Theophany

Whoa, there sparky. Offsides is a lot less of an infraction than too many men on the ice; that's whistled dead immediately if it's an offensive offsides. This should be the same in EVERY case. Delayed call on defensive (and not waved off, unlike offsides), and called immediately when in possession of the puck. Too many men should be called every time that it's easily verified. In this case, it was completely and totally obvious, and it should have been called. It's ridiculous that it wasn't.

Pretty much, yeah.

I love numbers!

Actually a lot of places in Seattle (and probably the west coast) won't have it on. Pretty sad, but true. I get weird looks walking around in any of my Wings stuff. Hockey doesn't exist out here, which is really pathetic.

Hah! Living in Seattle, I get CBC AND Vs. But not CBCHD, so I'm watching on Vs.

Sweden is too deep (sound familiar? ) to be taken out, IMO. The Sedin brothers, Zäta, Lundqvist in net, Lidström, Kronwall, Sammy, Påhlsson, Bäckström... The other teams should be thankful that Foresberg and Mats Sundin probably won't play. But yes, it should be interesting; I'll be cheering on Sweden with my Lidström sweater on.

He gave pretty funny responses to all the questions; you have to wonder by Ozzie's expression if he was in on it before-hand and that's why he was snickering. So funny.

You haven't seen the Perry and Pronger Show, have you?

God, I wish I had read your post BEFORE going to the linked site.

He's been drinking lots of beer, that helps everyone recover from injuries faster.

Look for an Ozzie shut out after he let in that "soft goal" too.

You obviously haven't been watching Hossa very closely (or seen the games). He's got incredible puck control, he's got incredible presence at both ends of the ice, and he plays a great team game (and he's been stellar since getting paired with a forward he can trust with the puck--Filppula).

Yes, calling a person posting a "X player sucks and is lazy" thread a moron is a logical fallacy. Let's use logic here for a second. People who play pro sports are the best of the best in their sport. People who are the best at their sport cannot suck. Ergo, if you're a pro, you cannot suck. The threads you're talking about are the threads people make after games calling a player out and saying they suck in general at the sport. Not "they suck in this past game," it's usually, "Datsyuk sucks, he can never score, he's slow and doesn't do anything for the team ever." That's the logical fallacy here. Datsyuk is not Steve Yzerman. If he was, I'd be really happy that we found a way to clone The Captain, but it's still not possible. Regardless, not all foot/leg injuries are created equal. It's completely possible that Yzerman couldn't possibly injure himself any worse by playing injured. It's completely possible that Datsyuk could injure himself further, possibly even doing permanent damage to his leg. We have Dats signed until 2014--5 more years at $6.7 million a year. Losing that kind of a player permanently because he stupidly wanted to push himself is not beneficial to the organization, and you're making yourself look like an idiot for wanting that potential. You don't have Datsyuk's medical chart in front of you, and I'm fairly sure you're not a doctor. Until one of those two things change, please do us all a favor and kindly shut the hell up. (Edit to add in my eye roll smilie )

I disagree, Abdelkader is a much more physical player, and that is a huge benefit on the forecheck (since that's mainly what line 4 is used for). Abdelkader would be my personal choice, because he's one of the guys like Helm that gets in your face and skates his ass off on the forecheck. Then again, were my name Babcock, I wouldn't be posting here right now.

I'd rather tomorrow's lines with Dats being: Mule-Zata-Hudler Filp-Dats-Hossa Cleary-Helm-Sammy Maltby-Draper-Abdelkader That's just me personally, though. I don't really care if Hudler and Cleary are switched up as long as Dats is playing opposite Malkin.

I agree, Helm has been fantastic on the PK. I rarely see him out of position in our defensive end. When he is, it's usually doubling up to force the puck up the boards or to force the puck down behind the net.

I don't know; that 3rd line isn't really my cup of tea. I moved Cleary to line 3 to give that line some defensive power, and it seems like you've removed it entirely by dropping Hudler down there as well as moving Hossa there and dropping Sammy to line 4. Leino is also not a 2nd line player. The reason he's played pretty well to this point is because he's not pressured by the top 2 lines on the Pens' side. Plus, you don't want to split up Hossa and Filppula. They've been machines when they've been able to cycle. Adding Dats to that line would just be ridiculous, IMO.

Ozzie has really only let in one goal that he should have had, thus far. That said, Ozzie will be fired up for tomorrow night. Count on it.

Yeah, I agree with you. He made some pretty valid points. The owners cannot decide to just up and move their franchises; how fast do you think the Illitch family would move out of Detroit, were the Red Wings not as successful as they are, if the ownership were in charge of their location? A guy with a s***ton of money should not be able to just come in, say, "hey, I'm gonna buy this team and move them to Canada, k?" And yeah, it's also not his fault that the franchises use taxpayer money to build stuff, or that a team is terrible and can't come up with more than 15 players to dress. I hate him mainly because he's trying to make the NHL into the NBA played on ice. Granted, he's not trying to take the physicality out of hockey like they are in basketball, but he's trying to set it up to glorify the player over the team. 90% of people that I talk to about hockey that don't follow it know Sidney Crosby. Hell, I've run into people here in Washington that didn't know that Vancouver even had an NHL team, yet they still know who Sid the Kid is. That's the big problem I have with him. The NHL is not the NBA; we all have favorite players, but most of us follow teams, not players. This isn't the Kobe and LeBron show; it's hockey. Teams have history in our sport, and turning it into the NBA on ice skates takes away from that history.

Obviously when Dats is back we'll be running these lines: Mule-Zata-Hudler Dats-Filppula-Hossa Cleary-Helm-Sammy Homer-Abdelkader-Leino That second line is so ******* dangerous for the Pens it's scary; it'll also completely shut down Malkin (as the first line does to Crosby). The precision passing on line 2 would be amazing to see. Also, I'd be a big fan of scratching Homer in favor of Draper for line 4 (both for faceoff wins and for defensive purposes). You could also scratch Leino and keep Homer, but I think Leino has done much more for us than Homer has.

Yeah it was. Then again, if they're not going to do anything about the huge elbow that Neidermayer gave to Dats in the Ducks series, it's not like they'll do anything to Sammy for that elbow. Right?

We've lost both of the last game 3s that we've been in and come back to win both of the past two game 4s with 6 goals (with 3 against us playing the Ducks, and 1 against us playing the Hawks). We'll be fine. We'll come out and get our match-ups going after figuring out how Bylsma would play Crosby and Malkin with the last change.

Sorry guys, I've called every series right so far, and I called a Wings win in 5 (losing game 3). My bad. At least now we'll see the true fury of the Wings in game 4 (see 'fury of the Wings in game 4' against the Ducks and Hawks, 6-3 and 6-1 respectively).

To be fair and play devil's advocate for the people whining about the 6 on 5: If we get a PP when the game is 2-1 and we're rolling like we were in the 2nd, we're getting a goal. Yes, we would. No, I don't care what you have to say. If we go up 3-1 on this Pens team, they're so crushed at home that it's ridiculous. The Igloo would go silent, grown men would weep openly, and Franzen would just grin that ugly ******* grin and women and children would scream in horror. The game would have been over. So yeah, it was a pretty big deal to miss a 21 second 6 on 5 if you really think about it. Edit: I do agree though, we deserved to lose with how ******* terrible we played in the 3rd. Did Sid sneak into our locker room during intermission and give everyone sleeping pills or something? It's retarded how awful the guys looked in the 3rd.

I'd be okay with losing all of those guys but Flip.