Opie

Brunner played one shortened season in the NHL and had a hard time being consistent at that. Didn't Brunstrum have a pretty good first year in the NHL? I can go down the list of one year guys that have played in the NHL. Tatar, Nyquist, and the other forwards "Rotting" in GR are not ready to assume top line minutes, Alfie fills that role for one season while the young guys have another chance to acclimate to the NHL.

Those of you sharting your collective pants do realize that Alfie scored as many points as Brunner, you know the guy that everyone is freaking out over the fact Holland hasn't signed? He also was a PPG player in the post season, and he played all but one game this season. OR... are you just freaking out because of his age?

I would really like to see the details on this, 2 yr max at 4 would be good with me. This is not Modano who was a reclamation project at his age. Alfie still had a very solid year last year and proved himself still a viable top 6 forward. He will not put up Stamkos/Crosby numbers but he will be a very good all around forward on this team.

Yes me, just like Howard is not responsible for every win and loss, Nill nor Holland are completely responsible for every successful draft/signing. It seems more to be you are assigning credit to Nill for good signings and blaming Holland for bad ones. Who in the boardroom said sign Brunner last year and who said don't bother, who said get Sammy and who didn't? Who was behind drafting your boy Mrzak, was that all Nill and Holland was like "Nah, we don't need him", but the team went with Nill over Holland? You have as much of a clue about that as I do, which is exactly none! What if Sequin never improves and Erikkson scores 40 playing with Krejci and Lucic? You seem to arbitrarily assigning credit and blame and also assuming a lot about the future. Getting Horcoff from the Oilers, and a Sequin the Bruins were begging to trade is not the same as getting Stamkos from TBL and that is what you are making it out to be like. Nill has made some splashy moves in a third tier market with a lot less pressure than doing it in Detroit.

As a one year stop gap, two at most, I am ok with this. He will do well on Dats Wing (IF Bob Mc is right), and is a proven commodity giving the Wings the ability to split Dats and Z. It also give Tatar Anderson Nyquist another year or so to fine tune their chemistry and skill. I would like to see: Abby Dats Alfie Brunner Z Mule Tatar Anderson Nyquist Miller Helm/Emmerton Eaves/Tootoo Not the best line up the Wings have ever Iced, but I have also seen worse!

You may not have said the Hawks would suck gigantic hairy balls but plenty on this site did. Just like they predicted the demise of the Pens. A lot of this board/fans of the Wings went from having a superiority complex and saying no other franchise compares, to now having an inferiority complex and hoping for the demise of every other team. The Flyers are up against the cap, but with many teams hoping to make the cap floor, there will always be a crappy GM willing to rescue them. The Hawks had the Panthers, and sending Huet overseas. Philly seems to be able to get rid of every bad contract they sign, only to sign other bad contracts. The current climate in the league has set it up so that bad GMs can be saved by worse GMs.

Apparently, according to media around Boston (Mainly talk radio so no links) the B's as a team, both players and management, were not at all happy with his antics. If he had stayed on the team I think the White House non visit would have blown over, rather been blown over by his performance. But the way it played out he left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. We shall see if that stops a team like Philly (who routinely throws bad money at goalies) from picking him up.

I think Charelli and Neely are messing with the Young man's head. I think this is their way of motivating a young guy who has had some professionalism issues and spends a lot of time enjoying the amble bars Boston has to offer. This is staging on their part and I imagine they released the statement saying he is being shopped around. The expectations for him was that he would be Stamkos by now, he obviously is not, but that is what they are expecting around here (I live in NH and get all the Boston Sports stations). And then you throw into the mix Marchand's rise in stock compared to where he and Sequin were drafted, and the whole Kessel trade deal this kid is under a lot of pressure to perform. With the losses they are expected to have this off season, I do not expect them to trade him, they are just trying to motivate his off season!

No I mean he took a run at a D-man and then was not back in the zone to play defense until late in the play, I mean he literally took himself out of the play to try and hit a guy. Where did I mention fighting?

Simple Solution Continuous OT. Is there anyone watching the post season OT hockey going on and saying to themselves: "hmm this is getting old, you know what would make this better, a shootout!" No 3 point games, stop watering down team's records with artificial points to fake parity! Win or Lose that is it. Play 4 OTs and have a game the next night, oops, unlucky for you. Would you rather have had a skills competition decide the game?

Admittedly I am not the biggest Tootoo fan, nor did I like the Wings signing him. Having said that: There is no way he gets inserted into this line up with any regularity unless Miller and Eaves are both hurt. Those two are two of the better pkers on this team and play a very responsible game for the Wings. The fourth line next year has 4 guys ahead of toots with a healthy Helm back, and that is without the Wings signing a Free Agent to move Abby down the roster. This is with me assuming Bert and Sammy are gone next season, if they are here Toots will have an even harder time cracking the roster. I enjoyed seeing Toots out there swinging for the fences, but he took himself out of the play too often!

That is hardly the demise this board predicted!

This board sounds an awful lot like it did after the Hawks won their first cup. "The Hawks will suck after signing a few big names!" "Good-bye Depth, Hello COOORRRRREEEE" Hawks seem to have turned out OK!

The best part is he wanted to be here before it was a possibility, if one were to believe the story about him asking to mentor under Bowman! Which I do!

I think both are better than any other alternative out there for their teams. Would you really give up Bylsma for Torts? Especially with superstars, that guy has proven he can handle stars, let alone superstars!

I think the Wings would lose to the Kings, unless someone decided to start scoring goals the Wings probably lose in 7 games a bunch of 1-0 or 2-1 games. But I also never thought they would take Ana to 7, let alone beat them and then take the Hawks to 7. Plus I think a healthy Dekeyser would have changed that D drastically! The Hawks made Quick look mortal, imo, because they had two red hot lines and a third one going pretty good. The Wings had one line going pretty good and 3 struggling to get things done.

Axe, that made me chuckle, like back when people would say: "give Hossa a glorified position at Little Ceasar's but pay him like 2 mil in the nhl." Ahhh, non-drug induced flashback are only half the fun!

I believe the rumor was (towards the end of the last round) that if the pens got swept they would be letting go of Bylsma (huge mistake imo) an potentially shopping Malkin. I think I heard mention of it on NBCSN, but it could have been local coverage during the series, in which case it probably came from "CSNNE Insider" Joe Haggerty and he is as believable when it comes to rumors and trades as I am. Well actually I would probably be less likely to make up random shart than he is!

For the sake of internet fighting: What are the chances the NHL says no players can go? What is the backlash then if the coaches are going? I think the answer to the first question is no way in hell Gary says no coming out of the lockout, the league needs more good press. So therefore the second question is moot. Other thoughts?

Crosby is not as bad defensively as he gets crapped on for, sure in 2008 he was not a great two way forward. But as a person who has a strong distaste for Crosby, I have a hard time saying he is not a very good two way forward.

I am not saying Pavel is greedy, but he would be have to be high off of Sour Diesel to take a 1 mil a year deal. Especially if the WIngs stab him in the back buy offering an outsider a 10 mil a year deal. 5 or 6 would probably be a deal, but to take one mil per season from the Wings, no way in hell. If he did take it I would buy him a life time stash of the sweetest cheeba cheeba as a thank you! If you remember the "Lids rule" Holland did not want to pay anyone more than lids because he took the deal to stay in Motown. That I could see Dats doing, staying for 6.5 or so and Holland saying unofficially no one will make more than you, but not a million.

Marc Savard, is the first name that comes to mind when you say dats is a once in a life time player. Without Matt Cooke scrambling his brain Savard and Dats were very close, defensively Savard was a step or two behind, but offensively they were arguably the two best playmakers in the league at the time. Think about it this way: Yzerman arguably the greatest captain the sport has ever seen and one of the top goal scorers, assist and point total players, and arguably one of the best two way forwards. LIds arguably top 2 best defense man of all time, norris trophies up the wazoo. Dats arguably the best ????? of all time? Dats is great, but he is a level below Lids and Yzerman. Not saying that is bad, just saying that when Holland talked about contracts with everyone on this team not named Lidstrom he has said that they will wait to see what happens with the player and the agent. That is his canned speech, my whole point to bringing this up is not to compare the players and start a flame war, but to say that for every free agent that has come up in Holland's tenure he has used the same we will see comments in the media, except for Lidstrom. So when the haters were all up in arms because Holland said he would wait and see, that it is just media speak. Much like if Dats had a hat trick and 8 take-aways and the team lost 5-3, he would come out and say everyone needed to play better. He wouldn't come out and say, "I did my part the team sucked"

Sorry for the encyclopedia length rant, TLDR at bottom: Was reading " http://www.tennessean.com/article/20130601/SPORTS02/306010071/Predators-will-need-offer-you-can-t-refuse-trade-No-4-pick " and it got me to thinking: That is potentially 3 of the top 4 picks in the draft up for sale. I know they said someone would have to make an offer they couldn't refuse, but their standards are a bit lower than say PIT or DET when it comes to an offer being too good to refuse! The league is now forcing teams (that perennially fight for the right to be paid by the other teams, while their team's suck) to meet a higher salary floor. Yet these same teams are giving away the chance to build a franchise, and the same teams that try to be successful (Phi, Ana, Chi, etc...) will be the ones to scoop up these picks. Why bother penalizing (with salary cap) the teams that strive to be better, if the teams that are just there to make their owner more money, are going to give away their shot to get better. Why on earth would a team that is rebuilding and was not very good the year before want to trade their early picks in the draft, especially #'s 1 or 2 given what the Hawks and Pens have been able to do with a few years of good picks. Especially in this draft that is going to be 7-10 impact players deep (by most accounts I have read, this will be a very deep draft), with a stud top pairing d-man as the first pick, which is now the most coveted position in the game. I know I am one of the people that thinks this last lockout was an absolute waste of time, but when I see things like this, it makes it even worse. Does Colorado or Florida really think they going to get a Crosby/Toews/Hall player from another team for that? Now sure Popeye Seth Jones could be a bust, but from what I have read he is legit! Tallon will probably trade his pick to Chicago for their last pick and a bag of pucks! Is Florida even trying anymore? Now i know what some will say, well Florida will get better by trading that pick for something they need. NO, no they won't. Maybe Colorado will, but Nashville and Florida will remain just as bad as they were. They will take a late first and a late second for it and then pick a couple of utility guys. The league looks stupid with the Playoff schedule, why on earth would Det have played Friday (if they won) when the two eastern conference teams had less than 6 game series and were sitting at home? Why make teams play back to back in the conference finals, when if you schedule the eastern conf to start on Friday you could have had a game every night with no back to back games? The same Cellar dwellers are there every year, C-bus, Flo, Nas (minus a few mediocre seasons), trading or letting great talent walk away, sure they throw big money at one guy every now and again, but that, IMO, is just keep up appearances and stay at the cap floor! Meanwhile at the same time CHI, DET, ANA, and PIT have to make tough personnel decisions to stay under the cap. If FLA, C-Bus, and others are always going to be at the bottom with or without forced parity, screw it, let them be last every year and let the DET, CHI, PIT, BOS, ANA, PHI, etc... spend whatever the hell they want! I just don't get it. Maybe I am too much of a cynic, maybe I am just plain stupid, but this league is starting to make less and less sense every year! It can not support the teams it has, yet they talk of expansion, huh? More teams in the playoffs?! Why! over half of the teams already make the playoffs? The way they are talking all but 10 teams would make the playoffs. To me, the league is trying to fake success, 3 point games fake tight playoff races and inflate records, more teams in the post seasons fakes successful teams (can you count playoff streaks anymore if all you need to do is win 1/3 of your games to make it), salary cap to fake parity? The league used these 3 point games to fake CHI start of season streak/record. Granted PHI has 10 ties in their unbeaten streak, the Hawks streak was labeled as unbeaten in regulation. Is it all being done to draw in more fans or is the league just really poorly ran? TLDR: What is the happening with this league, teams(like Florida) are handing over the chance to get better, while teams like DET, CHI, PIT struggle to maintain at the top of the heap due to a salary cap. Also some other comments about playoff scheduling!

Lids is a once in a lifetime player, I love Pavel but he is not Lids or Stevie Y, and neither is Z for that matter. I also said Kronwall which you left out, in his contract discussion Holland said the same thing. He said the same thing when Z was up, it is the canned answer for everyone that is not a once in a lifetime player. My point, that is Holland's canned answer, he gives that answer to the media every June!

Well thought out and written post.