StevieY'sguy

I would like to think Luongo is ahead but when it comes to the playoffs i have to give the goalie from New York the nod...he has shown up in the playoffs which is something i cannot say for Roberto

I completely agree, I don't know if you follow baseball at all, but this move reminds me of when our hometown Tigers signed Pudge Rodriguez a few years back...a name that you can put on the marquee to build around and to hopefully be the catalyst toward building a winning franchise...It worked for the Tigers and im confident this will work for the Leafs, did they overpay for him? possibly; but if in 3-4 years from now fans can look back and identify this trade as the spark that got the fire going, then i think it will be worth it...

.....and that preserved their tie for career playoff points at 63 apiece. Just for kicks lets look at career playoff games played: Crosby: 49, Datsyuk: 98.............You want to knock on Crosby thats fine but doing it by comparing his playoff number's with Datsyuk's is not the way to go buddy.

There's no way this year's team will be as dominant as last year's in the regular season...not a chance. With that being said this may be a blessing in disguise, last year's team was on cruise control through the regular season because they were heads and tails above everyone else...this year's team is going to have to scratch and claw to get a W in many more games then they did last year...my hope is that this will make them have a stronger workman-type ethic by the time the playoffs come around...last year they had a baptism by fire on the fly in the 2nd round but thankfully they proved up to the test, we cannot always count on being that lucky in that type of situation....after that the big question as anyone with a brain can see is the goaltending issue, Ozzie needs to buck up and handle the load during the regular season until Howard or whoever our number 2 goalie is, proves they can stand on their own.

Shea Weber and Duncan Keith 2nd tier? I'm sorry but Spezza, Heatley, Lecavalier, St. Louis, Kane, Toews, Phaneuf,Willie Mitchell, Ohlund, Staal, Nash, and Gaborik all deserve spots ahead of those two guys!

Please post what you think the best line combos for the wings would be this season, here are mine: Clearly-Datsyuk-Zetterburg Franzen-Filppula-Bertuzzi Leino-Williams-Helm Holmstrom-Draper-Maltby Lidstrom-Rafalski Kronwall-Ericsson Stuart-Lebda

I could not agree more with the tiering systems or with your choices, we are absolutely on the same page

To be honest with you i don't think he will be all that effective on any line...He's on the fourth line in my book with Maltby and Draper because all three are washed up and are really only around because the Wings have too much class to cast off a player who has given them over a decade of good service....He provided a service of being on a top 2 line and screening the goalie to help out the much more highly skilled players on his line.....we have Bertuzzi for that now who's body isn't quite as banged up as Tomas and who has more pure talent. He showed his irrelevancy during the playoffs last year. I agree, with the poster above, i think Z and Dats need to be together and Flipper should be on the 2nd line.

You can use whatever categories you want i guess, but any statistical category that has Tomas Vokoun over Martin Brodeur, Manny Fernandez and Manny Legace ahead of Patrick Roy, and Guy Hebert above Khabibulin, Ed Belfour, Curtis Joseph and Chris Osgood doesn't hold any water with me or alot of other fans i'm guessing.....

The 2nd all-time save percentage argument for Luongo doesn't hold very much water whatsoever. Today's goaltenders are facing many more shots per game and as a result are turning in much higher save percentage numbers. Here are some of the "studs" that are in the top 25 save percentage list all time: Tomas Vokoun, Manny Legace, Martin Biron, Manny Fernandez, Dwayne Roloson, Guy Hebert, Mike Dunham, and Roman Turek.....Not that i disagree that Luongo is a fantastic goaltender, but using this skewed category is certainly no way to prove it. Getzlaf

Malkin

Hudler could put the puck in the net on a fairly regular basis, he was also one of the most positionally challenged players in the NHL last season and in season's before....read a book or watch an instructional video on where your position is supposed to play on the ice in certain situations buddy, and while you"re at it ask Z to teach you how to backcheck...the KHL can keep him as far as im concerned.

I'll go through this biased assesment point by point. Excelling in the playoffs? Crosby has the same amount of career playoff points as Datsyuk and Pav has played exactly twice as many games..also everyone loves to point out the fact that Crosby got shut down during the finals...and he did BUT everyone fails to keep connecting the dots and realize that it took our best defensive pairing and our best defensive forward all focusing on Crosby just to shut him down....this in turn made sure that the rest of Pittsburgh players never had to worry about taking the ice against Z, Lids, etc. which GREATLY helped them out (cough, Maxime Talbot,cough) and is a big reason why Pitt won the series ....so true Sid got offensively shut down during the finals but the effort that it to accomplish that hurt the Wings enough to lose the series. Crosby is clearly the better playoff performer no question. Face-offs: I havent seen the regular season numbers but i know that Crosby had the highest face-off win percentage in last year's playoffs so even if Dat's number are better i do know that Crosby is one of probably the top 10 faceoff winners in the league so if datsyuk really is ahead of him, it isn't by much. I cannot make a judgement on this as i said, cuz i have yet to see the numbers. Ability to handle pressure: This is 100 percent Crosby, the guy is the only person ever to be labeled as the next wayne gretzky, a moniker that he got as a 16 year old kid....what has he done with it? he's 22, was named the captain of an NHL team at 19 (what were all we doing at the age of 19?), has an mvp and a stanley cup (being the youngest captain ever to win one)....id say he's handling pressure just fine. I'm not saying datsyuk didnt face pressure but Crosby has accomplished all of this at an age when Datsyuk wasn't even in the NHL yet. Defense: Datsyuk, no argument here..although crosby is better defensively than a lot of people seem to think. Skating ability: Crosby without a doubt...i have nothing else to say other then watch the tape. Leadership: Crosby clearly, he is a captain, pav isn't and Pav has a rough time speaking english Offense: Crosby, although datsyuk is closer to sid than the numbers say.

STILL waiting for you to name a single s***ty captain who has won the cup...you can't do it you're just wasting your time calling names.

Listen man, i don't care how much you hate Crosby, he is not a s***ty captain....he may not be a Stevie Y or a Nick Lidstrom or a Joe Sakic but the Stanley Cup is too hard to win without good leadership....how many s***ty capttains have ever won a Stanley Cup? The answer is zero, the captain's job is to lead the team, and if your team wins the biggest prize in the sport of hockey, then you must not be doing too shabby of a job right? To be the youngest captain to ever win a cup says alot too. Obviously the vets like Guerin and such helped out but we also know that one of the best ways to lead is by example...who was the Pens 2nd (at worst) best player during the playoffs? Crosby.....what do you think Malkin was talking to the team in Russian throughout last year's run? I don't think so. Hate him if you want but if your team wins the Stanley Cup, you are not a "s***ty" captain.

Crosby

When i compared Datsyuk to Crosby with the stats above, it was in response to a previous post regarding the two player's OFFENSIVE games....not a word in that specific post of mine was geared toward all-around or defensive play so you can save your Selke filled argument for another day

Beatable if you shadow him....If by that you mean putting Z,dats (when he was playing), Lids and Rafalski on him like they did during the finals when Sid didnt put up many point then yea i guess so.....by the way how did that end up working our for us?....I'm pretty sure Sid ended up with the cup anyways.....Pav as a better passer? Please, Crosby is the best passer in the game not that dats isnt amazing but crosby is better. Also anyone who says that Crosby doesn't play defense obviously doesn't watch the Pens very often. I'm not here to make the argument that Crosby is a better defender than Pav because he isn't..few are; but the fact of the matter is that Crosby is at least an average defender probably a little above average actually...and getting better. If you want to talk superstars who only play on one end of the ice then let me introduce you to Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin. As far as Kane being better than Crosby; if you believe that then you need to watch more hockey... barring injury or a major unforseen drop off in play Patrick Kane will never be better then Crosby,Datsyuk,Ovie,Malkin,or Getzlaf.

Crosby: 3 100 point regular seasons in 4 years Datsyuk: 0 100 point regulars seasons in 7 years Crosby: 1.36 ppg in regular season Datsyuk: .99ppg in regular season Crosby: 1.28 ppg in playoffs Datsyuk: .64 ppg in playoffs Crosby and Datsyuk have the same amount of career playoff points and Pav has played exactly twice as many games as Sid....Also on top of this Datsyuk has played with MUCH better players throughout the course of his career. Crosby is a better offensive player period.

....Apparently you are not one of the people you speak of because if you are saying that you don't think Crosby is one of the top 5 players in the NHL then you are either very foolishly blinded by your hatred for him OR you are just an idiot. Sidney Crosby is one of the top 5 players in the NHL period.....Love him or hate him its fact and no one who truly knows hockey will disagree

Crosby

Datsyuk is the better defensive player by a fair margin....2 Selkes and higher plus minuses clearly prove that; but Crosby is also a better offensive player by a fair margin... as his 3 100 point seasons and much higher career points per game ratio prove. However, Crosby is still an above average defensive player who is getting better on that end every year and Datsyuk is an obviously a fantastic offensive player so they are both very complete players. However, my personal definition of the best player is who would i take to build a franchise around, which i realize other people's definition is not....For my reasons i look for leadership, abilitiy to handle pressure, excelling in the playoffs, as well as faceoffs, offense, defense,skating ability, passing,and the ability to make the players around them better. When taking all of these categories into consideration, i believe that based on my definition of "the best player in the game" then the best player is clearly Crosby

Sidney Crosby

I got to thinking recently about some of the Wings transactions over the past 10-12 years and i realized that there have been very few players that the Wings have traded away or gotten rid of that went on to have successful careers or continued their success at a similar level that they had with the Wings. I am just spitballing here: Players that haven't amounted to much: Anders Eriksson, Jason Williams, Joey Macdonald, Jaime Pushor, Dmitri Bykow, Jesse Wallin, Maxim Kuznetsov, Jaimie Rivers, Mathieu Dandenault, Aaron Ward, Kevin Hodson, Jason Woolley, Darryl Bootland Players that have had solid careers post wings: Slava Kozlov (other then Yzerman was my favorite wing back in the day), Keith Primeau, Mike Knuble, Kyle Quincey (off to a promising start), Sean Avery??? Feel free to add, these are just off the top of my head, the wings seem to have pretty good foresight!

Thats a good point, hopefully some of these people who are just in it to watch the OV's, Crosby's etc will stick around and develop into true hockey fans, if the NHL grows as a whole then maybe we will get to a point where the NHL doesnt have to shove the same two players down everybody's throat all the time and can start branching out as far as what players and teams they try to really "sell"......... I appreciate your condolences on the George jersey, it was the worst gift ive ever got lol