dat's sick

People will be saying that when Leino scores 30 goals and gets 70-80 points.

Does winning the cup grant you extra cap space? I agree with the others, we would probably have had a smaller chance of signing him if we won the cup. His mission would have been succesful and he could have just gone to whatever city he liked the best or whoever offered him the biggest paycheck.

Don't you know that old saying, "offense wins championships" ? ...wait.. is that how it goes?

You're a bit slow aren't you? The LA Kings play in the Western Conference. Two teams from the west can't meet eachother in the SCF. Therefore, if the Wings make it to the finals again, we won't have to worry about Scuderi making kick-saves and making us lose the game.

As for looking at next year's free agents outside of the Wings already, don't bother. Most of the interesting players will be locked up long before they ever reach free agency. Nash for example.

He's a great guy, and almost too good of a goaltender to be a backup. Like he says, he has the capacity to be a starter. This is a good signing for the Blues and I don't think you'll be disappointed. The goaltending situation looks really solid for you guys now.

Like UKWING said, Helm and especially Abby will in all likelihood be very cheap to re-sign. If Homer retires the salary we clear up with that should more than cover it. I could see Lids taking atleast 2 mil less than he makes now. If the cap goes down a lot I could see him being awesome and taking an even bigger discount to "save the team". But if he runs into injury trouble this season again I wouldn't be surprised if he retires. He strikes me as a guy that doesn't want to play until his body is destroyed and he's embarrassing himself out there.

That's what I'm saying. If he gets a big offer from another team, by all means go for it. His value will probably never be higher. But for him, more than for anyone else, I think taking $0.500-1.000 less per year to stay in Detroit should be a no-brainer. It's easy to say I guess, but if the Wings hadn't picked him up odds are he wouldn't even be in the NHL today.

There's a chance Lidstrom retires. I would be sad to see that happen, but that would pretty much clear most, if not all, of our cap issues. At the very least I see him taking a big discount for a 1-year extension. Homer, Draper and Maltby I don't see playing beyond next year. I wouldn't be extremely surprised if Homer announced his retirement during this summer even. Unless the salary cap goes down by a significant amount we should be fine.

I think Sammy would be stupid to leave to be honest. Unless he gets some absolutely huge offer from another team, something like 3 Mil. He's been on many other teams previously in his career and has never had even half the success anywhere else that he has had here.

Difference is Jordan Staal isn't good enough defensively to be used very much as a shutdown guy, and there are a ton of Centers that are better than him at both ends of the ice. I think the Pens have played him sporadically on the Wing but it hasn't worked out very well.

Antropov 4 years/16 mil.

Cleary is an awesome role player. Maybe he made it because he plays on the Wings and Team Canada is led by Yzerman and Babcock, but he could be a great player on that team imo. You can't have 4 lines of nothing but stars. You need grinders, defensive specialists, PK'ers etc. Don't know if he'll make the final team, but I know I'd rather have him on the ice in an Olympic Gold game than Joe Thornton or Pat Marleu. Jordan Staal doesn't really belong there either imo.

Wow, that is incredibly classy if it's true. But didn't Kings GM say that they and 2 other clubs were the only ones granted permission, and if they managed to sign him the Wings would get compensation?

15-18 year deal for Toews and Kane?? Now that would be something to see. The reason those 10-12 year deals for guys like Zetterberg, Hossa and Franzen are so good is because they'll most likely never play out the entire lenght of it. They'll retire and the cap hit will go off the books. Signing a 20-year old guy to an 18-year deal is a HUUUGE risk. What if they play good for 2-3 years and then start getting a bit lazy and stop improving? What if they blow out a knee, gets surgery and becomes a much worse player? Not to mention Toews and Kane have yet to earn a lot of money. You can't sign them to a contract that has them earning 1 mil a year in their early 30's, they'd never agree to that. Putting 2-3 cheap years at the end of an 18-year deal is not going to get the cap hit down a lot. I personally think the Hawks are in a pretty good position even beyond this coming season, but I think you're living in fantasy land if you expect 4-5 mil cap hits for Toews and Kane.

Tallon said that they couldn't get a deal done with Havlat and decided to "go in another direction". They sure did. A 12-year deal instead of a 1-year deal? Were they really that turned off by Havlat's tendency to get injured that they couldn't offer him a longer term?

True, but he didn't necessarily want to go there. And he didn't want to stay there. Also, he has excelled pretty much wherever he's gone in his career. Playoff success has been so-so for him, but he's a guy who always delivers in the regular season.

The only team that was a contender last year and looks like they've gotten better is the Hawks. And even that is debatable with their goaltending arguably being a big weakness now. Other big teams like the Sharks, Bruins, Penguins etc. are doing very little. The teams that are doing the most moves are Montreal and Toronto. Yeah, they've really been nipping at our heels. I feel like Draper, Maltby and Homer were probably the most affected by the Stanley Cup hangover. They'll be better next year.

I think they know what they're doing. Anyone who thinks they'll lose Kane or Toews next year is crazy.

Not a Hossa hater by any means, but I would root for Chicago. I actually like that team. The only reason I'm not thrilled about Hossa going there is that we'll have to face him every other week. My hope was that he'd go to the West, to either the Caps or Rags.

Good post. I agree Abdelkader should stay in the minors one more year. Though I personally feel like Abby is the one who has 3rd line potential at the most, while Helm could definitely be a top 6 guy if he learns to put the puck in the net on a consistant basis.

He didn't choose to go to Pittsburgh but I think you might be right otherwise. Gotta suck to be a Kings fan. They have all that cap space but can't get anyone to sign there.

x3

http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=283486