Cern

It was really so insurmountably difficult for Crosby to just say "Hey, hang on a second" to the media?

Please don't. We really need the cap wiggle room and we can win the Cup without him on the roster.

Yet again Pittsburgh fans leap over one another to prove themselves the vanguard of fan classlessness

This. The nature of hockey dosen't lend itself well to single-player glorifications/duels - for all the circlejerking the media was making of the Washington-Pittsburgh series, Crosby and Ovechkin were together on the ice for something like 45min-1h for the entire length of a seven-game series. It's not like in basketball where you have the same guys in play for virtually the entire game and ergo can make an argument for single players squaring up against one another, hockey is defined by frequent, brief cycling shifts, meaning you genuinely need a 20-player effort. Marketing the game with single players produces a misunderstanding of the game from people not already familiar with hockey.

Using age as an excuse is bulls*** in any situation. If you're not mature enough at 21 to respect your opponent first and foremost perhaps the voting and drinking ages should be bumped up a couple years.

Oh god, that reminds of that one Sid commercial I hate heads and shoulders above all others. You know that EDGE jersey ad where it's implied that Crosby grew up as a diehard Penguins fan even though he's on record saying his favourite team as a kid was the Habs and his fav player was Steve Y? FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, it just makes me rage so hard that he's essentially authorized his childhood to be flushed down the toilet like that.

He has no balls because he has no legal right to hand off a copyright he doesn't own in the first place? It's Illitch who owns the Hockeytown label, not the city of Detroit. Learn to read, you moron.

Hasn't Feds already signed up to play in the KHL or something?

Uh, now we watch the media force it down our throats at any avaliable opportunity for the next year. You just watch, when the Wings play those two games in Sweden you'll be able to play drinking games to the amount of times they reference Crosby's 'ungodly' cup run.

It's funny, I was feeling all the despair and whatnot during the game itself, but not long after it ended I've been more impatient than anything. I'm really eager for the roster to get sorted out and for the Wings to make another go at it. This is a resilient team, they'll bounce back.

Assuming we don't resign Hossa, how much cap space will we have to play with anyway?

Oh god, someone drew it.

Honestly, it reminded me all too well of game 7 of the 2006 finals. Can't remember who it was on Edmonton but they had a beautiful open-net shot in a last-minute scramble and Cam Ward just dived across the crease to stop it, it was exactly the same situation.

On a lighter note, someone on 4chan suggested a drawing of Crosby and Zetterberg playing keepaway with the Cup with Hossa chasing. I actually laughed.

Pretty gutted, but you and I and everyone else here knows the Wings will bounce back from this in the long run. The team more than anything else is in need of a bit of a roster shakeup and with all the young guys we've had on the ice these playoffs I'm really excited to see them take on permanent roles in the roster next year. The Penguins get a bit of a party for the time being, for us the preparation for next season begins now.

Are you ******* kidding me?

oh boy, yet another offsides

If I had a dime for every time I heard that...

By the time the score becomes 3-0 having more power play opportunities becomes completely redundant. There's no point including them when it's painfully obvious that they'll have no impact on who wins the game.

Definately the way to go. At the very least, they can't get into the it's-Game-7-anything-can-happen,-a-single-bad-bounce-could-destroy-everything mindset, if they do that they let the Penguins get into their heads. Just gotta think of this as just one more home game against a team they know they have solved on the Wings' ice.

0-0 against Western teams, evidently. See, I can use irrelevant stats too!

You're trying to have your cake and eat it too here, though. In another thread you're ranting about how the Wings' near-unbeatable home record these playoffs means nothing (ditto on the historical home win game 7 streak). Which is perfectly reasonable to argue, but here you're citing previous performances (ones as far back as last year, at that) as a concrete advantage to Pittsburgh. Either factor in the past or don't, but it works both ways whether you want it to or not. The Wings' home record is just as much a confidence builder for Detroit; if anything it's probably more relevant than the result of a second round against a team that's in no way similar to the Wings.

The question is, when the top two lines are inevitably going to end up getting ice time against 'defensemen' like Hal 'The 2.5 Million Dollar Pylon' Gill because unlike Game 6 they're in control of who plays against who, how is Detroit going to have trouble putting pucks in the net in the first place?

In other words, you're throwing previous games out the window. Which is fine, but that means your analysis of Hossa based on previous games is equally null and void. I can just as easily say he'll show up and make an impact in Game 7 too, what's to prove me wrong if by the same criteria (read: none whatsoever) Crosby and Malkin are apparently going to do the same? Hossa has also been on record these playoffs for multipoint games at crucial times, so what is there separating him?