TheOwl

Hasek is hated by so many. When Roy and Brodeur were playing in the 90's in their primes, who won all those Vezina's? Sure Roy had more wins, but look at Hasek's career GAA or Save%, insane. Plus what he did at the 98 Olympics. No goalie has ever had a better tournament in the history of all hockey. Hasek is for sure top 3, and for sure the most exciting goalie of all time.

These long contracts are so idiotic. DiPetro gets 8 years? Malkin and Crosby 8.5 million for what, 7 years each? What's the point? They should limit contracts to like 5 years max. What if the cap goes down 10 million over the next 4 or 5 years? Teams will be screwed. Plus these players are impossible to trade. The only long term contract which really made sense was Ovechkin's.

What's this bulls***. I payed 30 bucks for Center Ice, I live in Canada, and since the game is on an American sports channel (obviously I don't get it), the game is blacked out. Stupid NHL! I paid the money just to watch the Wings!!!

^ For sure, Datsyuk is a beast on defense. Some people take the +/- stat way too seriously, just because Savard has a better +/-, doesn't make him the better defensive forward. Mason deserves Calder for sure, but I don't see them giving the Vezina to a rookie for some reason. It's pretty wide open. You could argue strong for Backstrom or Thomas, or Mason. The trouble is Thomas and Mason split the goaltending duties with Leclaire and Manny. Wins seems to play a huge part, even though it shouldn't. But Mason is on a pretty horrible team, making 40+ saves a night, and stopping between 38-39 of them, not to mention all those shut-outs. I hope they give it to Mason, he's playing the best, he's the best goalie in the league right now, just watch him!! It's a lot harder to stop the puck when the rest of your team sucks.

Boston are just jealous that their team has sucked for the last decade, and now they finally have a solid team they want respect.

Sundin looks terrible, even if it is his second third game this season.

Detroit is really an anomaly, they traded away a lot of draft picks to with that cup in 2002, yet their still an elite team. The only reason Washington and Pittsburgh have such good rosters are all those high draft picks because of their horrible play for years and years. I really don't understand the whole drafting system, why should the worst teams get the highest picks? Obviously to even the field, but since the salary cap, isn't the field even by default? All these horrible teams are now becoming good simply because of being handed high draft picks, while the Wings have been good because their quality organization. Not hard to pick a superstar when you got a top 5 pick. They should figure out a different way of assigning drafting order. You should be rewarded for success, not failure.

He was unbelievable in the Junior hockey tournament a week ago. Didn't know he was an NHLer yet Funny how the Central for the last few years was always called the weakest division in the NHL, next year it could be the best with Columbus and Chicago with these talented rosters.

You would think Columbus would be in a play-off position right now with goaltending like this. They should trade Leclaire for a top 6-forward and keep Mason longterm.

^ Don't be dissing Hasek, the best goaltender of the 90's.

I like the East-West format for the first 2 play off rounds. But it would be good to see the top surviving team in the West play the lowest ranked team in the East, and vis versa, in the final four. It wouldn't be a huge radical change. Also to take into account, if the finals were between two Eastern teams, would West fans even watch? I wouldn't watch Boston play Buffalo in the finals. I always cheer for the Western team, unless Washington somehow makes it through. The system now is pretty solid and doesn't really disclude an entire conference.

Is it evil to feel alittle happy when certain players get injured? I'm not happy about this, but whenever a San Jose, Boston or Pittsburg player gets injured, I smile alittle.

I think it's a forgone conclusion Hudler will be signed. And either way if Franzen and Hudler both can be signed for around 7 million combined, it would be worth taking the pair rather then Hossa. The only way possible to sign all 4 including Sammy would be ditching Flipulla (may be worth it) and one of the higher paid D's. But just think, after next season Lidstrom's contract will be up freeing up a huge amount of cap, hopefully he'll stay obviously, but perhaps he'll take a discount to try and get another cup before he retires.

I'm forced to watch a lot of Vancouver games, and their announcers are so boring, sounds like robots calling the game, they literally describe in detail every pass, every shot, every hit.

This is epic Detroit hockey. Every line is blowing Dallas out of the water. Is it just me, or are the FSN Detroit announcers two of the best in the league?

The actual game is terrible to watch. I find no appeal in watching a game with little hitting, the goalies not really trying, and nothing on the line. It's meaningless. They should go back to North America vs. World, that was always a good time. Also the skills competition is pretty entertaining! Datysuk hopefully will show off more then last year

The voting isn't a joke, what is a joke is "voting often." If every fan could vote once, and only once, it would be fair. But the reason their are so many Ducks and Canadian's in the line up is using scripts to vote multiple times at once. An easy solution to this whole debacle would of been simply saying, each team can only send a maximum of 2 players. So in the Canadians case, the 2 players with the highest number of votes would make the all-star game. Let's face it, the starting line ups for both East and West, suck. Giguere, Campbell, and Niedermayer don't deserve to be in the game at all. No Canadian deserves to start, especially Price and Komisarek. Komisarek? 3 points? That's freaking awful. At least the other players the NHL named to the west all deserve it.

Penguins are playing terrible right now. I bet they regret re-signing Flurry for such a long expensive contract. Long contracts are killing the NHL. Imagine if the cap goes down. Also interesting about the Pens, their right up against the cap, and are getting Malkin at 2.5 million right now. Next season it jumps to 8 million. How the hell do they expect to clear 8 mill worth of cap space? The Penguins are screwed now, and long-term. Bad contracts. Malkin is obviously playing with good players because he has 44 something assists, and only 16 goals? Something like that. He's obviously a great play-maker, and a better all around player then Crosby. Still, I'd take Datsyuk over either in a heart beat.

The only thing I could see him doing is trading Flippula or Kopetsky for some draft picks. Flippula could be worth a lot on the trade deadline, maybe a 2nd round pick. He's way over-paid, could clear up room for Leino during the playoffs etc.

Stuart is a beast! Kronwall is looking like the worst of the top 6 D men these days. One or two guys having a "Stanley Cup" hangover could explain why the wings are playing not like themselves at times. Lidstrom and Osgood seem to have worked through it. But Kronwall who had an excellent playoffs with 15 assists is struggling now. He'll come around. We should trade someone to Toronto to get Steffan Kronwall, and get an all Kronwall D pairing. How badass would that be? Theirs a huge point to made though, the D is taking up a huge portion of the cap. Stuart and Kronwall at 3 million, Rafa at 6, Lidstrom at 7.45. One has got to go to free up cap room for the forwards. Why can't Chelios be a top 4 D man anymore? He hasn't played that badly. Kindle could be brought up. Trading a D-man could mean losing both Franzen and Hossa, or getting hold of a top tier goaltender.

It's interesting that Hossa hasn't scored in the last 7 games, and Zetterberg hasn't scored in the last 9 games, while Franzen leads the team in goals. Hopefully they'll get back on track!

Poor Russia, giving up that goal with 5 seconds left..

Franzen leads Detroit in goals!! BYE HOSSA! KEEP THE MULE! He's always bailing us out.

The Wild have sold out every game in franchise history. Amazing since they have few star players other then Gaborik and Backstrom, and trap everytime they get a lead.

Osgood is tearing it up! Funny watching Franzen and Homer fighting for positions in front of the goalie. Must be really annoying have two huge guys screening you at once.