xtrememachine1

I want Parise more, but our defense is really deteriorating fast and we NEED Suter more. Defense drives this team.

I agree. If somehow we can fill up our top two lines without having to use Franzen and put him on the third line, we would be incredibly difficult to play against. Bert and/or Cleary shouldn't be on the top two, but Filppula should. He had great chemistry with Z this year. Helm is more than capable of being the third line center, whether is a checking or scoring line.

Not to take anything away from Smith, but I think his success has more to do with the team/system or goaltending coach than him. Bryzgalov was great there, goes to Philly and he's terrible. Smith was terrible everywhere else, goes to Phoenix and now he's great(?). Mike Smith's success makes Dave Tippett look better than Mike Smith himself.

Its moments like last night that make me glad the Caps aren't my favorite team. What another gut wrenching loss. It would be different if they just lost, but to lose like that... I don't know how they'll be up for the next game.

Yeah and I don't think Nick's going to beat up his 42 year old body to play for way less than what he has been making. Lidstrom says $5 mil, Kenny has to pay it. He's can't refuse that offer and let him walk/retire. In fairness to Nick, he DID win the Norris two years ago. His numbers were down this year, but so were everyone else's numbers. He's not the player he was 10 years ago, but he's still one of the elite. The only reason he'll come back is for a final run at a championship, but at the same time, he's not going to screw himself out of money. They have plenty of cap space and the caps going up, I don't see Nick taking a big pay cut. Way too many factors to prevent this from happening from the ownership down through our prospects. I'd love to have both of these guys, however the teams problem, according to Babcock at least, is depth. Spending more than $14 mil on just two players won't fix the depth problem and it'll make things tough down the line especially if they're long term deals. Plus, their's always injury potential. Anyone remember Derian Hatcher? Imagine if that was during the salary cap era. Parise missed almost all of last year with a knee injury. Not saying he's injury prone, but another knee injury isn't out of the realm of possibility here. I've been saying this for a couple years now, we NEED a backup goalie. Not Joey MacDonald. Sure he did fine this year, but I don't want us in that situation. Howie's been injured in each of the last two years and hasn't played in more than 63 games in a season. If Lidstrom's trying to make one final run for a Cup, we can't be risking it all on Howard's health because let's face it, we're not winning it with J-Mac. I don't think we need a backup to push Jimmy, we need one to keep the season relevant if he gets injured. Yes and last year the fans here wanted Brad Richards, James Wisniewski and Christian Erhoff. The year before that everyone wanted us to sign Kovalchuk to a Franzen type deal. The fans of every team want all the best UFA's out there every summer. Not signing Parise and Suter this summer won't be the end of the world. Quite frankly I'd be surprised to see both of them sign here. How often do you see the biggest names in free agency sign with the same team in any sport? It happens, but not that much and its pretty surprising when it does happen. So I'm not exactly sold on the whole idea of "sign them both or we're screwed".

Really surprised by this series. It seemed like the Flyers has this thing going their way in Game 2, then all of a sudden in the 3rd period the Devils like flipped a switch and took over the whole series. Seeing as how the Flyers were so dominant against the Pens, its pretty surprising to see them down this quick.

All this talk about teams prospects came up because you said "I don't see why either one would sign with the wings", yet here is a poll done by the players this past year where the 2nd most desired place to play is Detroit and you disregard it. Whatever the players reasons may be, actual NHL players said they would like to play in Detroit. The consensus among the players seem to think Detroit is still a good destination to play and have a chance to win the Stanley Cup and they're right. We still have Datsyuk and Zetterberg in their primes, a good, young, up and coming goaltender, possibly the greatest defenseman of all time, strong ownership, good coaching, smart front office, great scouting and a long history of winning.

Wow! I never considered this to be a possibility, but I guess it could happen. If that's our defense, we may not make the playoffs, plain and simple. Keeping on topic, I think Quincey stays. We'll offer him a one or two year deal at the same price. With the cap going up and defensemen being overpaid in the market, keeping his salary the same is the equivalent of giving him less. You can't give up a 1st round pick for a guy that's basically a rental. Give him at least a whole season on your team, in your system, then make the determination if he's worth a roster spot next year.

Sounds like it should be a good off season for Wings fans.

I saw this and couldn't stop laughing Karl Alzner’s dogs didn’t take last night’s loss too well

I would imagine being lazy and sucking IS against team rules.

Not that the NHL fixes or tries to fix their games *cough*Penguins*cough*, but Kings vs Flyers would be the best possible matchup for the league as far as interest goes. Two big cities. Both teams smashing their opponents with ease. The obvious storyline with Richards and Carter on the Kings.

The way the Kings steamrolled Vancouver, it should be no surprise what they're doing to St Louis. Obviously there's still a lot of hockey to be played, but its looking like the Kings are headed to the Finals.

Kind of harsh, especially since Eaves just signed that deal and missed the year because of an injury. Its not like he was ineffective. Bert and Clearly won't be traded. Their value is really low right now, I don't see why anyone would want them even for prospects. Bert just signed a deal too, you don't put guys that just signed on waivers. You don't want to scare away other potential free agents. Actually after Bowman left he made a number of big moves. Hatcher, Lang, Cujo, resigned Hasek, traded for Schneider. Its since the cap was put in place that he's been more cautious and with good reason. I sure would hate to see the Wings be up against the cap in a couple years with Datsyuk ready to become a UFA. Not if he's getting a "big" pay cut now. If he's making $4 mil this year, that's not going to be enough to re-sign Howard, White, and Filppula and Datsyuk the year after that. If the cap goes up by a ton or gets eliminated altogether, then that's a different story, but right now Holland has to assume the cap will be the same or very similar years from now. I never said it was exciting, I just said those are the types of moves Holland will probably make. Babcock said that the team needs better depth. Blowing $14 mil on two players doesn't fill out depth, it makes us a top heavy team and gives us a lot less flexibility down the line, in regards to the cap, to re-sign core members of this team.

You don't ask the 7 time Norris trophy winning captain and face of the franchise to take a HUGE paycut. Maybe he just makes $5.5 this year or $5, but anything less, unless suggested by Lidstrom himself, is insulting. I mean, I understand he didn't have a great year, but he didn't have a great year in 2004 either. Everybody's numbers were down this year and he was no exception. If Lidstrom decides against retirement, Holland needs to give him a Lidstrom worthy contract. As for being with Suter and Parise, they're not getting both. That's not realistic. As I mentioned in another thread, someone will drastically overpay for Parise and he'll be out of our price range. Suter's a defenseman and defense is really going high the past couple years, so it wouldn't surprise me to see him get out of our range too. For them to come here, we would need them to WANT to be here. If they chase the money, we'll have neither. Realistic moves by Holland would be signing Scott Hannan, a defensive minded defenseman that helped Calgary's PK this past season. Michal Rozsival, a puck moving defenseman with good hockey sense. Maybe they get Matt Carle from Philly. Dominic Moore, a good two way center with some offensive upside. Sammy Pahlsson or maybe we go after Paul Gaustad since we saw first hand how effective he can be in the playoffs. Maybe they take a chance on Brad Boyes, a former 40 goal scorer, I'd imagine he'd come cheap. These are the types of moves Holland will realistically make. Its not Holland's style, since the cap was put in place, to go after the crown jewels of the free agency class. It IS his style to go after low priced players and get a lot out of them.

I think Hitchcock will get it. The Blues were lousy, he comes in and they're 2nd in the conference. Can't argue with that. This trophy means nothing though for the reasons stated earlier, plus if you look at Bylsma, he won it last year, Pens fans and the media want to run him out of town now after his first round loss. This award is quickly forgotten.

LOL Abby, Eaves and Kindl are just gone like that? Plus, who is going to trade for Cleary and Bert? I'm assuming those are salary dump deals. An entire line of players that has very little NHL experience doesn't seem like something Holland would do. Its fine that you come up with these plans and rosters and lines, but the theme of this is thread is "what would Ken Holland really do?". I don't see him trading Bert, Cleary, Eaves and Kindl and just letting Abdelkader go. I also don't see us signing both Parise AND Suter. One other thing you're not taking into account is that Filppula, White and Howard will all be UFA's next summer. Datsyuk will be a UFA the year after that. If we're signing all these players for multi-year contracts and spending up to the cap, how do we retain these other players going forward? Its not as easy as, "we can mathematically fit them onto our team next year so let's do it". Its unfortunately a lot more difficult than that which is why Holland will have a tough time this summer.

This is a thread to talk about what could realistically happen. Parise at $7 Mil, sure. Suter at $6 mil? Never. If Wiz is getting $5.5 from Columbus, Suter is getting at LEAST $6.5mil, but more realistically $7mil. Semin for $5 mil? While I do agree that he'll get less than his current salary of $6.7 mil, $5mil? His numbers haven't exactly been great lately, plus him getting demoted to the 4th line every now and then, I don't see him right now being better than Hudler. Not to mention, he's probably one of the softest players in the league. Lidstrom for $2.6 mil is the worst though. He's not going to come back for another season at that price.

I remember the Wings doing that during the Dave Lewis days too. They would just pepper Giguere or Kiprusoff with all these perimeter shots and nothing was going in. I remember watching Shanny and Hull blast it from virtually anywhere into Giguere's pads like if they shot it hard enough it would go through him. I'd rather see the Wings set up a play and take 18 shots with a better chance of them going in rather than shoot the puck from anywhere and rack up 40 SOG. That series was very 2003, 2004, 2006 for us.

While there's nobody on the free agent market I want more, I would be surprised to see him come to Detroit. Some idiot GM out there looking to keep his job by making an off season "splash" will throw $8 or $9 mil at him and that will be the end of that. Maybe he turns down one of those offers to sign with a competitive team for slightly less, but one thing is for sure he'll get these insane deals from desperate teams.

Yeah, that is pretty sickening. 9 goals for us in the entire series and the Coyotes match that with 9 goals in less than two games. Phoenix scored more goals in a little over 2 periods than we did in the last three games combined. Ridiculous. I know there's talk about us not being deep enough and Babcock even mentioned that and I do agree that our 3rd and 4th lines need to be better, but to see a team like Phoenix score 9 goals in 2 games when it took us, a team with many talented stars, 5 games to score that many, that's on the coach. Whether it be preparation or motivation, coaching was a contributing factor to our early exit.

So Marty is complaining that he was interfered with on the final goal... for the life of me I can't see it. I don't see JVR making contact, I don't see him moving Brodeur's stick, if anything Brodeur might have made contact with JVR as he was out of his crease and JVR was standing with his back to him, but I saw nothing other than a player screening a goalie.

So does this mean Lundqvist will win the Vezina? As a goalie, how could you be nominated as one of the best 3 players in the league and not be the best at your position?

Tough series. I want the Caps to win, but this being easy at all. Caps in 6 with lots of OT games.

I have no faith in the Devils after watching them struggle against the Panthers. Plus, Marty was 1-3 against them in the regular season, not that that means anything. Flyers in 5.