number9

It's not an "angle" it's true lol. Other teams wait for many years for their entire team to rebuild...wings fans are not even patient enough to wait for 1 or 2 years while their mediocre defense gets rebuilt into a great one. Commit to guys like Ehrhoff and Wisniewski for big money for 5+ years? or sign gappers like Colo on cheap short contracts and wait to have Sproul, McKee, Ouellete, Marchenko, DeKesyer on reasonable contracts? I'll take the latter Wiz for over 5.5 for 6 years is bad business. Waiting a few years and having guys like Sproul for 3.5 is good business. Not to mention wasting big money on long contracts on guys like Ehrhoff and Wiz means we won't have that to spend on our own young guys when they come up. So the Kings don't need a good blue line because "theyre comitted to winning"....what? Quick played lights out. 5 bad post season games and now we suck? gotcha

And this is why we let our boys mature in the minors. Riley certainly isn't ready it seems. Smith was just helping his pal...but still I hope he learns from this as well.

Lemieux was the sickest

Doughty - Mitchell Scuderi - Greene Voynov - Martinez Drewiske Volchenkov - Zidlicky Tallinder - Salvador Greene - Fayne Larsson We have a boat load of NHL ready forwards. Watch when the CBA gets decided and and other teams go into firesale mode. Kenny can sit back and use all the tradeable assists hes got a forward to bring in some D for cheap. Genius.

Beer

Mike Bossy was sick too

Smith

LaFleur was also sick

Lefebvre not quite as sick, though either

LaFontaine too. That guy was sick in the Q.

Mackinnon.... sorry about being drafted by Columbus :/

1. Hence why I said "Rights traded" 2. Wasn't meant to 3. Signing Gonchar for 5.5 in 2010 would have been dumb. We still had Rafalski Stuart and Lidstrom. Salo's 3.75 cap hit takes him till he's 40. We need that money the next few years to give our young guys raises, instead it would be wasted on a 38-40 year old fast declining. Have no idea what your talking about with Hammer. Everyone one of our D-men outscored him last year except Ericsson, who had just 2 fewer points. (Smith had 7 pts in 14 gp and likely would have) (Kindl matched him playing 13 fewer games). 4. Jussi and Joni grew up playing together in Finland and are best friends. My bad on Carle, for some reason I thought Tampa drafted him, though I don't think he's worth 5.5. Jovo continued to live in Florida during those 13 years, I'm sure now that he's close to retirement he wanted to return home. Like i said, why didn't Kenny chase Bryan Allen???

If we had signed Semin that would have sent a message to the rest of our players that you can float and still be a wing. Not a good example for our young guys. I think he had problems with pain killers too. You'd be surprised how many players abuse drugs and alcohol, most are capable of keeping it on the DL though.

Rights traded Suter wanted to play with Parise at home in Minnesota Carle wanted to be back in Tampa Garrison wanted to be in his hometown Vancouver Bieksa was never moved and said publicly he had no intention of leaving Vancouver Jovo wanted to be back in Florida Pitkanen wanted to play with Jokinen in Carolina Hamhuis wanted to be home in BC So you have Gonchar, Salo, Hamrlik, and Allen. And Gonchar, Hamrlik, and Salo are all old shells of their former selves Dang we shoulda chased Bryan Allen

Never ends with him http://www.theheckler.com/2012/11/20/patrick-kane-arrested-for-swi-in-switzerland/

Yes Emmerton and Matthias a couple picks before Lucic is sad plus Axelsson a couple before Marchand

True but with Callahan, Boyle, and Rupp, plus adding Asham, Pyatt, and Halpern, their still tougher than us!

Made sure to add it after the way everyone reacted to the initial news. I've lost friends and family to drunk driving so I understand it's a sensitive subject, but this kid is not huge F*** Up moral degenerate because of it. It's a common mistake that once in a while has disastrous consequences. It happens to the best of us. His career is not over because of it. He's lucky he didn't hurt himself or someone else. I hope he learns his lesson and doesn't do it again

Well by your definition of a role player I'd agree on Sammy, Cleary, and Tuzzi. But not the rest of them. While they're all good on defense, specifically Abby brings grit, Helm brings speed, and Eaves and Miller bring penalty killing. Toots isn't as good defending as those 4 are but he brings a lot to the bottom 6. Specifically things we don't have much of on this team too. He'll bring grit, energy, agitation, and bottom-6 scoring. Sorry that you have a personal vendetta against him, I'd be willing to bet he ends up being our best off-season move and a fan favorite. Yeah we need a sniper, but we also needed our bottom 6 retooled. Tootoo is a part of that retooling. Semin brings scoring, but he only brings it to 41 games a year. The other 41 he brings locker room cancer. Plus we have young scorers who need his time in the top 6. I'm already happier with Brunner over Semin. Prefered Prust as well, however he got overpaid, glad we didn't give him that contract. Scott is just a big dumb pylon. Top goalie tandem. Amazing forward lines. If they could get one more big D-man I'd hand them the cup right now (and they have the cap space to do it!)

IMO the only teams that had successful off-seasons were Calgary, Carolina, Montreal, Rangers, and Tampa. Most other teams didn't change much or lost out. So i'm not too worried....the only team I fear that really got better is New York, their lookin dopeeeee

Hahaha The only one that needs to do some growing up is LGW Before you judge this kid realize that drunk driving is not only VERY COMMON, but over 99% of the time nobody dies! An estimated 112 million Americans drove drunk in 2010 (about 1 out of 3 Americans) Only .009% of drunk driving ends in a fatality (you're 3x more likely to willing kill yourself than you're to get killed by a drunk driver or drunk driving) 99.7% of drunk drivers get home safely without even being pulled over Average drunk driver (that gets caught) will drive drunk at least 80 times before their first arrest Not trying to justify drinking and driving, it's still a stupid mistake to make, but that's what it is: A MISTAKE. Not some huge moral dilemma. It also has nothing to do with hockey and in no way effects his ability to skate on frozen water and shoot rubber. Frankly, I'm glad we finally have some drinkers on the team. We need more rough and tumble heavy drinking types in the lineup. Golden boy Smith is a bit of a barfly too. So let's all be fair and start criticizing his personal life as well. The other night Brendan showed up to a bar drunk in GR and tried to fight the bouncer when the bouncer wouldn't let him in... mind you the bar had already been closed for almost an hour when the tipsy, angry, confused Smitty showed up. I mostly feel bad for Riley in all of this honestly. That dumb decision he made while inebriated is going to be a huge pain in his butt for the next year at least. Bye bye drivers license and alcohol! Oh, and to whom ever brought up "alcoholism", you need to spend less time on your computer and more time at the bar. Did you even see his BAC? The only "superdrunk" alcoholic with a BAC that low would have to be an 80lb girl who just gave blood. This was totally expected though, the kid is Canadian and Irish for petes sake! Cheers Riley EDIT: Stats courtesy of MADD

What roles are you talking about? Tootoo and Semin are not even comparable. Tootoo is a bottom 6 agitator and Semin is a top 6 scorer. Yeah we need a sniper in the top 6, but we also need grit in the bottom 6. Tootoo brings that. Semin is a terrible choice anyway. We don't need his laziness rubbing off on the rest of our players. I wouldn't even want him in the same room as Pulkkinen.

He has been doing better lately: Smith, Sheahan, Sproul, Aubry, Callahan, Bodin I think we tend to draft small because we play the skill game. When your system requires that most of your players are skilled your gonna have to draft a lot of skilled softies. And because we always pick late, all the players who are blessed with both size and skill are gone when they get to us.

No. I think he did pretty well, considering that he lost his #1 #2 and #4 defenseman in just one year... Most other GM's would have destroyed our depth at forward and sacrificed our teams future to rebuild the defense through trades. I'd rather not lose anyone or our picks, and wait for Sproul, Ouellet, Marchenko, DeKeyser, and McKee to age up. Wouldn't say Ken was entirely unprepared either... 50% of our drafts picks over the last 2 drafts were D-men. Considering Kenny's style (building through the draft opposed to building through trades) I'd call that preparation. Anyone who knows Holland knows that the CBA also influenced his decision making. Although it was probably his most aggressive off-season, he still played it close to the vest and didn't tie up all our money. Minny's "Big Win" is going to be their biggest mistake when the cap drops. Goaltending: Fixed Weak Bottom Six: Fixed Sniper: Likely fixed (Brunner) Weak Defense: Addressed, but not fixed (Q and Colo) He addressed all of our needs and didn't blow up the team. If he had landed Suter (at a reasonable price) this off-season would have been an A+ performance. However that was clearly impossible, so it seems he did the 100% best he could. I'm happy with that. Plus he gets 10 bonus points for ditching Hudler

Holmgren,forcing hands since 2006. #Bizzaro-Holland