dat's sick

Good deals, imo they've got a good chance of getting over that 'playoff chokers' label pretty soon. They rocked the World Champs recently for Sweden, I've got no doubt they can get it done in the playoffs too. Henrik is the one that's worth more, not a huge difference though and they're more valuable together than apart.

I don't care how weak it was, great confidence boost for Tatar and a much needed break for us. We are playing a much better game than we have in a while, win or not atleast we're starting to climb out of that "playing like absolute s***"-hole we've dug ourselves.

Datsyuk's playing on fire tonight, best game in a while for him. Thing is though that Nyquist is better suited for 2nd line duties than Tatar is. I like Tats but he is a 3rd liner who we only want on the top lines because of plugs like Cleary being there.

It's easy to sit and watch other teams and be impressed, because you're not seeing so much of the bad that you see if you follow a team for a long time. We still beat Boston once. This was a good 1st period, we kind of regressed back to our recent play after the 1-0 goal, but before that we had much better neutral zone play and offensive zone time than we've had maybe all season. Datsyuk had like 4-5 very nice sequences where he almost created great scoring chances. Some good looks from the defense but unfortunately not many shots actually getting to the net. 4th line was good, 3rd had some good shifts but Tatar has to get into the game, now we need Weiss to give us a 2nd line, as usual that is the problem.

Good effort, especially the first 10 minutes. Unfortunate mis-match on the goal and that gave them some energy to take over a bit. Not the best period by Tatar, weak on the puck. Zetterberg also didn't do a lot of things right. Datsyuk looks determined to stop this losing streak, hope more guys follow.

That was Quincey completely misplaying that. Jimmy could have read it better but it was a nice play. Good period though, hope they keep playing. Nucks are keeping them on the outside, gotta get inside chances somehow.

Franzen-Datsyuk-Alfredsson Zetterberg-Weiss-Nyquist Tatar-Helm-Andersson Miller-Glendening-Abdelkader Imo something like that is the best we can do this year and I have a feeling it could look very good..

I'd trade Franzen+Quincey+Picks for Enstrom in a heartbeat. Failing that kind of trade for a great PMD, get Almqvist in the lineup. Him, Helm and Nyquist.

Well an expectedly terrible end to that terrible game. I don't want us to win an OT game until Babcock puts Tatar out there, and Nyquist when he gets up. Like, does he remember the OT goal Brunner and Nyquist combined for? He trusted them in the OT in the playoffs but he can't trust Tatar in a regular season OT? As for the game as a whole, wow. A half-decent 1st period, a pretty good PP, but just about nothing to be glad about otherwise. Well Howard was great and Tatar, if nothing else, shows he deserves to play by the way he chases the puck and skates harder than just about anyone else. We have work to do, lots of it.

Well I think most of us expected the full-time presence of Tatar, Helm and Nyquist, +Alfredsson and Weiss > Filppula and young d-men growing would lead to improvements. Most of that hasn't come true completely atleast. But we'll be better. Until we have everyone healthy, Gus, Tatar and Helm in the lineup and we still look terrible I'm not panicking. This is painful to see though. Good shift by the stacked 1st line though.. man it'd be great to have that line always.

Look at Tatar go.. so great to see a guy that plays like he WANTS it.

Z-D-Alfie Tats-Fraz-Abs Babs didn't have a lot of patience. And the Rags strike. Sigh.

That was a mess of a period. Wow. After a pretty decent 1st I didn't think this team would once again fall back into a coma and get dominated. Better 3rd please? He's probably thinking "what is it about Tatar that is dragging this team down and what veteran can I trade him for?". Thruthfully I think he expected us to be as hit with injuries as we've been the last 2-3 years, counting on that to solve any logjam problems. We'll get injuries eventually and maybe then we'll be glad we have a deep roster, but Holland HAS to realize it's a crazy situation to have a team that is struggling this bad when Nyquist is stuck in the minors for no good reason.

1st period I thought Z's line and Weiss's line looked good. 2nd period not a single player except Howard has been good. Really if this was any other team we'd be down by 2-3 goals after this kind of period. We need Nyquist at the very least. I want to see Almqvist too, kid can move the puck atleast.

Anytime Datsyuk's line is bad it's bad news for the team. Z's line looks pretty good, but the whole team is kind of getting outhustled in this period.

I like him around the net, but man he's awful everywhere else... people complained about Holmstrom in his last year or two, but even though he was terribly slow he was never a giveaway machine. Bert needs to make simple, simple plays and get himself to the net.

Imo if you're playing with Datsyuk you have 1 job : get the puck to Pavel and get open. If Bertuzzi was Nyquist that could be a decent line.

Miller!! 4th line deserved that goal, only line that's been consistantly good lately.

That's the problem right there, Bertuzzi gets the puck in a great opportunity for a chance off the rush, but he can't even manage a 1 foot pass to Datsyuk, instead it's a giveaway. We're looking a little better than early in the period, but christ we have a difficult time maintaining possession of the puck. Our passing is abysmal.

Datsyuk is the only one able to handle a puck and connect on passes. Get'r going boys.

Ryan (who is good but streaky) was a trade though, not an UFA signing. They gave up a very good prospect in Silfverberg for him. Alfie's been great and he will be huge in the playoffs I bet. Weiss.. we'll he's maybe not moving in the right direction as fast as I hoped, but it's early going. He's a great example of the hypocracy of Wings fans though. "Make a trade Holland! Shake things up! Trade Filppula!". And though it wasn't technically a trade, signing Weiss instead was the same thing as a trade. Now that Weiss isn't tearing it up people are starting to say we should have kept Filppula or Holland shouldn't have taken a chance on a guy that just came back from serious injury. LOL. The identity of the team has sort of been in flux since Lidstrom left. We're still trying to be that puck possession, skilled team but it's hard for us to do that with the players we have. Like it or not, Filppula kind of fit into that style of play better than Weiss does. Atleast so far, hopefully Weiss finds a way to fit into the system. Having Nyquist in the lineup would also help tremendously as he's good at holding onto the puck. On defense we need all our bodies healthy. Kronner, E and Dekeyser are the guys that CAN play the style of hockey we need them to. Kindl is close, but still makes to many bad plays with the puck unfortunately. Quincey and Smith and Lashoff are not good enough at it, which is why I'd like to see Almqvist get a chance in the #6 spot. Even if he makes defensive errors he might be able to make up for it with his puck-moving skills. As for our energy line: when we get Helm back: Abdelkader-Helm-Miller/Tootoo. Imo. Down the line I'd love to see Abdelkader-Helm-Glendening.

Well our offense has been non-existant for 3 games in a row and even before that it wasn't exactly setting the world on fire. A loss like this is probably needed in order to really show Babcock/Holland that this team has a long way to go. Getting the best possible lineup on the ice would be a start.

They had a good 1st period, Wings made an effort at the end of the 1st and beginning of the 2nd then the 4-1 goal killed them and I'm not even upset at 5-1 and 6-1. They just want to get off the ice. Sucks for Alfie to lose like this.

Tatar-Datsyuk-Alfredsson Franzen-Z-Bert to start the 3rd.

The Cleary signing is looking worse and worse. I've actually thought he's been okay, but we desperately need Nyquist in the lineup and Cleary's stopping that. Is it terrible that I'm wishing for something minor like a broken pinky to put him on LTIR? Sorry. We shouldn't be getting killed like this in the scoring department. After our 2 goal lead in Phoenix we've been outscored 9-1, not including losing a shootout. The dynamic needs to change. If that means splitting up Z and D, so be it. Franzen-Zetterberg-Alfredsson Bertuzzi-Datsyuk-Tatar Cleary-Weiss-Abdelkader Miller-Andersson-Tootoo Try it...until Nyquist comes and saves us.