Datsyerberger

Ooh, two long lasting, low injury guys who have basically had 20 year primes. Well played, well played.

If we're talking about the prime talent level of the current Wings player: Lidstrom Hasek Good luck getting goals in. Otherwise: Datsyuk Orr Good luck getting the puck. Any coach intelligent enough to let them do their thing. I'll just take an easy out and go for that thurr Babcock guy.

Was projecting to a 60 point season on the Isles before his injury, this year. He could be next year's Drake, but better!

I wish Doug was a Red Wing, too. Good player and from the D. Maybe if we need to fill a slot this offseason for cheap, he'll sign for 500k like someone suggested. He'd make for a pretty sweet 3rd liner.

Answers: 1. No, I watch a fight and hope a hockey game breaks out (ba dum ttshhhhh... seriously though, I voted Yes) 2. No, but I'd be quite irritated. 3. No, but on a team that doesn't have the skill that far down the roster, a fighter can be more useful than just another scrub. I certainly don't mind having a fighter, but I like them to have NHL skill, as well.

Yea, I had a pair of normal experiences. I just went to the john a few minutes ago, and before that, I ate a donut. Seriously though, yes, I think so.. whether it be spiritual, or drug induced (I don't think so ), or due to the random firing of synapses.. well, that's anyone's guess. In any case, very personal experience. TPBM prefers jelly donuts over the usual hole in the middle sort.

In before the "Cindy Crosby" jokes.

In my experience, the rare occasions in which women physically fight tend to be a lot more brutal in nature than usual male fights. I think that's largely an instinctive/biological thing, where men scuff and rough eachother up a bit for mating rights, who gets to eat first, or just for fun... and thus, both are trying to minimize long term damage. From an instinctive point of view, when women fight, its usually in defense of family/offspring/something very primitive, and because of that, it's quite fierce and primal. Guys usually just wrestle and pound on eachother with fists a bit. Gals do that, involve nails, hair pulling, objects, teeth.. ANYTHING.. that's my experience having observed female fights, anyhow. I'll fight an angry dude over an angry woman any day. Hell, I remember this one time back in high school, huge jock dude pissed off this one gal.. she wasn't particularly large in stature or anything, fairly slender, though she was decently built.. she might've been a basketball player, don't remember for sure. But anyhow, he pisses her off, and she launches over a cafeteria table, tipping it over in the process, and just assaults the s*** out of him.. he wasn't holding back any punches, but you could tell he was overwhelmed with the sheer ferocity of it. It's really not the sort of thing you usually see in a male brawl. He left that fight with a black eye, several bruises, a busted lip, and a bloodied nose.. I think she had a single bruise on her cheek. That's really all he could manage to land. Women who feel cornered to the point of needing to fight are $#@! dangerous.

The women here are worse than the men. XD I like the slogan, personally. I wear my beard full time anymore, and I can't really wear it out more than I do for professional appearance reasons, but it's a healthy Van Dyke so I'm not stressing it. As for the ladies this year: How about playoff ponytails/braids this year, gals? Tie it into a ponytail/braid in the back for game days, and post up pictures of of it. Those women among you who already have long hair will just be like us guys that are already rockin' beards, ya dig?

Well, personally, I measure success by playoff performance and that Stanley Steamer Cup thing, and unless you're counting Mac and his couple of appearances last playoffs... well, we've still got him and/or Downey available if we need him, but given even Mac's very limited game time last playoffs, I don't expect we'll see anything more than that.

The price of success. I can live with it.

And yet we're still among the top 3 teams in the league with arguably the toughest division in hockey this year (3 super hot goaltenders, 2 really skilled young teams, 2 really physical teams, all 4 others currently sitting in a playoff position).

As I said earlier in the thread, there's not much of a debate for the biological differences.. only women with a combination of exceptional size and exceptional talent would probably be able to make it -- That, and they have to have equal training, which is not anywhere near the case right now. I could see those occasional women slipping in. (Imagine some 6'3" Russian woman with Datsyuk skills, haha)

Root for her? Hell, I'd probably want to propose to her! XD

Traditionally, women were considered no good at any sport/physical activity.. or even something as dumbly simple as shooting a gun, for that matter. How much of that is a lack of potential to be "good at hockey" as opposed to a relative amount of training?

My feeling on it is that lower tiers, college, and national hockey should remain separated.. this allows the average woman to compete within their size range and overall ability, and the same for men. The NHL (and its farm leagues) would become the melting pot for the absolute top tier for both genders (where you would possibly see a handful of women exceptional in talent and stature)

If anything, what I would see is something like with exceptional players in the 80s and early 90s.. even a minor hit on them would be a possible cause for retribution (a la Gretzky). As I do admit, the greatest challenges to overcome are by far societal and gender mentality barriers, and the fact that the NHL is a very physical sport (not something I want to change).

That's mostly resultant of inferior training and (of course) a lesser average height. I knew a couple exceptionally tall gals in high school who could dunk on a regular basis. Of course, they were exceptions to the rule.. but then again, so are shorties like Hudler and Gionta, and so are weird style goalies like Hasek. You're comparing a sport relatively new in its evolution (woman's upper tier basketball) to something that has been around as a mainstay significantly longer (men's upper tier basketball). It would be more appropriate to compare the first 6 years of WNBA to the first 6 years of NBA. While I still expect there to be a dunking discrepancy (due to average height), I still think there are a good handful of women players who have the size to dunk in the NBA.. and out of those, at least a couple have to have upper echelon talent. The remaining x-factor is training.

So the US and UK militaries (for example) shouldn't field women soldiers because their enemies would feel wrong to shoot at them? Wut?

Even if you were to take (on average) 3 women players from the top 10 women's hockey nation's national teams, you would end up with 30 players with possible NHL talent/size. And even if only 1/3 of those made it past the AHL, you'd still have 10 women in hockey, with 1-2 of those with star/upper tier level potential. While it'd be a small start, it'd certainly be a very significant inroad into increased attention to the scouting and training of women's hockey players, and eventually you could end up with a small but significant amount of women hockey players in the NHL--say 5%, which would be around what, 35 players? That's more overall representation than some significant hockey nations have in the NHL.

Me neither. Then again, I watch 122314431 times more upper tier (NHL/AHL/a couple euro leagues) hockey than I do women's hockey. Sample size? It's not like you can just walk out on some random street and have a good chance to grab a HoF-worthy goalie, a couple d-men and some forwards. Unless you're in Novi, or something.

I'd like to hear a good explanation as to why. Grant you'd, I'd concede a few points off the bat: 1. Men have a general size/strength advantage on women. 2. Male bodies are generally more configured for violent abuse. 3. The unknown variable on how women would affect a predominantly male locker room environment. Now, having covered those points: I think, if this ever were to happen, men and women's hockey should be separated in all but the uppermost level (read: AHL & NHL). A dedicated women's hockey league allows for more diversity in women at those levels, where they don't have to compete with the size of men (so, say, a 5'2" woman doesn't have to go up against Zdeno Chara). However, it should be noted that some of the strongest people in the world, as far as size to weight ratio goes, are women. Furthermore, there are women 5'8" and taller, and there are NHL players 5'8" and taller. I don't see any reason why a woman can't be as mentally as gifted or skilled as a man. In fact, since women on average tend to have higher reflexes than men, you could see some exceptional women goaltenders, for example. Also, why women are less prone to aggression than men, you're kidding yourself if you think there aren't any aggressive women out there. Hell, look at Alex Semin. The only x-factor I can see is point 3, and the ever present sexual tension and interactivity between genders. But honestly, I think a mature society can overcome that (as has been shown in some other sports with mixed gender leagues, or the military, for that matter). Anyhow, I see no reason why physically well-developed and exceptionally talented women, with the proper size for the NHL, could not compete at the upper echelon of the sport (and frankly, I don't think I'm the only one who gets a good grin out of the thought of some 6'2" woman delivering a brutal open ice check on -insert hated player here-). Edit: Due to the massive de-railing this line of conversation could cause in what should be a thread of appreciation for and discussion of aforementioned HoF-worthy women hockey players, I'm going to re-post this into its own thread. Please respond there rather than here.

Don't worry; I lol'd. Well played, good sir.

Sadly, living where I do, I've seen nary a women's hockey game. If you think hockey is unpopular in the south, then women's hockey...

Penguins out in the first round (e5).