule because no one ever intentionally clears it over the glass anymore and the post replied that the reason no one intentionally does it now is because of the rule. im not crazy about the penalty myself, but the constant whining about how its just an accident when it happens is total b.s. most penalties are accidents. when do you see someone purposely high stick someone in the face for a 4 minute penalty? its always a missed stick lift or something that causes a high stick;an accident. same with slashing. like a player goes in and says to himself 'im going to break this guys stick in half and take a penalty'... once again, the player is attempting a clean play and through bad luck, a penalty occurs. most penalties are accidental. players dont go around trying to put their team shorthanded. these rules are there to keep players responsible for their actions on the ice. just as its the players responsibility to keep his elbows down when hitting, just as its a players responsibility to keep his stick down, its also a players responsibility not to clear the puck out of play. is that too much to ask?

well thats kind of the point of a discussion board isnt it???

this thread has now killed any legitimate attempt for rational fans to be displeased with smiths poor play. roughly everyone that has been on smiths case lately does NOT want him traded. most people just want him sat so he can learn a lesson and stop hurting the team with boneheaded plays. however, now everyone on the smith bandwagon will instantly turn to this thread and make the generalization that anyone that critiques smith is a moron. let me say this though, he made at least half a dozen mistakes in these first 2 games that are worthy of a weeks worth of bag skates. scoring a goal from 10 feet away into a wide open net thanks to the strong play of linemates does NOT redeem someone from all those mistakes. additionally, smith has been bad in his own end all year . many of you keep saying how absurd it is to rag on smith because hes a rookie. however you are all just as guilty of lumping anyone that is down on smith as the irrational reactionary type of fan when many of us have legitimate gripes about his play.

seeing the word redemption so many times after that 2nd goal makes me want to throw up a little. i am eternally grateful that smith put that goal in, but he had a wide open net to shoot at and it was zetterberg that made the play and filppula driving the net taking the attention that allowed it to happen. smith was in the right place at the right time, that doesn't make up for the many boneheaded plays he has made in the last 2 games. he needs to be out there generating chances before his negatives can be overlooked. on a related note, many keep whining that cleary gets hated on but filppula doesnt. the reason is that while neither have been particularly successful in the playoffs, cleary actively ruins plays while flip ends up doing his job. neither are making things happen, but cleary actually stops things from happening many times. cleary ends up getting points when others do the hard work, so the numbers show that cleart isnt as terrible as his play indicates.

its so frustrating that this team has battled so hard to get this far and with a few tweaks could be so much better. smith does not deserve to see the ice the rest of the playoffs. he has to be held accountable for his very poor play. and cleary continues to be deadweight on the top 6. put bertuzzi, miller, eaves, or anyone in that spot and then fill out the 4th line accordingly.

i would rather see ian white than smith at this point. he was mediocre defensively all year, but has been particularly bad in the playoffs.

reason #284752 i know i am a bad person... the minute cleary went down i instantly hoped it was something to keep him out the rest of the playoffs...

i also feel tootoo should be in. especially with abby out, we need a physical player. would have been a nice 2 game stretch to have him in there. i think bert slots in better than sammy on the first line and then you sit sammy and reconfigure the bottom 6 to accommodate both eaves and tootoo.

while this is totally tangential to the actual conversation, in their primes, both sets of players were top 10 talents. obviously the wings haven't had as much success with cups lately, but i dont think that can be attributed to 13 and 40. i think the big difference is just the eras they played in. stevie and sergei put up super pimp numbers because goal scoring was much more common back then. on topic, i just remember back to a time when fans were lamenting that the wings had no young players to replace yzerman, federov, shanahan, etc. and then low and behold we managed to keep scoring goals without having to overpay for top end forwards. i genuinely feel some of our young players have the ability to make it happen again. i also think there is a ton of reason to be excited about our defensive prospects.