Dave

What a life you must lead!

I don't like him either, but who is better?

This guy is bringing quality dialogue to the conversation. Very profound!

I see this as nothing but a good thing for the NHL and NBC. Outside of Thursday does anybody watch NBC anyways? So it's not like they're alienating their show's fans, but just adding hockey fans. If the NHL has the same marketing team as the past few years then they could probably hook a lot more viewers. The cup raise, and "what if..." commercials should pique the interest of many casual viewers.

Never would have guessed by your avatar. Very subtle.

There's a huge difference between that team and this one. That team was 30-8-3 at the midway point. They were across-the-board good. 3rd in GF/G, 1st in GA/G. Their PP was 3rd in the league and their PK was 8th. They also had 5 20 goal scorers. This current team has had good runs for most of the season, but they aren't the machine that the '08 team was.

Leino!

The past 3 games have been embarrassing.

I really don't understand the SO argument. It's like they forget that Detroit has every chance to LOSE in the SO too.

You can't learn if you don't do it. Practice != real game.

That would be amazing. Perhaps we could use a written agreement, stating that Datsyuk will not fight Perry anymore, as trade bait.

I gave you a plus because I don't see a problem with posting trade proposals. But I don't think Burke would want those players, and from what I've heard (just on other forums and stuff) Semin is headed back to Russia after this season. Plus, Hudler is only 1 point behind Semin, so I'm not sure adding Semin would be as big a boost as people think.

Getzlaf used to be a monster. But now he seems fairly invisible. Am I the only one who noticed this? I guess winning a cup and a gold medal has satisfied him.

His locker room presence.

Who's to say that our players aren't getting better? So you're saying he's arguably better than Rafalski? That sounds like a good thing. We're ranked 5th in goals per game, yet we only have 1 top 20 goal scorer in the league. Sounds like we're getting production out of everyone. Not even remotely true. I'm pretty sure that Detroit has had the most regular season success out of every team the past 10 years. Just looked it up, they've won the President's Trophy 4 times in the last decade. No other team has won it twice within that span. Within those years the team that won the trophy made it to at least the conference finals 50% of the time. Last year was the closest playoffs series ever played (as far as goal diff). Drake is not the reason they won. Team defense, and Z and Dats playing superbly is the reason they won. Drake was nothing more than a nice story that has been blown way the f*** out of proportion. I disagree.

JMac has looked pretty good the past few games. Part of that is the fact that he's getting a lot of D support. Det is 1st in the league. This statement is bewildering. The team is .500 on the road, and .875 at home. If they lock up a top spot and have home ice then they have every chance of winning.

Exactly. Remember when everyone was on him about his horrible pinches? Well he doesn't really do that too much anymore. Also, he's very good at clearing rebounds. This is something that was necessary for Howard last year, and for McDonald this year. He's 27 and improving very well.

I bet there's 29 teams that would like Ericsson. Other than the one real bad turn over he wasn't as brutal as everyone makes him out to be.

Well I'm no expert, but the ice looked horrible. When that happens you can't rely on skill as much and have to get dirty, which the team was not willing to do. It was their last game on the road trip and you could tell the team was just ready to get it over with.

So from now on players can just leave their head down, or "turned back" while going through the neutral zone and defenders can't touch them. That would be amazingly exploited. It also removes any responsibility from the puck carrier.

Detroit is getting schooled on pick possession.

This is one of the worste power plays I have ever seen.

I'm not going to say that the shift wasn't awesome, but Detroit lost game 5....

Zetterberg being healthy and on a tear is why Detroit won in '08. That and they had favorable playoff matchups. But they got the 1 seed so they earned those matchups. Drake helped the team, he did not "seal the deal". They would have won without him. *EDIT* Also, Franzen coming into his own is a huge factor. They probably would not have won it all if Franzen hadn't awaken.

By reading this forum one would get the impression that Dallas Drake is the best thing that has happened to this organization in the last 15 years.