xtrememachine1

This looks like "Jordan Staal Part II". Quite frankly I'm surprised Shero made that kind of offer. Does he not understand that one of the contributing factors to the Pens failures is the fact that they have no depth? Crosby makes almost $9 mil per year, Malkin is over $9 mil, Fleury, Martin and Neal are all making $5 mil. And now you want to blow another $7 mil on a one dimensional defenseman? I think they're lucky he rejected the deal.

Great stuff! I like looking at the public voting and seeing 53% picked someone (Mike Gartner, Larry Murphy, Ron Francis) other than Yzerman. Really? lol

The last four points reinforce the main point, but the first point is all that really matters. He is our top goal scorer, however, that will change weather he's on our team or not. He was on pace for another 28 goal season, which is great, and he's still a useful player right now but his style of play will wear down his body fast and for a guy that used to be huge for us in the playoffs, he's done pretty much nothing over the past 3 playoff runs. He won't get better, he will get worse and I think it would be foolish for this to end any other way other than a buyout. The Wings cannot get stuck with this contract after he turns 35.

Because he's getting bought out, the next contract he'll sign will probably be low. Hopefully Stevie told him how great it was to play in Detroit.

That seems a little steep for a guy with injury problems. Those problems aren't going to go away as he gets older either.

Not surprising, but Jagr won't be back with the Bruins. http://prohockeytalk.nbcsports.com/2013/06/26/jagr-wont-be-back-with-bruins-hortons-future-less-clear/ I wonder if this is someone Holland takes a chance on. Pros: Jagr will probably sign just a one year deal wherever he goes. We NEED a top six forward and the pickings are kind of slim. We saw with Boston that he can be a strong two way player. He is and always has been a puck possession player. Cons: He'll sign with the highest bidder, which makes him too expensive. Maybe it had to do with injury, but he looked like a 41 year old player by the end of the SCF and this was a shortened season. I wouldn't want him taking a roster spot from one of our up and coming young guns, but at the same time, I don't see any of them being a top 6 forward next year and if we don't get someone, we're looking at Cleary, Samuelsson or Bertuzzi (or possibly all of them) in the top 6.

To each his own. The Wings were not expected to do anything this year and I felt the most important part of this year was the development of our young guys. I mean, if our top prospects don't perform well, we're looking at some lean years, lottery draft picking years. Seeing them take it to Chicago, a team that eventually won the Stanley Cup, is very promising. Seeing them win the Calder Cup down in the AHL is even more promising. Losing never feels good, especially to Chicago, but there's a big shiny silver lining to this past season and maybe that makes me a glass half full kind of guy, but the promise these young guys showed this spring outshine the loss. Again though, that's just me.

Joel is a good coach in that he came up with a good system that works for the Hawks and their team to make them successful. He's not a good coach at making adjustments. He had no answer for what Babcock was doing and when he did change something, Babcock came right back and countered.

Our defense does need a little bit of a boost, but I'm not sure. His passing skills would do great here, but I don't know about the rest of his game. Teams are so desperate for defensemen right now though, I bet someone throws a decent amount of cash his way, so its really a non-issue for us.

Well said. Being terrible for many years, accumulating high end draft picks and having some success doesn't exactly compared to being a Cup contender for over 20 years in a row. Its way too early to call Chicago a model franchise. Like you said, do it for 20 years, then you have something.

Yeah, no kidding. They did talk about us a bunch after the Hawks won the Cup. If you weren't a hockey fan and just turned it on at the end, you would've thought they beat the Wings to win the Cup. It doesn't sting for me in the least. We were an inexperience 7th seed that barely made the playoffs. I wasn't expecting us to even take it that far. Plus, our young guys ended up getting a nice Calder Cup championship out of it.

Congrats to the Hawks. Even with the injuries to Toews and Hossa, they still pulled out a series win. Having said that, after Game 3 Boston looked like a completely different team. I don't know if it was a loss of focus because maybe they thought they had this in the bag or more likely they were exhausted, but the passing wasn't there like it had been and the speed wasn't there on the offensive forecheck. I know he got hurt last night, but Jagr played like a 41 year old hockey player in the last 3 games. Krejci pretty much disappeared. Marchand didn't have the speed like he did before. Rask looked pretty unsure of himself at the end too. He was so confident in net and in the zone and then after that 6 goal game, he never got back into form. Patrice Bergeron's injury was tough on them. He's a pretty important part of their team and his injury can't be understated. As its been said before in this thread, we were the closest team to knocking off the Hawks and that's pretty damn good considering all of the inexperience we had on our team and the fact that we weren't expected to do anything. We weren't lucky either. It was inexperience, some bad luck and some bad breaks that led to our loss.

Congrats to the GR Griffins and their first Calder Cup!! The next generation of Red Wings is looking pretty good

I think at this point, unless Boston quits playing or suffers an injury to a star player, there's no way they can lose this. Chicago was having trouble just getting shots on goal and when they did it was just one shot and no rebound. Rask will stop those all day. If it wasn't for that cheap third goal, off the skate, in Game 1, this series could be 3-0 right now. On a side note, does anyone else think this is Jagr's best playoffs post-1996. The numbers aren't there and he doesn't have a goal in the playoffs, but he looks like a very well rounded player. He's making some nice plays defensively, setting up offense. He's contributing in big ways that don't show up on stat sheet.

After the playoff he had, he more than deserves this. Great signing!

I was actually teasing a friend of mine who is a HUGE Letang fan saying he should go to Detroit. But actually that might not be a bad idea. Give us a good right handed shot from the point, a true powerplay QB, he'd fit right into our system. I don't see why he couldn't be another Brian Rafalski for us.

I kind of figured he'd get a deal like this, but $9.5 mil and he's somewhat injury prone. Plus, you're already committing $8.7 mil per year to another player who's even more injury prone. This top heavy, shootout, superstar team might do well in the regular season, but its proven it can't handle the playoffs. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have resigned Malkin, but I don't know if signing someone to a huge contract that eats up a bunch of cap space is a good idea when the cap's going down and your team has been exposed several times in the postseason as having a ton of holes and lack of depth. Letang's pretty much a goner and your blue line is already the weak point on the team. I keep reading Pens fans saying "Okay, let's go lock up Tanger long term. And then Duper and then Iginla. And then get Cooke back!". I'm like, "You know there's a salary cap right? And these guys aren't going to play for free" I'm soooo glad the Wings don't think like this and they would rather have a well balanced team.

I thought this series against Boston was very telling of Bylsma's coaching skill. Most teams the Pens face in the East are pushovers and they just overwhelm them with talent, but as soon as they face a team that plays any kind of system and has talent, they struggle horribly. Boston had a plan to shutdown the Pens scoring and the not a single adjustment was made, besides putting in Tyler Kennedy. No line swapping, no change in style of play, no adjustments to what Boston was doing, nothing. If they can't win on talent alone, then they meltdown and that's on the coach. They got lucky in '09 with the Devils and Bruins getting knocked out and us having all those injuries. They got lucky in 2010 when the top 3 teams in the East fell in the first round. They got lucky again this year with the Isles and Sens in the first couple rounds. Pens fans get this "false hope" that the team is going to just steamroll everyone the way they steamrolled all these lesser teams.

Dave Tippett would have been a great fit for the Pens. The guy has made every team he's coached on play way above their talent level. He turned Marty Turco, Illya Bryzgalov and Mike Smith into stars.

I really don't get how Byslma gets extended. You have arguably the two best players in the league on your roster and every spring for the past 4 years has been a playoff embarrassment. Oh well, I guess I don't have to worry about them getting Dave Tippett. lol

Well since getting scared by the Leafs in the first round, the B's are 8-1 and just swept the top seeded Penguins, who also led the league by a wide margin in goals for during the regular season and were held to just 2 goals for the entire series. Its really hard NOT to pick the Bruins here. I think this series will be similar to ours. Toews and Kane will get swarmed by defenders, they won't be able to forecheck as well against Boston's system and I think the B's could have this in 6 games. I would say 5 games, but I think Chicago is good enough to prevent the Cup from being won on their ice.

My favorite line from watching the sports talks shows here is "50 years from now, we'll look back on this and still have no idea how the Pens lost this series." Watching Milbury and Jones on NBC was like watching them mourn over the loss of a friend, saying how surprising it was. The sweep was the surprise, the results was not. Sure the Pens had all the talent to win a Cup, but that's pretty much it. It takes more than talent to win it. Boston was well coached, well organized, they played a great defensive system, people were in position all the time, passes were sharp and frequent, nobody panicked when they had the puck and they capitalized on defensive breakdowns. That's how the Pens lost. Boston was well prepared. It was obvious from Game 1. Bylsma will be gone, when your expectations are that high and your roster is that loaded, somebody has to take the fall. I just hope they don't go out and get Dave Tippett to replace him. Look at how much he got out of the Coyotes, I would hate to see him in Pittsburgh.

Great performance by the Pens last night. They played like a desperate team, but unfortunately for them, it wasn't enough. If they had played like this in the first two games, it probably wouldn't be 3-0 right now. Malkin was strong all night, but didn't score. Vokoun was much better, but gave up more goals than his counterpart. People are saying that Crosby is hurt which is why he's so ineffective in this series. No, I think Crosby's problem is that he's getting swarmed every time he touches the puck by B's defenders. This isn't the Islanders. He's not going to have all that open space against the Bruins especially in Boston where they can get the match ups they want.

Speaking of the Pens losing at home, today is the 5 year anniversary of when we captured our 11th Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh aka the best sports moment of my life!