HelmFan

I'd like to point out the obvious fact that the Pens only won one more game then the Wings did this postseason.

Pittsburgh is going to have to play some defence this round. There's no way the can expect to score 4 plus goals a night on Craig Anderson like they did on Nabokov. Pens, again, embarrass themselves when matched up against a tougher team ( think last years Philly series) Senators in 6.

I've always liked the way Martin Hanzal played against the Wings. I'd prefer him over Yandle.

that was embarrassing. PP coach should have been fired on the spot after that one.

sooooo... if the players decide, should we be mad at Cleary and Abby for playing themselves?

total BS. see Abdelkader or better yet, see Franzen. He decided to play in the playoffs 4 years ago. that seems to have earned him quite a lengthy leash.

Lets give Miller a shot with Datsyuk. He's coming off of a career year last year and can score some of those Homer-esque dirty goals. Before laughing consider that he scored 14 goals last year, equal to or greater than Bertuzzi,Cleary, and Samuelsson. Nobody can say with certianty that he'd be any worse than Abdelkader, whose only hockey attribute is "6'1 220 pounds" But Babcock only cares about size, so this will never happen. If he was a manager in corporate America, he would get sued for discriminating against the small guys.

If it happened Jan 10, then we should be just entering week 8 right now. Maybe he'll start skating soon?

it's way too early to tell if Brunner is worth big money. He's only played 19 games. We don't even know if he has the gas to play a full 82 game season plus playoffs. (the Swiss play only around 50, less physical games) It's Kenny's best interested to get him signed now, before he proves that he can score at this pace for 80 games for more than a season or two. If he continues to prove himself, YIKES, is he in for a big payday.

I agree with your stance on Tootoo. Everything you said, I'll second. I can't believe he gets 1.9million a year. I especially agree with the part in bold. Tootoo gets most of his hits seconds after the guy has already got rid of the puck. And they are almost never the heavy,"bone rattling" type.

Soooo Babcock didn't know how important Lidstrom and Homer were important to the power play until they were gone? Do we have the right guy running this team? (Ment to be tongue in Cheek. I have no emotion con for that)

I think it's pretty safe to assume that if the puck is within 8' of Pavel, then he has control of it. Doesn't matter who has the puck.

NBC is American. As are both teams. Who are they going to be bias towards?

Plunk!

Garth Snow should have read the fine print. He traded for Tm Thomas, the TD Bank Garden's quiet, but friendly janitor.

Don't argue with me. Argue with the Redwing philosophy for the last gazillion years. My point was: I hope he is that good. I want to win, and I want the best players to play. Not the ones Kenny feels loyal to. (although I do admit that Ken Hollands approach has worked for a number of years)

Management has called Helm the best 3rd line centre in the league. If we could acquire someone good enough to bump Helm down to the 4th, we would automatically have the best bottom 6 group in the league. I'm all for that. Unfortunately for Jarnkrock, it takes a lot for a Redwing to be demoted. (see Cleary) and the only rookies that make the team are guys that are out of minor league options. (Brunner is the only recent exception that I can think of)

I posted this in the "pk issue" thread at about the same time this thread got going. It seems relevant here: What we need is another legit bottom 6 centre man to carry the 4th line the way Helm carries the 3rd. The Wings have always been strong down the middle. This year the depth isn't there, and it's showing. Emmerton sucks, and Abdeldkader is a 4th line winger. With those 2 at centre,it's not hard to see why our bottom 6 have only got the 1 point. There's also no point having Tootoo if he can't play special teams. so my PK would have Helm/MIller 1st unit Legit 4th line centre/ Eaves 2nd unit. bottom 6: Cleary/Helm/Bertuzzi MIller/ Mystery centerman/Eaves I won't win any of you over cutting Abby and Tootoo, but for (almost) twice the cost, can you really say that they're better than Miller and Eaves? Especially on the PK. Who do I have in mind for my 4th line centre? Nobody on the Griffins, and I don't know enough about the other teams to say. But we do have plenty of bottom 6 depth to trade.

arguing for or against Tootoo is pulling this thread off topic. The question was how can we solve our PK issues? My answer was replace the crappy PK'rs with good PK'rs: Helm, Miller, Eaves and a legit 4th line centre.

He averages 8:30 mins a game. 0 on special teams. 0 points, -1, 15 hits (69th in the league), 8 shots and 3 staged fights. Seems pretty high for a $1.9million cap hit. Now, I'll be the first to tell you that you can't measure a grinder by his stats. But I haven't seen anything special from Tootoo at all. I had high hopes for him and Abby on the 4th line together and I want to give him a chance, but our problem right now is our special team play SUCKS. If we can bench a poor special team player for a better one, I'm all for it.

What we need is another legit bottom 6 centre man to carry the 4th line the way Helm carries the 3rd. The Wings have always been strong down the middle. This year the depth isn't there, and it's showing. Emmerton sucks, and Abdeldkader is a 4th line winger. With those 2 at centre,it's not hard to see why our bottom 6 have only got the 1 point. There's also no point having Tootoo if he can't play special teams. so my PK would have Helm/MIller 1st unit Legit 4th line centre/ Eaves 2nd unit. bottom 6: Cleary/Helm/Bertuzzi MIller/ Mystery centerman/Eaves I won't win any of you over cutting Abby and Tootoo, but for (almost) twice the cost, can you really say that they're better than Miller and Eaves? Especially on the PK. Who do I have in mind for my 4th line centre? Nobody on the Griffins, and I don't know enough about the other teams to say. But we do have plenty of bottom 6 depth to trade.

Wings were obviously tired from the Blues game. Bertuzzi and Cleary could barely skate out there. I'm thinking that for the next back to back game, the Wings pull up a couple of the Griffins so that they have some young, fresh legs.

Atiwapaskat housing.

No need to get worked up there,guy. You said "he might be". I proved that he wasn't.

Stats show this isn't true: last 4 years played. 75 out of 82 82 out of 82 68 out of 82 1out of 5 add them up and you get 226 games played out of 251. so he's missed 10% of the games the last 3 years and 5 games. For comparison: Datysuk 18%, Zetterberg 6%, Filppula 17%,Franzen 28%,Cleary 17%, Bertuzzi 7% I think this year, he got caught out of shape and thinking there wouldn't be a season and hurt his back trying to hard to get back in the swing of things. It didn't have anything to do with him being an undersize grinder.