Carman

It's not up to Ken Holland to get him signed right now, I'm sure he would, but that's not how it works. No way in hell an agent would let his first year guy sign a cheap deal 19 games into a season where his client is tied for 4th in league goal scoring. I'm not sure what I want in a deal for Brunner this off season, and cheaper 2 year deal which lets us be more aggressive free agent wise, but maybe have to give him a bigger raise or lose him after those two years or a long term higher money deal which might be more money in the beginning, but if he can prove to be a 40 goal scorer year in year out would be steal.

He just needs to stop taking so many penalties, he'll never be a shutdown guy. But he's physical, has great/elite puck moving skills, but will always have defensive lapses. His penalties need to be cut down, we can't have our #1 guy take the 2nd most minors in the league for defensemen. That's not good enough.

What a great game, and great weekend. Really need to build off this, we got behind the pack a little to start the season. Start to get healthy and I can see us doing some damage this season.

To be fair Luongo has had the best season of any goalie coming into today. Believe it or not, goalies have bad days.

Fair enough, just know that Howard's last contract was negotiated with only 60 games played by Howard.

7uongo is back. Glad we don't spend a fortune on a "elite" goalie.

So then why are you on Howard so hard if short term stats mean nothing? Does Luongo previous 700 games mean nothing then? You seem to be all over the place.

Ok so stats must mean nothing to you.

He's one of the "elite" goalies.

As a med student you should understand that injuries aren't 100% preventable, especially playing a sport like hockey. Groin injuries linger for a long time, usually if it happens during a season you are going to be battling through it the rest of the way, it takes a unreliable time table to get rid of a groin injury could go away in a week, it could stay sore for months and require surgery. Some days are better than others, some days you can feel 100%, and other days you can't get up from a chair without holding your breath. Groin injuries aren't just battle though the pain injuries, they severely limit your mobility and reaction time, which as a goalie is absolutely paramount. To suggest that Gustavasson should just play through it is just completely naive and quite impractical.

Damn almost for that superstar Huskins!

Can Kronwall stop taking penalties? He and Cleary have taken way too many, 2 of the top 7 penalty leaders in the entire league playing a ton of minutes on the same team.

adding another 6 minute a game player won't add toughness.

Samuelsson averaged .57 PPG playing with Matthias and Wolski/Bergenheim. That's better than Latendresse, Van Riemsdyk, Derek Roy, Tyler Kennedy, Okopso, Hornqvist, Downie, Bertuzzi, Turris, Ott, Hemsky, Setoguchi, Koivu and Gagne. That was just last year btw, Let's not even talk his .67, and .72 with Vancouver. Not to mention the fact that Samuelsson has been successful under babcock before, knows the players, and is responsible defensively.

Nah, I'm not that finicky. I'm just looking at the real world. How many of these one-dimensinal players are there? I don't count Crombeen, Prust, Tootoo, Dorsett, Hendricks, Konopka,(etc. because they do more some other things other than punching they usually play more than 8 minutes a game usually and can pitch in some offense, defense, face-offs or skate. Let's see, Jared Boll, Orr(although he can actually skate and hit pretty well), Clune?, Parros, Thorburn, and John Scott. Pretty sure there might be a couple more, but these are the ones I can think of and looking over the fights so far this year. I don't know, I just don't see the need for a team to dress one of these heavy weight guys, is Kronwall really going to think twice about hitting someone on Buffalo because Jon Scott might come out during one of his 4 shifts a game and ask Kronwall to fight? I really don't think so. I just don't see how these guys are a deterrent in today's game.

Huh? I wouldn't think twice about running people with them out there. It's not like they can fight me without getting a penalty. Instigator killed enforcers, there is no use for them, no NHLer worth a damn will be scared of playing the game hard because the other team has a fighter. He doesn't need to fight the enforcer if he doesn't want to. Enforcers are only good if they can be physical, and play smart. You're not going to see many guy that are only good with their fists play a ton of games with today's rules.

WOOO tootoo!

The other one's yea, but that was a broken stick almost turned into a breakaway. Not all penalties are bad.

What did you want him to do? That's the right play, you don't let a guy walk right in on a goalie that just entered the game as a back up.

And that was just bad luck there for White, Kindl made the right play in trying to tie the guy up. And emmerton is down. Just not going our way.

What the f*** Cleary short handed goal? I'm so confused, what the hell was that?

I'm the Howard guy, but he's played below average this season. It's definitely not all his fault, but he's not played well for sure.

If we signed Hossa to a long deal, securing Zetterberg would have been an issue, along with Re-signing Ericsson later, along with Howard, Hudler, Filpulla, Lidstrom, and Kronwall. I love Hossa, but it would have been neigh-impossible to secure both him and Franzen while still having flexibility. I still think I would have down whatever I could to keep Hossa, but it's wasn't the easiest decision, Zetterberg was making 3 million the year Hossa played here. Also recall back that we still had 6 million invested in Raflaski as well. Sure it looks like we could afford both now, but that's because we've lost a lot of high salary players. Was it a bad move in retrospect? Probably, but you keep a 30+ scorer coming off of some dynamic playoff performances, that you've develop, and is on a better deal. It just doesn't seem like the worst move ever to me. Once again, I love Hossa, and would take him on my team everyday, I just understand the situation the Wings were in.

Don't see why people are down on Samuelsson, he's good defensively, and has the same number of points as Cleary in 12 less games. Sammy will be fine if he can stay healthy. Cleary is a major issue right now, there isn't one positive thing he does for this team on the ice right now.

Saw it coming, Mraz definitely shows potential to be very good. Right now it's Howard and Gustavasson's show. Cleary needs to start producing 1 points in 15 games playing 20+ shifts a game while taking isn't good enough. The alarming thing about Cleary is he has 11 minor penalties. The next closest forward on the team only has 5, after that it's 3. So Cleary accounts for 30% of our forward's penalties this season and he has third most in the entire league. I just cannot fathom what Babcock is doing putting Cleary out there so often. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.