hockey23

I'm gonna go with MLive and Macomb Daily. They actually have quotes from his agent which seem to indicate that he's retiring.

Nill on Nyquist:

There were some rumors/speculation that Filppula was available in a trade at the draft. It makes sense because he's really the only player we have who has value and we would possibly trade. Who else would we trade? Lidstrom-no Datsyuk-no Zetterberg-no Homer-no Franzen-very unlikely. We lack scoring wingers and his contract hurts his value. Hudler-possibly, but wouldn't get much in return Bertuzzi-no Cleary-no Helm-no Abdelkader-unlikely. Not too valuable anyways Eaves-no Miller-no Kronwall-no Stuart-no Ericsson-unlikely. I don't think Kenny would sign and trade plus his contract hurts his value White-no Commie-no Kindl-possibly, but would have to be packaged (probably with Filppula) to get anything good in return Howard-no

Backup or GR bound?

What about Ray Emery?

Yeah I think you're right, but it still makes me wonder. If the plan was to talk to Ozzie then go sign Conklin, what's the point of the MacDonald deal 3 weeks after Kenny said he wouldn't be offering him a contract?

Didn't Kenny say a couple weeks ago that Joey wouldn't be offered a contract? I'm kinda wondering if they've decided to go with Osgood and know they need a good #3 when Ozzie can't play or maybe they want to bring Larsson over and give him some competition for the backup spot? It just seems a little strange to give a #3 goalie NHL money if you're still planning on getting a proven, and healthy, backup.

The quotes I posted are from this HFBoards thread

The reaction to E's contract was very similar to the reaction of Datsyuk's, and we all know how that turned out. If you want a good laugh, I dug up some reactions when Datsyuk signed in '07...

That's from some random guy on twitter. Probably belongs in the rumor mill for now.

There's no reason to leave $7M for the trade deadline. $3M is plenty so we basically will have $4M to sign a backup and make another move.

Holland on getting a backup: Also, on the offseason in general: I think the roster is probably about as good as last year, but losing in the 2nd round isn't the goal. It's good to hear Kenny's not done.

I don't really like Zherdev, but it would be stupid not to sign someone and not use the cap space.

You better have a good excuse

Wiz and Ehrhoff never hit free agency so I'm not really upset that we didn't get their rights and overpay. Both of their contracts are pretty bad; not so much this year, but it would hurt us next year when trying to re-sign Kronwall and find a Lidstrom replacement. The Smith/Kindl/Janik thing isn't a big deal to me. Kindl probably deserves to play full time, Smith could use another year in GR, and Janik is a career minor leaguer.

It sounds good in theory to sign one elite d-man, but who was available?

Wow. Great price for White.

Filppula isn't even 3 years older than Setoguchi, so I wouldn't exactly consider that MUCH older. They also have the same $3M cap hit and put up almost identical point totals. Setoguchi also played with Thornton, which should inflate his numbers, while Filppula spent much less time playing with elite players (Dats and Z). And if you factor in that defensively sound centers are more valuable than wingers, I would say Setoguchi isn't much more valuable than Flip, if at all. Edit: To tie the Seto-Flip comparison into a possible Yandle trade, I think you have to consider what the other team needs. Minnesota already had a good center in Koivu and they were looking for a scoring winger for him, so in that case they would definitely prefer Seto over Flip. In Phoenix's case, they need centers so I would say Flip would about as valuable to them as Seto is to Minnesota. I think the Burns trade is a good one to base a Yandle trade on, and they would probably want Flip + Smith + 1st.

He was set to make $3.35M and had a $3.75M cap hit. $1.4M is what he'll get from the buyout plus $1M from the Wings so $2.4M total. So it's a million dollar pay cut for him.

1 yr $1M. Pretty much a 7th d-man. I'm cool with it.

I'd like to see where everyone thinks the big FAs will end up, or just some general predictions about free agency. My predictions- 1. Holland doesn't sign anyone tomorrow; LGW goes into all out panic mode 2. Wisniewski signs with CBJ before noon tomorrow

Signed with Colorado

Jovo just signed with Florida

Wings are out on Jagr per Craig Custance.

Both are $1M overpayments which is pretty normal for free agents.