dobbles

i am giving up my support of the red wings. i have lost all faith in ken holland. good night and good luck.

last game: 17:34 and 3:28 on the pp previous game: 17:33 and 2:35 on the pp (most pp time of all players) previous game: 17:53 and 3:14 on the pp we have been seeing a lot of dan cleary lately. over 17.5 minutes a night of him the last few games. that is was i was referencing. its not about being a meme or being funny. its about being frustrated with how bad our team is and how we keep playing %&*# players like cleary all the time.

to me what the performance of filppula and hudler shows is that they weren't necessarily the problem, the team is. whether thats babcock, holland, etc i dont necessarily care. all i can see is that we had players we had drafted and developed and we did not put them in a situation to succeed. sure they aren't winning any scoring titles, but they have both shown that they can put up points on their new teams. yet here we are with 2 of the best forwards of their generation and year after year we struggle to score goals. its frustrating to watch. but thank god we have danny cleary playing 18 minutes a night! i dont know what we would do without all his production!

i think cleary deserves to be suspended for a few games for sure. and that definitely makes me happy because we are better without him. i hope he gets a few games an the team plays well and babcock and holland finally see he is part of the problem not the solution. additionally, for all the talk about cleary being a character guy and a great locker room guy and a great veteran presence, i think its fitting he committed the douchiest act a wings player has committed in recent memory.

tv ratings are the driving force behind popularity. thats where the money is. i wouldn't say that the high attendance numbers are a bad thing, just not really important.

cleary led the team with 2:35 on the pp then again he now has 53 minutes of PP time this season with no points to show for it, so i guess its not surprising...

i went back and read the old posts on this thread, and i found it really funny that so many people wanted howard to start over quick this summer. now most people dont even want him starting for the wings. regarding ryan, i think it sucks as you can always use goal scorers. i have not seen pacioretty play much these last couple years, is he really worthy of making the team?

the problem is that they had yet another first round pick bust. trading him for some sort of asset is the quality move. thats not to say nemisz cant develop in another org an at least contribute on an nhl level, but right now he had very little value. heck, we picked mccollum 5 picks later in that draft. think he would get any legitimate value back in a 1 for 1 trade?

so we spend 3 minutes chasing our tails in our own zone, then we finally break into their zone and cleary draws a penalty?!?!?! way to go grandpa dan!

its not obvious he is peaking now. its obvious he is having an anomaly. and that next year he will be back to being the same player he has been every other year of his career. its funny how i provide actual data to back up my opinion and you just keep dismissing it. besides the only reason i even provided the data or linked to the article that said the same thing is that you erroneously tried to imply his age was where he should be peaking. steen is performing this year at a ppg more than 50% higher than any other season he has ever had. additionally his shooting percentage is twice his lifetime average. those sort of numbers are not sustainable over a large sample size. he is on a hot streak, plain and simple. if you sign players based on hot streaks then your team will never be any good as your money will be locked up in underperforming players. we cant predict the future. but what we can do is use the information we have to make the best possible decisions. when doing that you give yourself a good chance of being right most of the time. if you just blindly guess and are correct, thats called being lucky. using information to make informed decisions is called being smart.

it doesnt make a difference. i ran the numbers of the top 30 scorers since 2000. it includes young guys like crosby and ovechkin and some retired guys like sakic and kovalev. when you average the points they scored per season based on age, it peaks at age 27. steens contract will take him from age 30-32 roughly. if you look at the numbers for those ages, they are about 10% lower than the peak at age 30 and about 20% lower than the peak for age 32. so considering that steens peak performance was a 51 point season, then we can project that he will get 40-45 points each season. i will post a graph and numbers later. i wasted enough time compiling it all...

i disagree. holland goes out an gets a guy like tootoo and then babcock plays him 6 minutes a game. it is not holland that puts dan cleary out there shift after shift even though he brings very little to the table. it is not holland that mixes up lines all the time. now i'm not saying i think he should be fired. just that trying to displace blame onto holland is not accurate. i do think we are starting to see situations where babcock is not the most effective for us and it may be time to go a different direction in a year or two. its not that babcock is a bad coach, just maybe not the right coach for this team and organization.

thanks for making me google texas sharpshooter!

i disagree. that sort of play happens dozens of times every game. just normally the opposing player doesnt drop his stick. thats why it looked bad.

c'mon. he has a career best 51 points. thats not consistent 50-70 points.... and he is already at the age his point totals will decline on average. there are many articles that look at the subject, but i like this one from several years back: http://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog.php?post_id=8663 (emphasis added) overall its not a terrible jeff finger type contract. but i still feel its a bad value, and its the type of contract that will lead to more bad contracts. other players and agents will now use it as a comparable and that will push salaries up even more.

you do realize steen is 29 right? statistically speaking forwards score the most in their early 20's. stats wise he is similar to filppula. and i dont think anyone around here would have wanted flip for 5.8 a year.... just seems like a high cap hit for someone that has never had more than 51 points in a season...

its not about comparing the two as players. clarkson signed a contract coming off a career year he was unlikely to repeat. he got inflated value meaning the contract has a high probability of hurting the team. the steen contract appears to be the same scenario. we see it all the time with guys having big years before signing a contract. recognizing these scenarios and not overpaying is key to being a good gm and putting together a good team. buy low, sell high, right? with the new cba, max contract is 7 for FA and 8 for re-signing a player, correct? either way, 3 years is still very short compared to what we normally see. perhaps its the first sign that gm's are finally going to have to be smart now that the cba closed so many of the loopholes that allowed bad contracts to disappear?

i didnt keep up with the gdt but when i was watching i thought the penalty was overboard. 2 or 4 minutes would have been plenty sufficient. it was just bad luck with how getzlaf fell into the boards.

http://redwings.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=696294

i would love to see this team with more grit. guys that finish checks and play a harder style. thats why i think tootoo deserves to be on this roster. but unfortunately, all we get to talk about this year is how we need more fighters to protect our stars. i think dabura hit it on the head perfectly. having tough players on your team does NOT prevent cheap shots. it just gives fans some sense of payback to make us feel better. teams that play tough still get injured. teams that play tough still have dirty plays against. it sucks that datsyuk took that elbow from cowen, it really does. but would having mcgrattan on our team have stopped it? doubt it. it was an in the moment, stick out a body part to get a piece of a guy type move. heck, boston is the poster child for tough teams and yet neal did IMO one of the dirtiest things all season by kneeing marchand. neal doesnt care. he wont have to fight anyone. or if he does it will be some hugfest like all the other crappy fights in the nhl these days.

there were stinkers in the west as well. its not like we had a rivalry with edmonton or any number of other teams. and when looking bigger picture / longer term, we are actually reigniting many more old rivalries that i am sure were much more heated than what we had in the west. once we are here for a few years i am sure the bruins, leafs, canadiens, etc will stir up plenty of emotion so that the weeknight games against the panthers or hurricanes seem worth it.

let me first say that i think this thread and the opinion of kindl is still pretty tame. its not as if anyone wants him benched, traded, executed, etc. just some people that are disappointed with his play thus far. with that said, i still think criticism can be warranted in spite of what you bring up. because yes we need to be scoring more goals, but would that not be easier if we weren't getting hemmed in our zone too much because of bad breakout passes? there is a lot of play in our own end and through the neutral zone that can lead us to these chances. and that's more of what worries me. to me its not about the high profile plays that end up leading directly to goals. those get enough attention. its the little plays that end up keeping us stuck in our zone for 30 extra seconds, or cause someone else to take a penalty as we scramble around. its the little mistakes like that that have crept back into kindls game this year. and those kind of mistakes are just as important to winning as our shootout woes, holding leads, etc. the reason you see people singled out every year is that there are bound to be players underperforming an causing the team more harm than good. that doesn't mean people are bad fans for pointing it out. it just means that in a team game there are always weak links. and we have to talk about something to keep the message board alive~!

kindl has regressed some this year which makes me sad. i still had high hopes for him even before everyone jumped back on his bandwagon last year. i do agree with kip though in that right now he is just a 3rd pairing guy and probably will never be anything more. after his good year last year i had hoped he might have a shot at being a fill in top 4 guy, but that is probably unrealistic at this point. the biggest thing i think is getting rid of quincey and finding a better defensive defenseman for the bottom pairing. this is one of the few times i wouldnt mind seeing them go out and get a veteran as they really just need to keep the seat warm for a year or two until we get more of our guys through the system. heck, i even see kindl being done with the team once his contract runs out in a couple seasons and we have some of those guys like sproul and ouellet on the team.

they always draft guys they are excited about but then they never pan out... heck look at baertschi; 12 or 18 months ago he was the second coming of iginla. fans and media were super pumped about him. now he is a vast underachiever that just got sent down. before that, they were super pumped about backlund. thought he could finally be a creative center for iginla to play with. hes put up a whopping 73 points in 200 games. they have a pretty good history of not developing talent. an the worst part is often when they at least develop servicable nhl'ers they leave and then play better in other places. (nystrom, mcelhinney, and prust are examples) heck even look at their captain giordano. he had to go play in russia for a year because they didnt want to offer him a contract. luckily he managed to develop, but they even tried to screw that one up! and just to clarify a couple things - i am not saying baertschi is a flop. he still has plenty of time to turn it around. and i am also not saying guys like prust and nystrom went on to be stars. just that they were more successful after leaving calgary.