Buppy

If Nick retires we will almost surely be a worse team for it. Bringing in new people is always a little dicey. You never really know how well they'll adapt to the system and the other players. When it's your #1 defenseman and most reliable player, who's also the team captain and long time leader, it's even more of a problem. I'm not saying we'd miss the playoffs for sure. Or that we'll be terrible. But it's hard to imagine Nick's eventual departure as anything but a bad thing for the team. When Stevie left, the torch had already been passed on to Hank and Pav, and Nick was still the best player in the game. We don't have anyone for Nick to pass the torch to. We don't need a 'generational' talent, but we need someone ready to step into the role. Kronner, Stu, and Rafi aren't, IMO. Maybe when he does retire we'll get lucky and whatever changes we make to compensate will work out fine. Maybe we'll be even better. But I wouldn't get your hopes too high.

This phrase is fast becoming way overused. Seems like some people think that anytime someone scores a goal on us, or we get outscored in a period it's because we were coasting at the time. I swear some people just look at the end result and then pick whatever cliche seems the most likely cause. We played fine in the third last night. Conservative, but not overly so. We put up 9 shots and had a number of chances. The truth is; a good player made a good play, then Jimmy let in a weak one. That's it.

I still say no. I can't imagine Ozzie 'rescuing' us. If we come back, it will be a team effort. No more or less likely with either goalie. So it's better in the long run to let Jimmy get the experience of another (and hopefully multiple) elimination game.

Blame lies solely with GMR. Before that dumb thread about 3rd period comebacks, we were a very good 3rd period team.

For the record, I liked the Williams signing. Yeah I admit it. But in my defense, I only liked it BECAUSE everyone here was so against it. I found the hatred for the move entertaining. I was at the game today, and I swear I never saw Willy on the ice. The stats say he played 7+ minutes, but I never saw him. He may literally be invisible. You'd think that'd be a useful super power, but apparently not. In truth I did want a former Bluejacket, Malhotra. Winning faceoffs looks like fun.

If Nick doesn't come back, we'll need pretty much every dime spent on retooling the defense. I'd love a premier winger, but i think it's only a viable option is Nick does come back and at a friendly cap hit. Depth scoring is a pipe dream unless we're fortunate enough to have a guy or two like Tatar/Ritola/Mursak/etc explode developmentally. Bargain contracts are the only way to get great scoring depth in cap era, and we really haven't had the draft picks for it. Cap systems pretty much by design favor the Hawks/Pens method of periodic total rebuilds. Other than the stop-gaps in Williams & Bertuzzi, I believe the rest of the team is still championship caliber. A top sniper would rock, but Hudler would be good enough if that's the best we can do. Miller/Eaves/Helm/Abby are fine bottom-6 grinders, and capable of producing a bit of offense. Throw in someone like Draper/Homer/Cleary to help them learn, or maybe another cheap vet who still has decent speed. A youngster like Ritola or one of the other kids to finish it off. That's plenty good enough for a bottom 6. A top 6 of Pav, Hank, Mule, + Flip/Huds/Homer/Cleary isn't bad either. I'd expect Franzen to be more 'himself' next year. I'd expect Flip and Cleary to be big contributors provided they stay healthy. And I'd expect Happy to do well also. It's not the best in the league maybe, but still a forward core capable of winning. The defense could use some work I think, whether Nick goes or not. If he comes back, we may not have any options. Rafi is probably the only one we could upgrade for a similar cap hit, and he has his NTC, so not likely an option. Let Lilja go, and we could potentially have 2-2.5 mil to spend on a replacement, but we won't get a difference maker for that much. I think we just have to hope that Ericsson gets backs to '09 playoff form, and that Nick stops pretending to be human. Goalie might be my biggest concern. I freely admit that Howie proved me wrong this year, and I love the experience he's gotten so far these playoffs, but 'sophomore slump' is something that really seems to hit goalies hard. And I'm not all that confident that Ozzie can get back to proper form. But when we're only paying a little over 2 mil for our goalies, upgrading there wouldn't be easy either. As far as tradeable assets, we're basically limited to Flip and Happy. Either or both would likely mean we'd need a top 6 forward in return, so no real help if we wanted to free space for defense/goalie. So short of just blowing up the whole team, which could very well leave us out of the playoffs for a few years, we're more or less 'stuck' with what we've got. Might not be a top contender, but a contender nonetheless, and too good to give up on just yet.

I'm going to the game tonight. My first ever playoff game. I'm looking for a 6-1 win. Anything less and you're all fired.

Be realistic, San Jose is a good team. One of the best in the league in fact. If the games were called perfectly even, the Wings would still have to play very well to have a chance to win. You can't just say "there's some adversity now go overcome it and if you don't then you didn't try hard enough or weren't good enough...". You can't win battles in the corners or in front of the net or anywhere else if you don't even fight them for fear of taking a BS penalty. Some adversity can't be overcome. Last game Flip gave up on a loose puck when a Shark player was maybe a little in front of him. Rafi's stick maybe might have been near to touching a Shark and he dropped it like it had suddenly become poisonous. We made few drives toward the net and had little traffic in front after the bogus interference calls. That is what you're suggesting, and that is exactly what we can't do. That's basically giving up. What we need to do is just play like we would any other time. Forget last game, nothing can be done about. Be aggressive, drive the net, fight hard, and hope the refs don't get in our way again (or at least call it even). And a side note on the penalties to Pav and Cleary. Both of those were plays we see 20-30 times every game. But normally, sticks don't break and players don't take headers into the net, so no one notices. Cleary got unlucky, and Pav happened to get called. Can't really complain about either one.

Regardless, I don't think the line would work very well without another good offensive threat. What Hudler does best is find open seams in the defense, either in transistion or in a set offense. Cleary, despite his speed, is not very good in transition. He doesn't see/use his linemates well enough. He's also more of a grinder type, mucking in the crease and corners as opposed to working the cycle. The same could be said of Helm, Abs, Miller, and Eaves. Nor are any of them particularly good finishers, to take advantage of Hudler's passing ability. If Happy had to be the focal point of the set offense, and work mostly by himself in transition, I don't think he would be nearly as productive as he was with Flip and Sammy; two players with a style more compatible with his own. He scored half his points on the PP anyway, so maybe it wouldn't matter. But I can't see him putting up 57 points in that role again. I don't think we have, or can get, the right personnel to be 3 deep in scoring lines again. I would rather see two good scoring lines than 3 mediocre ones. Hudler, as a cost-effective 2nd tier top-6 winger isn't particularly bad, but I think it's worth the effort to at least try to do something better.

Not I. Playing for perhaps the best franchise in sports, at the highest level of the game, would mean more to me than a few extra million. It's not like he had to worry about his electricity being shut off or making his mortgage. Being just a little smart while making $2.5 mil+ for ~6-10 years, and you're pretty much set for life. Of course, I've never had a ton of money, so the trappings of luxury, million dollar homes, tons of exotic cars, high-priced hookers , etc., don't mean that much to me. Decent house & car, bills paid on time, quality education for my kids, new socks every day. All I want, and wouldn't cost more than a couple hundred grand a year. Invest everything else, and in 10 years I could live happily ever after just off the investment income and still leave my kids a $20 million estate. Also, I remember reading somewhere that his KHL salary was €2 million, which, when you factor the taxes, is roughly the equivalent of $5 mil NHL salary. May or may not be true. Doesn't change my point either way. In any case, I don't have any bad feelings about him leaving other than (assuming it wasn't a cap circumvention plan...) not letting the team know earlier so we could have done more in free agency.

I said trade him, but only because it's the closest option to 'try to grab a premier FA sniper, then trade Happy to help make room'. I think that would be the best option, but of course it's easier said than done. Happy as a fall-back plan isn't a bad thing. But I don't think he's a great fit on this team. His best place I would say is depth scoring from the 3rd line, and a PP specialist. But I'm not so sure we can afford the depth to have someone else on the 3rd line for him to play with, and $2.875 is a lot for just a PP guy. If we move Flip down to the third line, we move Cleary up, and also have guys like Bert and Homer in the top 6. The third line would be great (for a third line) but a top 6 like that would be pretty mediocre, especially if we had another key injury. Same goes really if Flip is in the top 6 and Cleary on the 3rd line, except I don't think Cleary and Huds complement each other very well without a good offensive center to make it click. If we keep only one of Bert/Homer, and put Flip and Cleary in the top 6, our speed, defense, net presense, and passing is solid, but we lack goal scorers, and Happy is completely out of place on a third line that probably features 2 of Helm/Miller/Abs/Eaves. So that kind of precludes the luxury of playing Huds on the third, unless we're content with him as a PP specialist. At the same time, I don't think he works very well for what we want our top lines to be. His speed and size severely limit his defensive capabilities and effectiveness banging in the corners or the crease. Mule, despite people thinking he's similar to Holmstrom, isn't very good in those areas either and he's slow, so I don't think you want them both on the same line. Bert/Homer would give us that, but both are slow and defensively suspect. Again, not a great fit with Huds. Cleary is probably the only option that would work well. So maybe we go: Happy-Hank/Pav-Cleary & Flip-Hank/Pav-Mule. Keep Homer as a cheap 4th liner + PP guy. Not terrible certainly, I just think we could do better.

I think you missed my point. There's nothing bad about it. It's too small of a sample size to be meaningful. It is an entirely insignificant statistic. The Wings have been an excellent 3rd period team.

In the past three seasons, teams trailing after the 2nd are a combined 22-145. It doesn't really happen all the time. Furthermore, 17 of those 22 wins came in the first round. The other 5 in the second. Detroit is 0-14 in the last three playoffs. 9 of their 18 total losses came in the third round or finals, where the teams are good enough to make comebacks very rare. Not sure how many of those were tied after 2 (Wings were 4-3 in those games not counting this year) so at the very least 6 of those 14 you really couldn't expect them to come back. 0-8 is not all the remarkable. You would only 'expect' maybe 1 or 2 wins anyway. Couple of the games this year, we weren't playing well to begin with, and I'm sure some of the losses the previous two years were the same. There isn't anything unusual about it. Level of competition, poor play to begin with, bad luck...the playoffs are such a small sample that I don't think you can draw any conclusions. Over the past three regular seasons, the Wings were 1st, 1st, and 12th in Win % when behind after 2 (1st, 2nd, & tied for 3rd in Point %). Being 12th/3rd this year despite being a pretty poor team for much of the season I think says a lot more than 14 playoff games in the last three years.

or perhaps: And this needs to be done... He's DANGEROUS!

Goes by the better record. We would have home ice. Just noticed a wierd oddity this year...one of each seed advanced. 1, 2, 3, 5 in the West. 4, 6, 7, 8 in the East.

Rob Blake = Gomer Pyle Jamie McGinn = Goku doug Murray = Little Person

Just a note, but Lils wasn't out for any of Phoenix's PP goals.

Grades relative to expectations/ability Datsyuk - A (Almost perfect, would probably be A+ if his linemates had been better) Homer - C (Not bad, and not less than expected, but nothing special either) Franzen - C+ (Half his points were because he just happened to touch the puck before Pav, needs to improve) Zetterberg - A+ (How many plusses can we add?) Filppula - A (Probably better than we should reasonbly expect, no plus since Hank made him look a lot better) Bertuzzi - B (Continental drift is faster, but he mostly stayed out of the way at least) Helm - B+ (Draper 2.0 coming along nicely) Draper - B- (The OD was really working hard, sucks that people have to get old) Eaves - C- (Other than the PK, not showing the greatest hustle) Abby - B- (Came out strong, but barely noticeable after the first game) Miller - B+ (Great effort, not enough skills, Maltby 2.0?) Cleary - D+ (Good and bad at times, not seeing/using his linemates well at all, did nothing with time on Pav's line, step it up) Lidstrom - B- (Aging legs showing, damn you Father Time!) Rafalski - B- (meh) Stuart - A (Probably a plus if Kronwall was better, and stop trying to get fancy) Kronner - C- (Good to see his passes start connecting, now keep it up) Lilja - B+ (I barely noticed him, which is good for a third pair man, a plus for being that solid after a year off) Ericsson - B (Huge improvements from early in the year, can still get better) Howie - B (Some huge saves, some bad goals, could have been a lot worse, needs to work on his handoffs)

Playing like that all the time just wouldn't be fair. The Wings are a charitable group, they like to let people win every once in a while. After all, who wants to watch a team go 82-0 in the regular season then 16-0 in the playoffs...

I think our biggest problems against Phoenix were losing key faceoffs (special teams in particular: 38.4% on PP, 43.3% PK), Lidstrom had trouble with the speed from the Czech line, and the offense from Phoenix's defensemen. Not sure SJ is as good in those areas as Phoenix, but they certainly aren't bad. Combine that with SJ's firepower on the top two lines (potentially at least) and ability to cycle down low (the Wings have had trouble breaking up a good cycle)...They will be tough to beat. Their size is the least of my worries. My worry is that Thornton's line will get going and/or Nabby will step up his game. Either one could be big trouble. Game 7 intensity and execution from the opening faceoff until the final horn. We can't afford to give them anything. Efforts like last night in every game though, and no one will beat us.

Could be the best thing to happen to the Sharks. If they get by us, they put the 'choker' label to rest, as well as give themselves a great shot at a Cup. And even if they lose, there's no real shame in it.

Definitely better than Franzen this series, but I'd still put him 4th.

By all accounts, James is an avid Sharks fan.

If they were all exactly the same, or within say 1 or 2, or every game featured identical (or almost) penalties for both teams, this would be more credible. But this is really what should be expected. For the most part, the series's and games have been pretty close. These are all NHL players pretty much always trying to avoid taking penalties. It makes sense that most would result in fairly even penalties. You even have your exception in SJ, and even Pitt isn't that close. Of course, we all know 'make-up calls' exist. We also know that the officiating is pretty consistently terrible. But they're terrible both ways.

I think I'd rather have Michalek, even though he's not having as good a playoffs so far. Younger, likely cheaper, and gives you pretty much the same.