hooon

Pretty hilarious how Chicago ALWAYS ices their top guys against us in the preseason.

Haven't seen you post in a while. Expertly done. You got me!

You, good sir, are awesome. Warms my heart to see another young Wings fan getting into it. Cool custom jersey he's got too. Didn't see the game nor the highlights, but loved the names on the scoresheet!

Haven't seen him play, but there was a good article about him that came out over the summer a couple months ago that praised him highly and talked of his skill set and ability. I will support any Holmstrom in the Wings organization.

I actually expect a big bounceback season from Washington in general, primarily due to Trotz back there. Unfortunately I see them as one of the teams that the Wings will be battling with for a WC spot most likely.

This is a great point. Weiss was a disappointment and his name gets lost in the shuffle a bit, but his health and ability this season actually have a huge impact on this team. If he returns to form, the Wings are already MUCH better off than last season.

While I love the Tatar-Sheahan-Jurco line, it would be awesome to see Jurco get some real top 6 time. He had a couple games with Datsyuk and they looked good together. I'm bummed about the Mantha injury and the blip in his development, but I also expected him to play mostly in GR to start the season. Additionally, I expect big things from Jurco this year, and would love to see him take the opportunity and run with it.

PM sent, not sure if I made it in time!

Left shoe on the right wing. Another leftie on the right side in Detroit, nothing changes.

Wow, what a great rivalry...

Bathrobe themed jerseys? I like the Seinfeld idea - its a pretty bizarre thing to do, but what the heck!

As excited as I am about Mantha - if we're being honest, his presence on the Wings this season affects our cup chances exactly 0%. He isn't going to put us over the top, so I really don't mind giving him one transitional year in the AHL, a league that I believe he can he can score a lot a points in, while refining the other parts of his game. We all want to see him play, but the last thing I want is for him to get small minutes on the bottom two lines with the Wings with non-offensive linemates when he could be getting big minutes in GR with other offensive and two-way guys.

It might be closer if it was Feds + Dats vs. Yzerman + Z. Feds and Yzerman were two of the greatest all time (during their peak/prime years), and while Z and D were among the best of their generation, they still aren't quite in the realm of the former two.

Toews has only had 1 elite year defensively (which was in a shortened season) and the rest were just good to above average. Last year was a "down year" defensively for him, at least statistically speaking. If the consensus is that he's the best 2-way guy (that is a popular opinion) it is based more on Canadian media hype than anything else. Kopitar, Bergeron, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Hossa... just to name a few, are all at least as good defensively and many of them are better offensively. Not to slight Toews or anything, but I reject the idea that he (or anyone else right now) is a clear cut best two-way player. What's amazing about Datsyuk is when he was at his defensive peak, he was not only winning Selkes repeatedly, but he was putting up 97 points. Toews has only broken 70 points one time in his career (and it was 5 years ago) and has never broken 80. Back on topic: I take Datsyuk for consistency. No question Feds peak was considerably higher, and he had the potential to be one of the best in the game all time, but he had attitude problems and just took nights (and weeks and months sometimes) off. No one has ever, EVER accused Datsyuk of having a bad attitude. Ok maybe Cherry has, but that doesn't count.

Because Crosby!!!!!2!

Mmmmmmm Emma.

Pretty expected, actually. I'm more curious about the Babcock extension to be honest. This upcoming off-season is a big one for KH, there are quite a few decent dmen on the market (assuming they get to UFA) and with mostly missing out on FAs the past couple of seasons he needs to shed the dead weight and get a solid player or two. I'm not the hugest fan of Hollands last couple of seasons, but I don't think it is as bad as some folks are suggesting. People are acting like he signed Cleary and Quincey INSTEAD of going after a better free agent, but the fact is, he missed out on the free agents and then signed Cleary and Quincey well after all the good FAs signed elsewhere. Sure, I'd rather have some youngsters in there instead, but I see fans kind of twisting it around a bit.

Nice work! Way to go Matt, that is actually quite inspiring to read.

I'll take a somewhat injured Yzerman over a retired Gretzky easily for 2002. Also, in 97-98 Yzerman was scoring almost as much as Gretzky but also provided world class defense. I don't see at all how an old Gretzky in his final 2 seasons as a player makes us "WAY" better than Yzerman in his 2-way prime. In fact, it is not even possible to do any better than back to back cups in a two year stretch.

Take these broken Wings... and get a new training staff.

This. Neither has even played a full NHL season yet. These are RFA contracts, not UFA guys that any team can sign. Nyquist is making 950k a year and Smith is making 1.2. While I do think both TT and DD will make a bit more, it won't be MILLIONS more as some people are suggesting. That isn't how it works with restricted free agents. They will be short "bridge" contracts to hold them over until they get paid for real (and prove they're worth it over a larger sample size).

I could be way off but I was expecting DD to get around 1.7-2m on a bridge deal, and Tatar to get around 1-1.5 tops. One thing Holland has always been pretty good at is getting our RFAs to sign cheap deals, but it is curious that they're "far apart". However, this isn't too uncommon for RFA negotiations and really there isn't much risk of losing them, maybe the Wings will have to pay a few hundred K more than they'd like but that's about it.

Our training staff is terrible, so 20 games seems pretty likely when you factor in groin pulls.

Pretty darn good. I saw another one recently that compared all the NHL teams to the Game of Thrones house/families. I believe the Wings were House Stark - former greatness, but everyone dying off.

Maybe Ehrhoff wanted to Sign in Pitt?