revmo10

Only TSN states 8pm. ESPN.com and NHL.com both say TBD for Sunday's game. oops...didn't see the spot where it says "evening" until now....i sure hope its in the evening....

Keep it up boys! Nobody can stop us if we keep playing this way!

Lets go get em boys! Try to stop Hoss and Franz and we'll just throw Pav and Z at em! wings in 6...

Its probably because the Wings are only gonna need 4 games to oust the Ducks!! maybe its smart planning?

I would hardly say that Joe Thornton is "average at best"! He is definitely not the second best player behind AO but he is for sure in the top 10. If he is only average, then there are a lot of below average players in the NHL.

I was thinking about the way KH signed Zetterberg to a 12 year deal instead of a 10 year deal to lower his cap hit and I came up with an idea: First, this is assuming we want Hossa/Franzen/Hudler to remain Red Wings for the rest of their careers. And I don't know how "legal" this would be but assuming contracts don't affect your cap numbers once a player retires, whats to say we couldn't sign these three to very long contracts that would essentially keep them a Red Wing years after they were ready to retire? We could front load the contracts so they are happy now and just add a bunch of 1 mil/ year deals to the last, say, 10 years of their contract... Like Hossa gets a 20 year deal worth 70 million, have it be front loaded, so he gets most of his money in the first 10 years, and then who cares about the last 10 years because he will retire at 39 years old and we won't have to worry about the last 10 years. But, at the same time, his cap hit is only 3.5 million! You could do the same with Franzen and Hudler (at a lower cap hit) and keep all three players... I know this is definitely a loophole that the CBA must somehow cover, but isn't it exactly what they did with Z since they added 2 years at only 1 mil each? Odds are Hanks back won't allow him to play much longer than 38 years old, so really, we lowered his cap hit with years he probably won't play anyway. What are your thoughts? I can't believe KH hasn't at least explored this idea. If that won't work, I say we concentrate on Hossa and Franzen and if Hudler signs an offer sheet with someone else....at least we get compensated with draft picks to secure the future. On a side note...we will definitely need to start finding a new "Lidstrom" soon. And we'll need money to do this..... HMMMMM....food for thought.

I figured there had to be something that covered that. well, it was fun to think about...

I was at that game and it was amazing!! I was also at the game when the wings won the cup that year....the game on March 26th was much louder!

Zetterberg and Datsyuk have always taken a lot of pride in their defensive games first. Just look at the way Hank kills penalties and the amount of takeaways Dats has. He, by far, leads the league in takeaways every year! What would interesting is if either Hank or Pav got to play in a system that didn't focus on defense. Take Fedorov in the 94 season for example. He had been and still was one of the games best 2 way forwards...if not THE best. Then Yzerman went down and we needed him to step up his offense, so we cut him loose and he goes and scores 120 points and wins the Hart Trophy! You just can't say that Crosby will always put up better numbers until you get Hank and Pav in a system where they don't have to be as responsible as the DRW expect them to be. No way on earth I would trade both or even one of them for Crosby. Maybe in 5 years but certainly not in the prime of their career. They are hands down the best players on this team outside of Nick (but not comparable). The only problem with Hank is is minor injuries, like right now.

I think one of the best potential lines for this upcoming season could be at the end of Red Wings games when we might need to put out: Datsyuk Zetterberg Hossa Lidstrom Rafalski and if we have to pull the goalie and throw Franzen into the mix....look out! especially if he's still on fire! I don't think you can put a better 5 man unit on the ice today.

eh...no big deal. The Red Wings will be just fine without him. Not like he was actively involved in all of the decisions any more anyway.

I don't understand why everyone keeps saying Hossa's agent lost out on a lot of money! He just gets to sign another contract next year! Rich Winter will get his money. Hossa will get his. The contract is for one season ONLY because Holland needs to make sure he can sign Z by July 1, 2009. Once Z is locked up long term, then Holland will look at what we can afford to pay Hossa beyond the up coming season. If it works out and we get to keep Hossa, then great. If we don't get to keep him, then we got to have an elite winger on the team while we could afford to. This is all because Ken Holland was amazing at signing Z to his current contract. I don't think Rich Winter is worried about it one bit. He probably thinks it is better for himself long term, since the Red Wings make players look better than they are sometimes! If Hossa wins a cup with the wings, they both make more the year after. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I'm fairly certain that an agent gets his cut yearly just like a player does, so Winter is really only missing out on his cut of $1.5 mil or so, if Hossa would've signed for $9 mil with Edmonton. A happy client stays with their agent....

I could see him wearing # 8 also...

I like to think of us as the RED WINGS of the NHL!!

I disagree about Sammy. I probably would've agreed with you a month ago, but I feel like he picked up his game quite a bit against the preds. He does have good puck control and he can stir things up...even though he can't back it up. But I thought he played pretty well in the first round. The thing is...he's part of the team and not going anywhere at this point. I think people need to back off him a little...IMO

He played really well except when he lost the battle for the puck that lead to an almost breakaway for the preds.... but all in all I like him a lot. I'm not sure I would sit Sammy. He seems to be making better decisions in the playoffs than he did for the second half of the season. I suppose its a good problem to have when its tough to decide who to sit!

I don't think we should do anything with goaltenders until we see what happens this off season and next year due to the fact that the league is evaluating the size of the goaltenders and some that are really good now might not be so good with smaller equipment. I say we go with Osgood/Howard next season and let the new pad sizes play out before getting locked into 5 mil. + with a goalie that can't hack it with smaller pads.

The NHL head office should look at this play and do exactly what the NBA did when they messed up that foul call against Shaq. They made the teams replay the end of the game! Those are the kind of things the NHL needs to do when it obviously makes a mistake. They seem to have a HUGE ego and can't admit when they're wrong. Humility goes a long way in the eyes of the fan, when it comes to respecting a league. They should want to make it right anyway!