Datsyerberger

I also am feeling quite good about this one. Much less queasy than I did about the last game. Then again, that may just be the feeling of euphoria I get from a lack of Dan O'Hitleran.

At this point, Id call it pretty even between Ozzie and Z, with Dats trailing close behind. If any one of them steals the winning game, they're likely getting the Conn Smythe. If neither Z or Dats have an amazing game, and Ozzie has a solid (but perhaps not flawless) game, it'll probably go to him.

Has kicked ass all series. He's let in a couple questionable ones, but they were questionable goals that were a result of hideous mistakes by his D. With a lesser goalie than Fleury, I imagine game 1 goes 5 or 6 - 0, game 2 4-0, game 3 results in a Det win, game 4 comes out more like 4-1 and game 5 turns into a blowout in the 3rd period. The guy has been standing on his head despite his team being outplayed by the Wings. Gotta give him some props; I can't believe there have been some people bitching about him on and off on the Pens boards. What the hell is up with the Wings always running into young hot s*** goaltenders during the POs?

My dad turned off the television not two seconds after the goal was scored. I agreed. I went to bed, because I knew I'd be fuming if I didn't. Woke up and played some EHM. Therrien got fired .. and the whiny little f*** is now an assistant coach for my UHL team. Serve me, f*****! (meanwhile, Crosby broke his leg in practice and is out for 5 months. Die die die die die)

ell oh ell

From the movie The Rock (1996), Sean Connery's character John Mason talking with an FBI agent while he's in prison. John Mason: You must see a certain pattern emerging here... Alexander Solzhenitsyn... Agent Paxton: Yeah, I heard of him. Didn't he play hockey for the ******* Red Wings? John Mason: That's the chap. I can't not laugh at that. *sigh* I just can't be serious with this, can I?

I hope someone gives him an octopus. How many spankings does he get this year?

Oh, and just to help out with site hits: F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5.. (Not like I dont do that anyhow...)

"The wages of sin is death." (Bible, one of Paul's writings) XD

XD there must be a lot of people here feeling like those fellas in YoungGuns avatar right about now, I'd imagine.

Well, there goes Ronnie's career. Say goodbye to your career, Ronnie.

Is this what I want to see, or what I expect to see? If it's what I expect... 1. Sidney Crosby (bolded, large print) 2 and all the rest. Small print, fuzzy, barely readable.

"...Paris Hilton of the hockey set." Aha, so that's what all those "steaming hot goalie sex tapes!" emails that kept showing up in my inbox were...

Instead of giving all this pledged money to the alleged thrower, we select a charity that the Wings organization supports and all donate to it if someone pegs Bettman (or lands one near him). Bettman gets embarrassed AND people that need help get help. Win/win.

Hmm, lessee here. First, likely retirees: Hasek: Most likely Drake: Probably, especially with cup win Chelios: I don't think so--more below Now then Hank and Mule: Lock em both up for a long time, hope Hank will go for a contract comparable to Pavel's, and try to get Franzen on the same deal as Kronner. Stuart: Resign for 3-3.5 mil. 3 is honestly a bargain, when you compare it to what other d-men of his caliber are pulling. 3.5 mil is still a good deal for us, atleast for a couple years, and I think a cup win on a team he's had good chemistry with will convince him into taking a slight discount. Success and stability seem to be his aims. He could go for 4 else where, little doubt. Flip: Something that's a mix between reasonable and long term, I'd prefer 3 or more years. If he has a breakout year next year or the year after and we've got him locked up for a year or two more after that, we'll be getting a bargain on him. If he doesn't work for us and he still has contract time left, he'd make a good trade--there are teams out there that could benefit from the way he was playing this year, honestly. D-Mac: Isn't he already locked up for like 2-3 years at minimum? If not, I'm sure he'd take minimum, he makes for a decent backup and he's a good team guy in the background, and a fan favorite. Might as well keep him 'til he retires. Downey: Enforcing is useful during the season, even for the Wings, and he fills the role well. Sign him cheap again and bring him out when you need him.. he's hardly necessary, or a loss if he goes, but he's useful. Kopecky: Hasn't really become much, I think Helm will take the spot he had and there are other more promising prospects coming up.. there just won't be any room for him. Hartigan: Same situation as Kopecky, but crappier and older. Lilja: Uncertain. To be honest, I think he could make a bit more elsewhere. He doesn't have much use here, other than as filler until our prospects settle in. Not sure how much/if management wants to keep him, but I'd just as soon see him move on.. it'd probably good for both him and the Wings. Chelios: If he's content with a small contract and to take a #6/7 spot cycling with our prospects, he's very useful in the background. If he doesn't retire, that'd be a good role for him--if he does, I'd suspect to see him around in some other fashion. Sammy: Possible trade? But management seems to like him. Hard to say. He's really a good deal at what we have him for, though. Free Agents Honestly, we have enough prospects coming up that we need to leave some room in our lines, to some degree. Next year is something of a transition with a couple likely going out and a couple coming up, so I think the best thing for us to do, if anything, is use some our plentiful extra cap space and snag a good scoring vet that'll work well on the 2nd line, short term. That rules out Hossa and Prospal, who are both likely going to be long term contracts, and honestly more than we're going to want to pay. It also rules out.. pretty much everyone else, except Feds and Sundin. Sundin: He's the real wild card this upcoming post season.. he could retire, he could go somewhere for a good lot of money, he could stick with the Leafs. Whatever he does, I hope he doesn't stick with the Leafs.. they've treated him like ass and given him ass to play with, and I'd like to see the guy have a shot at the cup before retirement (if he doesn't this post season). IF we can grab him for a reasonable amount, and IF he'd want to come here, he'd be a good grab. Fedorov: He may be content at the Caps. Then again, he may want to play for the Wings more so. If he's willing to sign a decent 1 or 2 year contract (loaded on the front end if its 2 years), hometown discount and all, he could be a very good grab. Two-way, would fit in well on the 2nd line, veteran, a favorite of many fans, and another guy with Wings history who's probably going to be looking to retire within the next coupla years. If he wants to come home and do that, let him, for the right price. All in all, I think that leaves us looking something like this: Z-D-H Franzen/Flip/(Hudler?/Sundin?/Fedorov?) Cleary-Draper-Sammy Maltby-Helm-(Hudler?/ ?) D-Mac, Downey, possibly Abdelkader on the 4th line, and/or as backup. If we sign a FA for 2nd line, Hudler will probably be on the 4th. Lids-Raffy Kronwall-Stuart Lebda-(Lilja? / Cheli? / Ericsson? / Meech? / Quincey? ) Any of the possible #6s there are all backup material if the other locks in. Lebda is also a possible #7 if two of those others look impressive. Our top 4 is VERY solid and we have tons of potential and wiggle-room for our 5-6 and beyond. Osgood Howard/Larsson (Is it Larssen or Larsson?) Iza very nice, ah liyek.

Actually hitting him is probably a really bad idea, for more than one reason (I'd laugh regardless) Landing one near him would be almost as good--it'd have the same symbolic meaning. Bonus points if the tosser twirls it first.

This is indeed a toughy, but when it comes down to the Wings and the capabilities of their scouting, I'd prefer double the picks. While the #1 has a good chance of being a star or atleast very good player, it's by no means a guarantee. Given that probably only the first 10 picks or so you have a very good chance of snagging the bet talent of the draft, everything beyond that is a bit more of a crapshoot. And I'd rather have 9 crapshoots than 4. The Wings scouting has proven time and time again they can dig out diamonds in the rough in relatively high (and sometimes very high) picks.. they do it with far too much consistency for it to be dumb luck. Every additional late pick you give them is the chance for them to pull up another Z or Dats.. while they may pull out a Crosby in the 1st pick, I'd rather them use a larger amount of picks and pull out 2 Dats/Zs and a Homer or two. The only thing that even makes this a tough choice is the 1st pick.. take that out and the 29-30 out and make it the 31, 61, 91, and 121 vs the 59-60, 89-90, 119-120 and 149-150 and it's a no-brainer.

Homer goggles aside, and relying more on observation and statistics, I'd say the Wings are far more of a factor here than Crosby. I'm not saying he isn't a factor at all, because he certainly is, but I'm willing to bet it's relatively small as compared to the "Wings factor". US base: The Wings have, easily, the largest fan base of all the US clubs. And that's only taking the US fans into account. For that matter, the Wings are also better off than any of the Canadian clubs, fan-wise, except the Habs and (maybe) the Leafs. I'm also willing to bet that once you expand the fandom outside of North America, the Wings outdo even the Habs. (Edit: We just don't burn as many cars) Another important thing to point out is that most of the Habs success goes a generation or more back. The most well-known hockey club of this era is the Wings, hands down. It's all a good deal of non-hockey fans know about hockey (besides Gretzky), and one of the very very few (or only) clubs many of them can match up the name with their respective city. Hell, the Wings even get random movie quotes about them due to their various successes this generation. This one is taken out of "The Rock" .. Sean Connery film, came out around the time the Wings were having a crapton of success with all the Russian players: John Mason: You must see a certain pattern emerging here... Alexander Solzenhitsyn... Agent Paxton: Yeah, I heard of him. Didn't he play hockey for the ******* Red Wings? John Mason: That's the chap. XD that one cracked me up. Speaking of which, lets look at european fan base. One previous poster mentioned the fandom of the Wings internationally. I concur. Of all the organizations, the Wings were to have first major success with a large group of europeans.. obviously, the Russian 5 (and nevermind the individual success of each of the players, or their already existing importance in Russia). That got a very large amount of fans in Russia that still follow the Wings--hey, we've atleast got Pasha now, and that works for many of them. Neverminding the individual success of Lidstrom and Zetterberg, we now have a very large and solid core of Swedish players, 2 of them stars, and 2 more of them highly successful. But I'll let the Swedes that we have here on our damned fan forums talk about the Swedish fan base. Down here in NW Florida, where I'm at, I haven't met a single non-hockey fan yet who has any idea who Sidney Crosby is (most of them assume an actor). However, most of the people I know who follow sports at all know who the Wings are (and that's all a good number of them know about hockey at all). Add on to that, almost everyone I know down here who is a hockey fan is a Wings fan (a few FL and TB fans, and 1 Stars fan.. but they're from TX). I'm from FL.. granted, my dad is from Detroit so you can imagine there's influence there. However, many of these Wings fans I know are native Floridians with native Floridian parents. They picked up on the Wings during highly successful era from the mid 90s til 2002. Many of these are people around my age group, late teens to mid/late 20s. Hockey has caught a decent amount of success in my generation, and I'd put that in no small part thanks to the hockey console/PC games (which have been quite consistently successful sports games).. and some of that is just holdover from Gretzky. Most of the people that know Crosby already were hockey fans. Not all, and I'm sure there is a growing number, but I'd still say a large majority. A good percentage of those that didn't know hockey before him and do now are probably bandwagoners, some of who probably jumped ship last season. As for the people buying the Crosby merch, I'd attribute that in great part to 2 categories: pre-existing hockey fans.. keep in mind there are several people here, Wings fans, who have bought Crosby merch. The other group is sports collectors in general, who are hoping to buy up early Crosby merch and keep it/cash in on it later (assuming he has a large of a career as he's supposed to). For a little statistical evidence? The 2002 playoffs was the last time hockey had this much success... another Wings finals year. Attribute that as you will, I'd say it stands out as atleast possible evidence.. more than you could find to attribute the ratings to Crosby. Nevermind the fact that the teams between these two times have been, for the most part, less than spectacular. TB was one of them, they actually have a pretty successful fan base. Another 2 are Calgary and Edmonton.. while not the most popular of the Canadian teams, they're still Canadian teams and the vast majority of Canadians I know would watch a SCF that had any Canadian team in it (if nothing else, so they can cheer against them in case it's a rival Canadian team). Out of curiosity, I'd like someone to find the ratings for 97, 98, 99, 2000, and 2001, and compare them to 2002 and 2008. It would be curious to see if 97 and 98 stand out more than the other 3 years there. I'm willing to bet they do, by a sizable margin. All that said, I hope Crosby HAS brought a good number of additional fans to the NHL. But I'm willing to bet the success of this SCF is much more due to the presence of the Wings, a both highly successful and original 6 franchise.

Consider how important Ozzie is to both his teammates, and to the fan base as well. How many times have you heard "Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie!" being chanted during the games since he was put in? (and not all of those at home!) That one should answer it.

I'd like to see Feds come home as well. Hell, his level of performance with the Caps is about what we need right now, and if he's willing to take a home town discount (a reasonable one, mind you) for a final chance at success with the Wings, by all means.. I'd much rather see him have a chance at redemption (and more so, to see him actually redeem himself with some good play) for all the good things he did do with the Wings, than to see eternal bad blood. You've gotta wonder if he misses the Wings.

In the NHL Underrated: Osgood Overrated: Er.. hm. Uh. Hm. Franzen I guess, they were acting like he was the end all be all for us when he was out. On here Underrated: Sammy. Duh. He's not an amazing player, but he's a decent deal for what we pay for him, and we treat him like ass. Overrated: Franzen again. ...Mind you, I'm one of the people that overrate Franzen.

I don't mind it in the post game analysis/replay analysis. If they bring that s*** on during the live action, though, reds will hole.

Then you'll understand what I mean when I say: "sage" : D

That camera angle was even crappier than that behind the net one they were using, and that one really annoyed me.

Getting back on topic, they're lazy and they suck. Also, the extra-long time it took to get game 3 started on NBC is clearly a conspiracy between the Pens/Crosby and the league, obviously intended to throw the Wings off their game.