Datsyerberger

Right, because the Wings want to give up the largest and one of the highest potential d-men in their system for a mediocre upgrade in goal. I'm pretty sure anyone that pays attention to the Wings knows that there's space for Ericsson on the roster next year and that the Wings like to keep most players down in GR as long as they can. I suppose we'll pick up Legace as a backup to replace Conklin, too. Edit: Looking at the rest of this guy's article, it's clear he has no idea how the Wings org operates. He talks about Howard being stuck behind Ozzie and Conklin.. again, last waiver eligible year. Unlike some teams *cough Toronto cough* we don't have to bring up our young players immediately and stunt their development just so we don't look like total ass.

Ho-hum. Generally, I'm pretty happy when my 4th liners go unnoticed, because it means they're not making horrible defensive gaffs or gathering up a plethora of stupid penalties. What? He doesn't score 50+? What? He doesn't fight often? (Who on the Wings does?) What? He doesn't commit often to dirty hits in an attempt to make them look 'big'? What? His line gets scored against every so often? What? He doesn't rack up PIMs for my fantasy team? Worthless player.

I dunno, 9 pts, 84 hits in 52 GP with only 9:43 ATOI, and only 28 PIMs. Compare to other teams' 4th liners with similar ATOI. Furthermore, try to find one of those players with that sort of hits:PIMs ratio.

Fresh Homer for the playoffs. Woo.

In this particular scenario, you forgot Cleary, who would probably make an excellent linemate for the Sedins (physical and sometimes goes to the net, 50 point player with good D). Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Holmstrom Sedin-Sedin-Cleary Leino - Hudler - Sammy Helm - Draper - Kopecky Maltby Don't see that happening realistically, but I actually had very similar lines in EHM, once.

Regardless of taste, said column differential doesn't give you eye strain and vertigo just by looking at it.

I'm still at the point where I'd rather keep Hossa/Hudler over Franzen/Flip, but I've got this feeling that management sees a future Hank or Dats in Flip's potential, which must be why they're keeping him around at the 3mil contract (And seemingly prefer him over Hudler). If they're right and he develops into such, and we end up getting some picks out of Hudler, then that will be the best scenario down the stretch.

To be honest, I think he'd rather not have that anniversary. Just speculation on my behalf.

Sammy is worth more than we pay him now as is, and will likely get 2 or so somewhere else. 50 point guy with solid D? yea...

Let's look a couple years ahead for fun, just speculate a bit. Let's say Homer, Draper, and Maltby have all retired, and Nick resigns cheaper. ZDHossa Franzen/Leino/Hudler - Flip/Hudler - Leino/Hudler (Keep 2 of Franzen/Hudler/Flip) Cleary - Helm - Ritola? Abdelkader - ? - Kopecky ? Raffi - Lids Kronwall - Big Rig Kindl - Stuart Meech (Total speculation on those d-pairs) Larsson Howard McCollum (kicking ass in GR, hopefully) I'm really not seeing any lack for 2nd line talent in the system, even if we only keep 1 of Franzen/Flip/Hudler, our first line is set, our D is doing well, and the only gaps are 4th line talent, which can easily come from our healthy prospect pool and veteran FAs. Too much chicken-littling around here, imo.

ZDH Franzen - Leino - Hossa Cleary - Helm - Kopecky Abkadoodle - Draper - Maltby (Meech) Raffi-Lids Kronwall - Stuart Lilja - Big Rig Lebda Meech (Cheli?) Osgood Howard or ZDH Leino - Flip/Hudler - Hossa Cleary - Helm - Kopecky Abkadoodle - Draper - Maltby D-men Goalies I also want to provide an alternate scenario I've been pondering. Suppose Holmstrom's injuries (knee, lower back, groin? Ow) are too nagging for him after this year and he retires. That certainly changes things a bit. ZDHossa Franzen/Hudler - Flip/Hudler - Leino Cleary - Helm - Kopecky Abkadoodle - Draper - Maltby or ZDCleary Franzen/Hudler - Flip/Hudler - Hossa Leino - Helm - Kopecky Abkadoodle - Draper - Maltby or ZDFranzen Hudler/Leino - Flip/Hudler - Hossa Cleary - Helm - Kopecky Abkadoodle - Draper - Maltby Really, I can't complain about any of those possible scenarios.

First time I saw them I thought they were prison uniforms. What really takes the cake, though, is they're one "k" away from having "Cack" on the front of their jerseys.

Seeing as I've seen quite a bit of discussion about these guys here and there, I'm wondering what general opinion LGW has on this pair. As someone who watches the majority of his Wings games (and for that matter, a non-Wings game or two a night) on internet streams (usually coming from the various local networks), I've had the opportunity to experience a variety of broadcast crews. Given those experiences, here's my relative thoughts on Ken & Mickey: -- They're slight homers. That's okay, they're home team announcers. The majority of their viewership are Wings fans. They don't go overboard with it, they strike a good balance between good broadcasting and homerism. (More on this in a little). They can and do get as excited over good plays and goals by the away team as they do with the Wings. -- They've got good voices for it. Strong, clear, and not heavily accented. They don't have particularly unique quirks, but that also keeps them from being irritating (More on this in a little, too). -- Interesting vocabulary without sounding like the bipolar Emrick (who, on one hand, tries to have 50 words for everything under the sun, and on the other hand, uses the modifier "back" to describe movement or location every other sentence, regardless of the direction or action). -- Their hockey knowledge and pronunciation of odd names is on the whole pretty good. They correct their mistakes if they notice them, and do so quickly without disrupting the flow of things. -- They occasionally segue into stories, but most of the time said stories are fairly interesting, and they usually don't do so at the expense of missing too much of an important play (usually). -- They can be flat-out hilarious sometimes. On the other hand, they do have a tendency to hee-haw too much every now and then, but that's one of my few knocks against them (and a good bit of the time I'm laughing with them). -- They break down and analyze a play fairly well. Maybe not the best in the league at this, but they don't leave me scratching my head. -- One of the bigger gripes I've seen against them is how much they whine about penalties, particularly in regards to consistency and ticky-tacky calls. They ARE one of the whiniest duos in the league about this. That said, what's usually left out is they tend to go off about it regardless of whether it's against the Wings or not. They don't shy away from pointing out a bad call, a ticky-tacky new NHL joke penalty, a dive, or awful inconsistency, and I for one appreciate that (rather than simply gobbling on the league's collective schwanz. Leave that to VS). A couple notes regarding some parentheticals above: -- As I said, I don't mind a small amount of homerism in 'local' broadcasting and I feel it's appropriate. Ken & Mickey balance this well. Some guys, on the other hand, are frigging awful homers. The Anaheim guys particularly come to mind. I remember watching one game. Here's how it went: (Anaheim goal): "skate pass skate pass SKATE PASS SKATE PASS SHOOOT SCCOOOOAAOAO--OAAARRRRRBGJHASLDSAKDSDLKL!!!!111one!11eleven!!1one" (Away team goal): "skate pass skate pass SKATE PASS SKATE PASS SHOOT score." -- Absolutely deadpanned goal call, completely killed the excitement of the play. I'm really not exaggerating that. At all. -- Also, vocal quirks. There's memorable, and then there's annoying. I was watching Calgary - Montreal last night (A Montreal network, don't remember which). Every time the play-by-play got wound up, his voice started to sound like he was being strangled while his balls were being crushed in a vice. I couldn't enjoy a goal without cracking up, because every time I heard his voice go like that, all I could hear in my head was his voice sounding like "MMOEEAEMMRRRRRGNNNH.. PUTTIN ON THE RIIIIIIIIITZ!" (think Young Frankenstein - Edit: Link for the uniformed -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH2nQHPs4aA). If I had to listen to that 82 times a year, I'd either tear my hair out or develop a hernia, I'm not sure which. Now, as for some other broadcast teams I like: Most of the Canadian ones in general, the Phoenix guys & Pang, and the Dallas guys... Shaving Cream & Razor or whatever their names are. On the whole, I really like Ken & Mickey. Thoughts?

Well, I took on St. Louis >.> Atleast they're one of the older franchises. And have a good internal org and a deep prospect pool.

Oh, and I know you just hate that.

Edit: ditto.

Edit: my keyboard went nuts.

He could have avoided it by not driving it to the net (and thus not getting shoved into the goalie) and coughing up the puck at the blue line or something, but then he'd be the worthless piece of s*** a lot of people think he is. It's just a bad call. Atleast the inconsistency is consistent with the officiating this year.

I'll eat my e-hat if it happens.

He got pushed right as he was starting to break to the right (looked like he was going to drag the puck then shoot it). There's about a half of second of time between the push making full contact and the collision.. and it happened at just a moment to take his legs out from under him and send him on an uncontrollable path to the goalie. If anything, that should have been a penalty shot.

Someone's stick getting shoved into your core muscles by 200+ pounds of mostly muscle will do all sorts of wonder for your balance.

(For the GI call) Detroit, 2 minute penalty for being shoved into the home team's player. Seriously, he gets shoved from behind into the goalie and he gets called? Lovely.

The VS folks quizzed Paul Kelly about fighting. A few things he had to say: A vast majority of players believe that fighting has (in his words) an important and historic role in the game of hockey. He believes fights should be stopped/broken up immediately if one player has a visor/face shield. He leans towads Laraque's suggestion helmets should stay on, and fights should stop when a helmet comes off. Interestingly enough (and to his surprise) the demographic which likes fighting the most overwhelmingly is females aged 18-35. This is good news to hear, to me. While I'm not a huge pro-enforcer guy like, say, GMR, I enjoy a good fight (read, a fist fight, not a wrestling match), and heavily agree that it has an important and historic role in hockey.

Damned well better be Vernors, HL. Or something hard.

Always nice to have an outside opinion, DG. And sorry, but I really cannot stand the Ducks announcers. Seriously. You've got rid of Burke, May, the Niederweiners are coming up on the end of a contract. Trade Pronger for some young D, ditch your current broadcast crew. Please?