Cern

This. It boggles my mind how fickle some people are here, Hudler's essentially declaring that the Wings are ultimately the only team he wants to play for and people are throwing him in the garbage because of it. He's not stupid, if he wanted to spend the rest of his career in the KHL he wouldn't have bothered with arbitration in the first place. He's looking beyond the next two years here, he knows the Wings can't afford him right now until some of the older guys drop their cap hits, so as an RFA he's putting himself up on the chopping block knowing he'll get first shot at the Wings when he comes back. What else is he supposed to do, bag groceries for the next two years? In the long run it's the best realistic shot he has at making sure he remains a Wing in the NHL.

I don't really get why everyone is on Hudler's case on this. He knows just as well as anyone that the cap is super-tight for the Wings this season but he's not going to do something ridiculous like sign for league minimum. In the long run this is his way of ensuring he sticks with the Wings, playing outside the NHL until guys like Maltby are gone and/or older players get smaller contracts so that when Detroit HAS cap room, he'll be guaranteed to have the Wings as his first opportunity for reintroduction into the NHL (assuming he plays well in the KHL at least). Yeah you can complain that it's meant waiting for the arbitration hearing to set up a game plan, but it's already been well documented that Holland was going to wait a few weeks to pull the trigger on a signing anyway. To me this just shows how badly Hudler ultimately wants to play for the Wings. He'd rather take a brief leave the league altogether than play for anyone else in the NHL. I don't get how people can be down on him for that.

This argument always makes me laugh. They don't engrave s*** like "they played defensively-minded hockey" on the cup alongside the team name. How teams win is completely irrelevant.

Avery? OH MAN, DEALING HIM AWAY TOTALLY BIT US IN THE ASS.

My biggest concern is our goaltending - I'm not sure Howard as a backup likely to see 30 or so games is going to turn out, even with our defense (assuming it gets back on track). I guess it's wait and see, maybe see what's avaliable for a trade before the deadline if it dosen't end up working out.

He could be an upgrade from Howard. I guess we'll see how it goes and I'm not advocating we pick Gerber up, but Howard playing 30 odd games really worries me given how terrible he's been in his earlier experiments with the NHL.

Very true, but the fact that so few games are in TO is inevitably going to heighten demand. It's an uncommon, special event, people are going to flock to it because there's a sense that it's a there-and-gone affair. Just earlier in that same article the same phenomenon occurred with the Jaguars - relatively small-market team that drew in sellout crowds to begin with, now they have to shut down segments of the stadium to avoid blackouts. You can't judge overall profitability on the measure of a single game or hell, even a single season. Talk like that is the reason teams like the Coyotes are continuing to vacuum the league's money instead of being allowed to die.

I've been saying ever since its been unofficially confirmed that Boston would host the WC that it should be Hurricanes-Bruins. The traditionalists, established hockey fans, and champions for dead franchises get a hugely-hyped-up one-off revival of the Battle of New England on a huge stage, and you incorporate the sunshine fans the League is so hellbent on drawing in.

It's weird, for me it was open DURING game 7, but really not that long after the final buzzer I somehow was over it. I guess I feel more impatient for next season to start than anything else, I'm really eager to see guys like Leino and Helm get a full season under their belts. After all the losses in free agency I'm getting a bit nervous again, though. Particularly in net, I really don't feel secure with Howard playing 30-odd games.

Because the thought of playing against Iceland brings dread to the hearts of all Westerners?

Ah yes, the long and storied winning tradition of hockey in...Iceland...

It does, however, put the defenders ridiculously out of position, so that if there's a turnover and there's a winger ready the other team essentially gets a free breakaway. It's a complete desperation move, which makes me wonder why they'd pull it off in a tie game with 10 minutes to go

Ha, nope. Although, Conklin does keep his special-game-event streak alive by playing in Europe to start next season.

Don't scare me like that, I thought that said Jason Williams at first...

He's been a perpetual rental player ever since he left Vancouver, that's not likely to change if he signs here. Heck, he's never been at 100% since he left Vancouver either, same story.

It has to be said, 2008-09 was a bit of an off-year for him. He was easily third place for a trophy he's usually coronated - I'd call that a decline even if he is still playing really well. He's getting old, there's no getting around that, you can't expect him to be winning (or even getting nominated) for Norris trophies until he's +45, bodies just can't keep peaked that long.

We're already on record for dropping a defenseman, adding another one dosen't really make a whole lot of sense. Besides, all the holes in our roster now are forwards.

Depends on how much Hudler is after

With Hossa, Kopecky, and perhaps Samuelsson gone, that leaves room for guys like Helm and Abdelkader - the gaps are hardly being filled by 'soft' players in the first place, let alone if someone like Orr is picked up.

Ah alright. Yeah, it's kind of a swanky area. Our house is getting a bunch of lancscaping work done though, so it literally looks like we're in the middle of No Man's Land at the moment

Where in Calgary do you hail from? I'm going to England for the next six weeks but I'm gonna be in Mount Royal for the next year or so, most likely.

Resigning Bertuzzi is laughable in and of itself.

Maybe if every grown man in the world had the exact same foot/thumb/arm dimensions it would be legit. But they don't, so it isn't. In any case no sane person is seriously going to argue that multiples of ten (the most mindlessly simple multiples you could possibly encounter) somehow makes less sense than using vastly different numbers to jump from one measurement to the next. Imperial is, for lack of a better term, a preserved medieval clusterf*** of a measuring system.

Surely they have far more than five on their list, particularly now that they've allowed more chances for some of those five to be taken before they get a chance.

If he was someone the Wings absolutely wanted to pick up, why wouldn't they have just done so in the first round?