xtrememachine1

I can't ever remember a team getting so many easy matchups in a playoff run as the Pens have these past couple years. Last year was especially easy. First round this year, they have the team that they've pretty much owned since they drafted Crosby. They'll likely end up facing the Caps again and we all know how that'll go. The Caps just aren't built for the playoffs. Its incredible how easy their path is for the third straight year. Whomever would give them a problem always gets knocked out by someone else. That was even the case back in 2009 when Boston and NJ (both teams did really well against the Pens that year in the regular season) were both knocked out by Carolina and then the Pens just swept them. Remember back in the day when we'd have to beat a heavily stacked Colorado and Dallas teams just to make it to the Finals? Sorry, ranting here, its not the Pens fault, they can't control who they play, but its just maddening to see them get these kinds of breaks over and over again. Boston or TB could give them a tough matchup, but I just know NJ will knock both of them out after two long brutal 7 games series with several multiple OT games and the Pens will just tear right through them to the Finals again and face a 6,7 or 8 seed from the West.

He was a bit of a letdown for me this year. Holding out, wanting to prove himself and his stats were about the same as last year. At times, he looked very dominant on the ice, but unfortunately, most of the time, he was anything but dominant. Having said that though, he's only 23, has shown that, at times, can be a very good player and I'd hate to trade him and see him gain that consistency to his game with another team. I just remember the Penguins giving up on Markus Naslund back in 1996 and he was about the same age as AA and was posting very similar stats. Pens traded him to Vancouver for junk and he excelled into a superstar there. I'm not saying the same thing will happen here, but I remember watching Naslund play, sometimes even alongside Mario and I can tell you right now, AA shows more promise now than Naslund did then.

He gave up 3 goals over a span of like 4 minutes. He absolutely should have been yanked. The defense wasn't great on that third goal, but his positioning for all three goals was awful and that's been the big problem with him since coming to the NHL. That Glendening goal, off the right wing, happens to Mrazek all the time. Definitely a weak spot for him and he can't seem to correct it. He can yell at the coach all he wants, he hasn't been very good for them since the trade and they nearly came back and won with Lyon in net.

I never cheer for my team to lose even if it moves them closer to getting a better draft pick. Let's say you cheer for them to lose, you get the pick you want and they pick someone else or they pick the guy everyone wants and he's a bust. Now you're back to square one and you're still cheering against your team? Cheer for your team, hope that younger players get experience and confidence playing at the NHL level and that carries them into the next year. If you get the top pick in the draft and he works out, great. If not, no worries, there's a Steve Yzerman behind every Pat LaFontaine.

I gave it a B. I went into this trade deadline with the mindset that we need to free up cap space for next year. Larkin, Mantha, AA all need new contracts and we were right up against the cap. Mrazek is gone. Tatar and his $5.3 mil contract is gone. Mike Green and his $6 mil will be off the books this summer as well. There's potential that we could re-sign him, which I wouldn't be opposed to as good defensemen are hard to find, but he'll be 33 next year and I don't see why someone with his skills at his age would want to say with a team that's in a rebuilding process. So in all likelihood, we'll have another $6 mil in cap space. Which, obviously, is great. Nyquist, Kronwall and Howard are all up after next year, so that's another $15 mil there. I think we're in good shape, cap wise, to resign some key players for our future. We don't want a situation where we're losing these guys because we're locked in with an underperforming vet. The one mark against Holland for this deadline is the inability to move Green. Yes, I know he was injured and his NTC limited where he could go, but why wasn't he traded well before his injury? Why wasn't he traded right after the All Star game? Why are we risking the potential of him getting injured and waiting until the last minute to deal him? I get it, hindsight is 20/20, but its not like his value was going to increase anymore. My point is, all of this should have been handled before his injury occurred.

Probably trade Green's rights at the draft for a 7th round pick or something.

I feel like most people are ignoring this and just want a reason to vandalize Holland's house. lol

Wow Tatar too? I can't imagine anyone wanting to pay someone $5.3 mil for the next few years for a guy that typically gets around 40 points. Having said that, I think Tatar could excel on another team.

Well you basically have this All Star defenseman in his 30s, on a team that is focusing on a youth movement and needs cap space to sign these younger (potential) superstars. Re-signing Green in the offseason will make signing Larkin, Mantha, AA a lot more difficult. It'll be easier next off season after some other contracts drop off, but right now it doesn't make sense to commit money to Green. What other players do you drop to make cap space? The demand for players like Kronwall, Nyquist, Tatar, Abdelkader, Helm probably isn't high due to their performance and contract situation. I'm just envisioning a nightmare situation like we had with AA and we have almost no cap space and we have a good young player that can't be signed except this time its with 3 good young players.

I'm glad he likes playing in Detroit, Vanek did too, but like him, Green will get traded. It makes zero sense to keep Green beyond the deadline. We're not going anywhere and there is a demand for a defenseman like him right now. It doesn't make sense to bring him back next year either. We need his $6 mil off the books to get some of our younger stars re-signed. Coming off an All Star season, he'd be crazy to take a pay cut, especially considering how overpaid quality defensemen are today.

We traded a first round pick for Kyle Quincy. We can get a 1st round pick or Cal Foote (who is basically the equivalent of a first round pick) for Mike Green.

At the beginning of the year, I hoping they'd trade away both goalies by the end of the year. Well, we're half way there now. Mrazek started off good, had a good first showing in the playoffs, but truthfully he hasn't been good for two full years now. It was around this time in 2016 that he collapsed and aside from a couple times he strung together 2-3 good games, he never got it back. Mrazek was never going to be "our guy", so there's no point in keeping him on the roster IMO. While it would be easy to say that the horrible defense contributed to his poor stats (and that would be fair to say), its his style that bothered me the most. His positioning, his aggressiveness at the wrong time, his inconsistency told me that this was a bigger problem than the defense in front of him. I had hope at the beginning of the year when I read that he was working with a goaltending coach and I think it some ways it paid off this year, but he's still a back up. Now maybe Philly has a goaltending coach that can get through to him and help him improve his game. As far as the return on the trade, we get draft picks, shed $4 mil in salary. He's our backup goalie, we exposed him to the expansion draft, his in the final year of his contract, I don't know how much people expected to get for him, but I'm fine with getting anything. Green will probably be next, that's another $6 mil and probably more picks. Howard, Kronwall and Nyquist are all entering the final years of their contracts next year, I could see them getting dealt within the next year. The rebuild may finally be underway.

If this is how AA plays every night or even most nights, this team will be back in the playoffs sooner than later. He reminds me a lot of Fedorov. The way he skates, the speed, the way he controls the game. People complain about his ability to finish. Well, AA gets two goals on 7 shots and he needs to "learn how to finish". Ovechkin does the exact same thing most nights and he's a sniper. I get that Ovie's a 50 goal scorer, but takes performances like AA's from the last few games and spread it out over a season and he's up in the 50 goal tier too.

I think that maybe because he's a young coach, they're giving him the benefit of the doubt and giving him some time. Unless others and myself are misreading this (which is possible) this problem we're having is more locker room than talent. We have holes in the lineup to be sure, but I feel like we could have the 2nd coming of Nick Lidstrom and Steve Yzerman on this team and we'd be maybe slightly above 500. As I've mentioned on this board before, literally every player on this team has regressed with Blashill as coach. Meaning, when they first showed up, they played well or at a certain level, then as time went on, they got progressively worse. Larkin is the only one bouncing back, but Nyquist, Tatar, DK, Nielsen, Helm, Howard, Mrazek, etc, they're all performing worse than they were earlier in their careers. Being prepared and putting together good line and defensive combos aside, that is the biggest problem with Blashill because it won't matter who we get in the draft, they won't be developed properly for the NHL.

Absolutely! If Arizona was any indication, he knows how to get the most out of his players. If we're still bad with him as our coach, then we truly have no talent, but I know that's not the case. The team doesn't seem to be responding well to Blash for whatever reason and haven't been since Spring of 2016. Keeping him as coach makes no sense unless they are tanking for better picks. Last night, I noticed Larkin out skating his linemates in a big way, like Mantha and Frk were not able to keep up. He would get into the zone, then have to stick handle until they caught up. Seems like AA would be a great linemate for him in the near future.

In 2015, they barely made the playoffs and got bounced in the first round. The next year they were barely over 500 and fired Johnson, made Sullivan the head coach and became significantly better.

Well he worked with a goaltending coach in the offseason and I thought he looked pretty good against the Caps a few nights ago. Seriously, how many point blank open shots were we going to give to Ovechkin before it finally went into the net? I don't think he'll ever win a Vezina and he has a long way to go before being a legit #1 goalie, but he's shown "some" improvement.

The Wings had a tough stretch of games against good teams, but they played well and could have had a couple of wins. Last night's effort was pretty bad. This loss isn't like the others. Playing well against good teams and losing isn't the same as playing bad against a bad team and losing. If they're up for the game, that's on the coaching staff. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of the blame is on Blash. We have good young players coming in, looking great and then regressing as time goes on. We have players in spots that they shouldn't be in (XO and Jensen on the ice for the final minute against the Caps with a lead, Kronwall on the PP, Abdelkader in the 6 top). Not being prepared for teams that they should beat. Not giving certain players enough ice time (I don't know for sure, but this could be why AA held out). For whatever reason, Blash doesn't seem to be working well with this group of players and I think its about time we start looking elsewhere. Not saying that the Wings are Cup contenders or anything, but the wrong coach can really screw up a team. Look at the Pens a couple years ago with Mike Johnson. Average to below average team, he gets fired, they put Sullivan in and they win two straight Cups. I think if we get a coach that knows how to maximize the potential of these younger players, we're a playoff team for sure. Probably not a Cup contender because of the problems on defense, but a playoff team.

If you are in the minority, you shouldn't be. I had high hopes for Nielsen being a solid two way player, but he doesn't seem to be excelling at either end and for the money we're spending on him, its overpayment.

Geez guys, lose one game and "everybody sucks". It was on the road, against a good team with Mrazek in net. I didn't see the whole game, but Mrazek looks like a guy that can't decide if he should go with his natural tendency or go with what he was recently taught and ends up doing neither and he screws up. At least wait until March to get down on the team and start looking forward to a possible first overall pick. Probably just me being overly optimistic, but if the defensemen situation gets fixed, we're a playoff team. I look at teams like Ottawa and Nashville and they went deep into the playoffs last year and I'd take our group of forwards over theirs any day.

Daley looked good in his first official game as a Wing. Green looked like what we would expect out of him on the powerplay and what we would expect out of him in his own end too. Ericsson and DK were not noticeable which for d-men is good, I guess. XO and Jensen were great in the offensive zone, not so much in their own end. Not to beat a dead horse, but defensemen is what will make or break us. Our forwards are good, but not if they have to backcheck and play defense the whole game. Howard is good, but he can't face 40+ shots every night. I thought the defense helped with the offense more than usual last night, which is great, but they had some bad lapses in their own end too. Promising start, still plenty of room for improvement.

The excitement of the season combined with the excitement of the new arena, I'm thinking we win it by a score of 5-2. Booth will get the first goal in LCA for the feel good story, Larkin and Mantha will each have 3 points on the night and we'll be overrating this team for the next couple days.

That's a nice looking group of forwards. Lots of speed and two way ability. Now if we could just get the defense looking that good.

Ironically enough, the guy that busted his butt in preseason and will take AA's roster spot wrote about his experience in the KHL. Maybe AA and any other player looking to jump ship should read this first. https://www.hockeyministries.org/home-ice/blog/my-experience/

Apparently Sproul and Booth are on waivers now. https://www.wingingitinmotown.com/2017/10/2/16400384/red-wings-sign-david-booth-to-a-one-year-two-way-contract UPDATE: But Helene St James says, if Booth clears waivers he'll be in the lineup on Thursday. I'm confused, I thought you put people on waivers to move them to the minors or is it because he signed a two way contract, he needs to clear waivers before suiting up for the Wings?