swiss_fan

hes been playing like a ***** this season imo.

Abby needs to play with some edge. He is at his best when he's being a pain in the ass. Maybe needs to go for lunch with Maltby and learn some tricks.

hasn't been physical enough

Last year in the playoffs, he had 0 points in 11 playoff games, and took countless boneheaded penalties. At that point, I realized how useless he is.
Along with Emmerton, he's the most expendable forward on this team. Hardly ever fights and doesn't play as aggressive as he did several years ago.
If he doesn't return next season, I could care less. We need to find a bigger, harder hitting forward on our checking lines.

I don't agree with the OP's assertion that the Wings are soft as hell, but I really don't understand this point, which has become a frequently stated opinion as of late. Are we only allowed to talk about potential changes to the team after they lose? I'm not saying that to be a smartass, I just really don't follow the thinking. When things are going well, how many times can we post "woohoo!" and "Go Wings!"
In another thread, Crymson attacks another member because after a loss that person allegedly makes several posts criticizing the team, but after a win is nowhere to be found. So it's this no-win situation where if you only post after a loss you're a whining fan who does nothing but complain when the team loses, yet if you talk about changes to the team during a win streak, then you're still a spoiled fan because you can't enjoy the team winning.
This isn't directed so much at you, but mainly I'm tired of the thinking here that we should do nothing but say positive things about the team (except of course for Hudler and Ericsson who are apparently exempt from that rule) as if that's the only way to support them and be a true fan. I do support the team. I also want to discuss hockey in a hockey forum. Sometimes that means talking about larger issues with the team, or even just wild ass speculation. The season is long, even if they're on a win streak, that doesn't mean there aren't things to talk about that will have implications down the road this season and in the playoffs. As I've said before, a lot of the criticism here is done with an eye towards the postseason and getting past San Jose, so it's not even about the current win streak.
For those who don't like threads criticizing the team and think they are ill timed, it's very simple to avoid and not post in the thread. It'd be great to have more posts here that actually talk about the Wings and hockey in general, instead of all the ones that only judge how other people post here, including this one.
*getting off my soapbox*

oh dear.
can you imagine if a player said that to babcock?

LOL

Assuming Anaheim continues to fall:
To Detroit:
Bobby Ryan
Matt Beleskey
To Anaheim:
Todd Bertuzzi
Cory Emmerton
Jakub Kindl
Draft pick
May be overpayment, but we get a legit top line sniper in Bobby Ryan, and a young, speedy grinder with a nose for the net.
Zetterberg-Datsyuk-Ryan
Hudler-Filppula-Franzen
Beleskey-Helm-Cleary
Holmstrom-Abdelkader-Eaves
Miller

Will the last person riding on the "Jiri Hudler Bandwagon" please tip the driver.

Heaten, you're always such a whiner when someone disagrees with something you say.
First, I didn't misread your post. I didn't imply that you said Holland should offer package xyz. I said that I thought what you were suggesting it would take to get Ryan was high.
Second, I never said the Ducks are going to 'help those Detroit Red Wings by taking major underpayment'. Just because I think your package is too high doesn't imply that I would think the Ducks would give him away either.
Third, you can sling insults if you want. But ultimately any one who reads this thread can see you getting all defensive just because I disagreed with your proposal.

...except i have made tons of posts that talk about hockey.
you posted something laughable, so i laughed.
with a proposal that ridiculous, i thought that was what you were going for.
don't get all offended.

You must be like 15 years old. Do you know anything about the Wings, the NHL, or hockey in general? Every time you get on here, you contribute absolutely nothing at all. I think I speak for all posters here when I say you're a dumbass.

oh my god i missed the best part:
ok, you officially win the "LGW comedy hour" award.
there is no way you were serious with that post.
just no way.

Great reasonning, They will match, so just don t try. You re right, when you have an even slight chance to add Stamkos, don t try it.. It is definitively not worth to take the risk?
Besides It s really stupid to say that.. If he hits RFA market, that means there is some problems that an offer sheet will just aggravate in terms of contract structure.(may be cash flow??)

Says who? You might want to get your facts straight before calling me out. Holland had a deal on the table for Hossa up to the moment he signed with Chicago. He absolutely wanted to and tried to sign both players. The only debatable element is how hard did he try to do so?
He absolutely went on the record numerous times saying he would take a steep discount. I believe the cap hit he and his agent wanted was around $5 million from the Wings, though I'm too tired to search for sources now. But after all, he ended up signing in Chicago for $5.5 million cap hit, so $5 million certainly isn't a logical stretch, and it'd be a phenomenal number to have a superstar like Hossa signed for.
Neither of these things are true. Franzen didn't stop us from getting Hossa. He signed first but Holland didn't stop negotiating with Hossa. Flip has always been the most logical guy to move to clear cap space. He'd net the best return for the Wings and he's never played up to his contract in the context of the Wings system (though he'd be underpaid on many other teams, he's a good player, just very dispensable in the Wings system). Holland wanted to sign them both, but he wanted them both for the amount that Franzen signed for. While Franzen shouldn't have and didn't blink an eye at it considering the relative newness of his stardom, Hossa is a career elite player with a complete game worth $8-9 million a year if not more on the open market. Holland could've said goodbye to Samuellson and Hudler before they got the chance to say goodbye first and focused on getting Hossa signed for around $5 million. Then he could have traded Flip for some solid picks and have a bit of cap space to play with to bring in guys like he eventually did such as Bertuzzi and Eaves. He then has to deal with cap hell for 1 year before it all opens up again, and he'll have weathered the storm and come out alive with Hossa signed to an outstanding contract.
But he didn't want to take the risk. Not just with Hossa, but with anyone. He signed Franzen and then half-assed everything else and watched all of his free agents walk away. He admitted himself that he was taken by surprise. He didn't play it write. He didn't focus on what he so often preached which is "VALUE." The best move he could have made to get the most value out of his money was focusing on getting Hossa signed, letting Huds and Sammy walk, dealing Flip for picks. Then he could've used his greatest talent in finding under the radar guys and older guys with something left to prove to fill out the roster, much as he had to do anyways after he was left with nothing because he didn't put any real effort into anything.
Agreed. Completely...and some. It'll never top Toronto getting fingered, but at the very least, there's a lot of potential for everyone to forget that they ever hated Lebda because they'll be so consumed with their anger over Ericsson.

Not valid answer, Max salary is at 12mil and a cap of 9 mil front loaded contract could do it..

Give me one reason why, IF Stamkos will hit RFA agency, Holland should not (will not) offer thoses 4 crappy late 1st for Stamkos??? (Besides that Holland do very few moves..) Burn bridges with Steve? I don t buy that.. We have enough cap space (probably the contender with the most cap space and enough to pull it, particularly considering the 10% rule), and any 3rd-4d D-man overpaid that we could acquire won t make this team better than Stamkos will.. (+the future is with Stamkos)
If a guy like Stamkos, generational talent a la Crosby, doesn t justify to throw an offer sheet to him, i m lost

Not valid answer, Max salary is at 12mil and a cap of 9 mil front loaded contract could do it..

That's the point though. A great GM would have MADE that work. Hossa was actually adamant on staying in Detroit, but Holland was refusing to make any neccessary changes in order to do so. As gmcom7 said, if you have a star player that's willing to stay for a bargain price, you do what you have to do to make it happen. He took the passive route and refused to pull the trigger.

I think Kronwall was always a different player though. Kronwall has always had the potential to be a number 1 defenseman and he showed that he was capable of living up and growing into it when healthy. The issue was certainly the injuries, and it's still a reasonable concern heading into his next contract. Plus, the injuries were more out of his control than his development and play on the ice.
Ericsson hasn't had the injuries. Ericsson has had nothing but plenty of opportunities and ice time. What has he done the whole time he's been a regular on this Wings team?
Struggle.
Sloppy mental game. Far more than occasionally terrible in our zone with the puck. He doesn't use his size. His offense hasn't come through as many expected it to.
Even accounting for potential, he has done absolutely nothing to deserve $3.25 million a year on this team. It's a slap in the face to too many guys and it's a message to anyone on the outside that the days of taking a discount to come to Detroit are over. The Red Wing product has been devalued by this deal.
Think about that point from another perspective entirely.
Consider Apple. Yes, the computer company. Their products are expensive, but arguably considered to be among the best in many classes. Apple products rarely if ever go on sale, and it's never for long or for too steep of a discount. Even if you don't like Apple, you cannot argue that there is a huge demand among consumers for iMacs, iPhones, iPads, etc...with that kind of demand, they don't need to have sales, and more and more people don't care because they still are getting the most value for their dollar.
What would happen if Apple had sales every other week and sold $499 iPads for $299? How many people would buy an iPad while priced at $499 when they know that they can get one for $299 if they just wait a little? Suddenly the product is devalued. The willingness to spend top dollar is gone because now they know that they can get the product cheaper. It's now worth $299.
Furthermore, when you devalue your product, you anger your loyal customer base who paid top dollar for the same product. Remember when the iPhone first came out? It was $599. A few months later they marked it down to $399. What happened? Everyone who bought the iPhone at $599 got pissed. Apple ended up issuing them all $100 gift certificates for anything Apple sold in an effort to make amends, and they learned a lot from that mistake and have yet to come even remotely close to making it again.
Apple's smart enough to never devalue their product. They do not compromise on this, and they make no apologies for their higher prices particularly with computers. After all, they make a great product that consumers want, so why devalue it, and in doing so kill your profits all while also adding some serious stank to the exclusivity associated with owning products that are so highly valued? It would make no sense.
So what I'm getting at with all of this is that signing Jonathon Ericsson is a lot like Apple having a sale. When Ken Holland is negotiating with a defenseman in the future, he can no longer point to Brad Stuart as an example of where the Wings bar is at. Holland would point at Brad Stuart like Apple pointing at a $499 iPad one week while the defenseman is going to say, "yeah but..." and go on to point to Jonathon Ericsson like when Apple had the same iPad on sale for $299. This single signing more than any other signing Holland has ever made has surrendered a tremendous amount of leverage to the players. It shows weakness. It shatters exclusivity. How great can this team be if they're stuck having to pay Ericsson $3.25 million? Again, no one's going to be anxious to take a huge pay cut to play here after this signing. Count on it.
And to address the "furthermore" from the Apple example, you have to ask, how does Jimmy Howard feel about this? How does Dan Cleary feel about this? What about Brad Stuart? Guarantee you that each and every one of them scratched their heads and got a little (or a lot...) pissed tonight. Also, what does this say to Eaves and Miller now? What about Helm, Abdelkader and Kindl? Every last one of them is thinking one thing that is the same: next time around, I'm going to get mine too.
More and more it seems that Ken Holland is dragging the Red Wing brand through the mud. This signing is by far the clearest proof of that. If he can't pull it together in the next year, I'm going to be more than ready to join those thinking that it's time for him to move on. He's smart enough to still be effective, hopefully here, though if not, certainly somewhere else. At this point though, I think he may be too entrenched in the familiarity and loyalty that goes along with it to make the right decisions. He's compromising too much when he shouldn't, not moving fast enough when he needs to and he just seems wholly unwilling to take risks or deal anyone away to try and make the team better or set the team up to be in a better position to sign guys to make the team better.
Again, I've never been a Holland basher. I've rarely critiqued deals much past occasionally raising an eyebrow. I've given him the benefit of the doubt time and again. But too many negative patterns have been emerging the last 3-4 years that have brought to the point tonight at which I'm for the very first time questioning whether Holland still has what it takes to manage this team.

Give me one reason why, IF Stamkos will hit RFA agency, Holland should not (will not) offer thoses 4 crappy late 1st for Stamkos??? (Besides that Holland do very few moves..) Burn bridges with Steve? I don t buy that.. We have enough cap space (probably the contender with the most cap space and enough to pull it, particularly considering the 10% rule), and any 3rd-4d D-man overpaid that we could acquire won t make this team better than Stamkos will.. (+the future is with Stamkos)
If a guy like Stamkos, generational talent a la Crosby, doesn t justify to throw an offer sheet to him, i m lost

I appreciate what Holland has done in the past (even though a lot of that credit should go to Ilitch's money, Bowman, no salary cap, Yzerman and Lidstrom).
However, I haven't been too keen on his unwillingness to make deadline moves the last two seasons, coupled with the Modano and Hudler acqusitions, and now this Ericsson overpayment.
In sports, it's what have you done for me lately. That's the way thinking should go, otherwise teams won't ever progress anywhere by living in the past.

I just continue to be in awe of Holland's amazing negotiating abilities. The guy just continues to have one great signing after another.
Best GM in the league right there! Am I right or am I right?
+1 please!

This
Franzen or Hossa???