xtrememachine1

Just as an FYI to everyone that's down on the Wings after this loss. We beat TB 3-2 in Game 1 last year and went on to lose the series. As poorly as the Wings have played for the last two months, I still believe this series is very winnable. I can't imagine Datsyuk's career ending to a team that we nearly beat last year and is now missing a couple key players. Howard should remain the goaltender for now. Confidence has been his problem these past couple years and yanking him after Game 1 won't do him any favors. The Boston game aside, he's been pretty good for us the past 2-3 weeks.

Unless Fleury AND Murray are out, it'll be the Pens taking this one. Honestly, I think Matt Murray is better than Fleury right now, but Fleury has experience which, at this point in the season, is really important. The Pens have been killing Lundqvist lately, so I don't know what the NYR will do to fix that problem. Unless the Rangers radically change up their strategy against the Pens or the Pens strategy doesn't translate well in the postseason, Pens will have this in 5.

Western Conference: Wild v. Stars (Wild shouldn't even be in the playoffs) Hawks v. Blues (Tough series, but the Blues will continue to suffer in the postseason) Sharks v. Kings (LA looks as good as ever) Preds v. Ducks (Another tough series. Nashville would have done better in another division) Eastern Conference: Islanders v. Panthers (I don't think much of the Isles. Jagr's group should be able to handle them) Wings v. Lightning (TB banged up, we want revenge and will hopefully be playing inspired with Dats retirement on their minds) Flyers v. Caps (Caps are way too good, but Philly will make a series out of it) Rags v. Pens (Pens will get their revenge on NYR for two previous playoff eliminations. They have Lundqvist's number for some reason this year) I really like the bracket that we're in. The Isles, Panthers and Lighting are all teams we can beat in a playoff series. It all comes down to the Wings game mentally. The past couple months, it doesn't matter who we play, we look flat and uninspired. If we get our crap together, there's no reason why they shouldn't be in the conference finals.

ESPN did a great job covering the NHL. Not so much on Sportscenter, but I feel like you could always turn on one of those two channels and always see hockey. I miss NHL2Night

It makes ZERO sense to not trade his contract. I don't think Mr Ilitch will be okay with that. We're losing our franchise center after this and there's another, younger, franchise center that's becoming a UFA this summer that we're already rumored to go after. There's no way, no how, they don't try to get rid of that contract and get that cap space. This is $5.5 mil in cap space we're talking about here. Plus, I read somewhere that the cap is going down next year. With Datsyuk leaving and Stamkos becoming a UFA, the stars are aligning for this to happen.

Everyone can point at this player or that goalie, but the heart of loss like today, fall square on the coach's shoulders. You have EVERYTHING to play for, the other team is playing their second stringers and they couldn't get it done. To hell with talent, will power alone should have been enough to get the job done in this scenario and it wasn't. THIS is on the coach. He needs to motivate, get these guys excited, hungry, angry. Sometimes they just look scared. They play like they have no heart at all. Unfortunately, Blashill's a young first year coach and its a learning experience for him. We can't give up on him this early. Its not like he took a Stanley Cup contender and turned them into a lottery team. Having said that, I'm afraid to see what's going happen in the playoffs. Does this team change something up and play like a playoff team or will they continue to put forth these uninspired performances?

I was just thinking he did more for us as a Bruin than he ever did for us when he actually was a Red Wing. lol

Never has making the playoffs felt so lousy. Blah. I hope getting into the playoffs will give them a new mindset or these next 4 games will be torture for us to watch.

Well this has been a season of ups and downs for sure, but if we win THIS game in regulation against a bunch of the Rangers second stringers, none of the downs will matter anymore. That's the nice thing about the playoffs, nothing that happened up to that point matters anymore, if you make it. Its a fresh start. A clean slate. Here's hoping for a clean slates and 25th straight playoff appearance.

Considering how poorly the Wings played against Philly a couple weeks ago, this is HUGE. Two weeks ago they looked like a team of amateurs against the NHL all stars. Last night, we pretty much played a perfect game. Fortunately, Howard is playing like a reliable goalie again and we're starting to play our best hockey at just the right time. Unfortunately, we still have work to do. We still need to get points, we need to beat Boston. Hopefully we can keep the ball rolling tonight in Beantown.

So basically what you're saying is, we NEED to beat Boston to get into the playoffs regardless of what happens tonight. Boston won't lose to Ottawa at home with the postseason on the line. We're 1-2 against them this year, but we've been pretty evenly matched with them all year, so a 2-2 record against them seems appropriate.

I can't imagine Mrazek playing in any of these last 3 games unless Howard is really bad or gets injured. Mrazek has one win in his last six games and was shelled in most of those losses. Howard has won 3 of his last 4 and has given up just two goals in each of those games. This is why I never get into those Mrazek vs Howard arguments. We NEED them both.

Do you think Boston will lose at home against the Canes or Sens? We need to win out to make the playoffs or some sort of Boston meltdown.

Well we didn't make the most of the easy teams that were on our schedule recently, so now we're going to have to beat the good teams to get into the post season. Boston and NYR on the road, Philly at home, its not going to be easy to say the least. Meanwhile, Boston has all three games left at home and its CAR, OTT and DET. As long as we win, we'll stay ahead, but right now I feel like we're down 3-1 in a playoff series. We can't have anymore mishaps. We can't afford to have anymore games with the effort that got us shutout by Toronto or blowout by Pittsburgh.

This is a tough bullet for the TB and specifically Yzerman. Tough for the team to not have their best player going into the playoffs. Tough for Yzerman because he had the opportunity to trade him and passed, hoping that Stamkos' talent would be able to get them back into the Finals and possibly win a Cup. Now they face the real possibility doing nothing in the playoffs and losing him for nothing. With all the Datsyuk talk about him retiring, it almost feels like the stars are aligning for him to come to Detroit. Healthwise, I hope everything is alright and gets better soon and this doesn't become a lingering problem. Pascal Dupuis was forced to retire from blood clots and Chris Bosh has problems with blood clots.

It should be noted that Mrazek has now played in more games this season than he has in any single season at any level. Rookies, in pretty much every sport, have trouble with fatigue creeping in during the second half of the season. Larkin is experiencing a bit of a slump himself. I'm not ready to give up on Mrazek, however, all this getting chased from net business can't be good for his confidence and confidence is why Howard is playing so poorly.

I'm all for trading Howard simple because of the cap space. He's not playing like a $5 mil goalie. We could get a $1 mil goalie to play just as well. On that subject, in 2007 we made it to the conference finals with an aging Hasek making less than a mil and then back to back trips to the finals with Osgood making a little over $1 mil. Many teams over the past 10 years have made it to the Finals with goalies that didn't make a lot of money. If saving that money helps us boost the defense, I'm all for it. Sign Al Montoya in the off season or see how cheap Cam Ward could be. Then go after Luke Schenn and/or Alex Goligoski or Keith Yandle.

LOL no. No, no, no, no no. Just no. While he will definitely make changes, if what he did with the Pens is any indication of what he'll do, things will go from bad to worse. He drafted Jordan Staal over Jonathan Toews and Phil Kessel. Traded away tons of draft picks and prospects for rentals and have been feeling the effects of it the past couple seasons. He's a "gamblin man" which is fun at the time, but when things don't work out and he loses those bets, you'll be wishing you still had "kickin tires Kenny".

The numbers are correct, but I don't think that you're understanding why the numbers are the way they are. If the forwards were focused more on scoring goals, rather than bailing out our defense, we would be scoring more goals. If the defense was holding the blue line and making things happen offensively, even if that something is keeping the puck in the zone, our offensive (and defensive) numbers would be better. I think you're underestimating the importance of having good defensemen and how they can impact a hockey team. Most of the Wings defensemen in the 90's were really good offensively and average-above average defensively. We had some stay at home d-men, but they were not the reason for our success. You mention Lidstrom, Murphy and Chelios like they were add ons to an already great defense. They were the great defense. Rouse, Ramsey, Pushor, Bergevin were add ons. All the guys I mentioned in my other post, could skate with the puck, pass really well, keep the puck in the offensive zone, shoot accurately and make smart plays. Very few of our current defensemen possess those qualities, none of them possess all of those qualities. Bottom line is if we improve our defense, take some of the defensive pressure off our forwards, we'll start scoring more goals. We have a lot of good young forwards that can replace Datsyuk and Zetterberg once they retire. I feel better about this young group of forwards taking over from D and Z than I did about D and Z taking over Yzerman, Fedorov and Shanahan's spots. On defense though, aside from DK, I don't see anyone that's really going to step up and be what we need on the back end. This needs to be addressed or, like I said earlier, it won't matter who is in our group of forwards because they'll need to help on defense.

I assume when you say ranked better, you're talking Goals Against vs Goals For. You could say that the forwards keeping the puck in the offensive zone would help the D, however, when the Wings were in their glory years, we had a strong defense that could keep the puck in the offensive zone and make good passes to get it out of our own end. Lidstrom, Rafalski, Schneider, Chelios, Fetisov, Konstantinov, Duchesne, Murphy, Coffey, etc. Our forwards never hesitated to pass the puck back to the blueline and have one of those d-men blast it back in. Our forwards never had to worry about whether those guys would get the puck out of their own end either. My point being, I think, our Goals Against is ranked higher than our Goals For because of the forwards coming back to help and it's negatively affecting our scoring numbers. It's difficult to generate offense in the other team's zone, when you can't trust your d-men to hold the blue line and you have to be back checking hard because you if you don't it could end up in your net.

All this talk about Stamkos and Yakupov, which would be a lot of fun if we got one or even both of them, but the biggest problem will remain, our defense. It won't matter who we have playing forward, if our defense isn't good enough to get the puck out of our zone and the forwards have to keep coming back to help, it won't matter if it's Steven Stamkos or Dan Cleary, we won't generate offense.

The ending of this game was very disappointing. You dominate this team for 57 minutes and almost blow it. Unreal. They showed Blash smiling after the win, I would have been staring a hole through each and every one of them. Play for 60 minutes. Just one time. Try it. The first Buffalo goal 10 seconds after we scored the 3rd one was unbelievable. I am SOOO tired of watching the other team score or at least get a great scoring chance right after we score. This is on the coach. You don't dominate for 57 minutes, play like garbage in the last 3 minutes and have it be a player problem. Blash has got to motivate these guys, keep them focused on the task at hand and put out the guys that can accomplish that. Babcock would have had someone's head after that ending. Plus, it would be one thing if the team making the comeback was good, but it's Buffalo. Buffalo. No excuse. They better come ready to play tonight.

I agree with most of your points, specifically this one. When we were at our best, we had a great defense. People are complaining about our lack of production out of Nyquist and Tatar, but how are they supposed to score when the puck is constantly in our end? Honestly, I think our fowards are fine and is without a doubt the best part of our team. I'd like to see the defense get overhauled this offseason. DK, Kronwall and Green are the only ones that stay. If they're really serious about overhauling it, trade Green too. DK is our best, Kronwall is our veteran leader. Getting a bunch of new faces on the blueline may not make things much better, but they honestly can't be any worse than what we have. The goalie situation needs fixed next. We're in a rebuilding phase, so I'd probably go with these two for one more year and see what they can do. If neither one can take over as the #1 guy, get rid of them both and sign a veteran. I'm like 90% sure that with Mrazek it's a conditioning thing. He's never played this many games in a single season and the season isn't even over yet. This happens with a lot of young players, in pretty much every sport, actually. They're simply not used to playing this much in this amount of time at this level. With Howard, it's a confidence thing. For those with short memories, this guy is a former NHL all star, that was a rock for us from 2010-2013. If he can fix his confidence problem, he could be great for us again. Unfortunately, that's a tough thing to fix. Finally, the coaching. Blashill's only in his first year, so its tough to be too critical of him. However, this team was near the top of the division at the All Star break, nothing changed personnel wise and now we're currently out of a playoff spot and losing to teams we should be beating. That's a coaching problem. We're losing to Columbus, getting shutout at home to Toronto, struggling to win against the Jets and Habs. When we play playoff teams we're getting outplayed and blown out badly. This wasn't happening earlier in the season, but it's happening now. That's a coaching problem. There doesn't seem to be any intensity or desperation. Most of the time we're losing before some people even get to their seats. A lot of times right after we score, the other team either gets it right back or at least gets a really good scoring chance. That's coaching. Blashill's a young guy and will have growing pains. I didn't expect him to come in and be another Bowman or Babcock, but he's a guy that has a tough task ahead.

Its a little early for "end of the streak" talk. We still have a pretty favorable schedule and Boston is struggling just as badly as we are. Still a lot of hockey to be played.

Agreed. His confidence is shaken and his play has definitely dropped. The defense isn't that great, no doubt, but its the same defense that played in front of him all season. One of the biggest aspects of his game that's changed for the worse is letting up big rebounds. This defense simply isn't good enough to handle clearing those away.