Joey v3.4

I wouldn't even bother trying to play hockey until you can skate well forward, transition turn (Leg over leg), skate backwards somewhat well, and be able to transition from forward to backward and back to forward. If you have ANY skating skill these are all skills you could build up in a month. If you're starting from virtually no skating experience it will take a lot more practice, and you'll have to work twice as hard as anyone who's skated most of their life. If you're heavier (I'd say over 170) learning to skate can be not only challenging, but painful. It's one thing to fall when you're 6 and weigh 45 pounds and only have to fall two feet. It's another to end up in a crumpled mass of 200 pounds of flailing madness. I took the most injuries on my wrists, but I learned to fall very quickly. Still didn't change the fact that my thighs and ass were bruised all summer long. Watch out for your wrists, instinct is to use them to break a fall, but often the fall will break them. Start learning to fall on cushioned parts of your body early on....use your shoulders, upper arm, thighs, ass, etc. If you're going down, tuck and roll with it. Trying to fight an obvious fall is a good way to strain something, and landing badly can straight up break bones. If you're new to skating, be prepared to fall....a lot. Especially when other people are trying to beat you around If the people on your team are fairly good, play as a winger. Center is a lot of responsibility, and Defense is not a position you want to "Start" at. If you screw up as a forward, you don't score. If you screw up as a Defense, they do score. I would get a ball or a puck, and a street hockey stick, and practice on your own. Once you can shoot and hit the general area of the net, once you can skate in all directions, then you're ready to start learning to play hockey. Unfortunately, trying to play ice hockey with limited skill in skating, is like trying to play basketball if you've never ran anywhere before. Still very viable. I learned to skate at 19, by 20 I was good enough to play mid-range inline hockey with local leagues. I did play Defense, but I always lacked the agility of the guys who had been playing hockey for a decade, so I could use my size and a slightly longer stick to do pretty well densively. My slapshot was exactly like Lidstroms, except his goes in the net sometimes, and mine very rarely did I played with little kids a lot. Amazingly, it was fun, and improved my agility more than playing with adults. Nothing will anger you more as a grown man than when an eleven year old can skate circles around you Start small. Think big. Learning to play hockey (Or even skating for that matter) can be frustrating if the people around you are a step ahead of you. I'd suggest setting aside a lot of personal practice time to focus on core skills such as skating, stick handling, shooting. If you really suck, the best way to be effective early off for me was always to agitate and try to chip the puck from possession. Sometimes a good chip can make it look like you did something awesome. If it's contact ice hockey, use your size if you have it, and work on speed. If you're a smaller guy, work on agility and quickness. Speed = How fast from point A to point B. On a car, it would be measured as "Top Speed" Agility = How well/efficiently you transition from one movement to the next. On a car, it would be "Handling" Quickness = How quickly you can get the wheels rolling. On a car it would be "Accelleration". If you don't have a lot of experience, don't buy expensive sticks. They are shockingly easier to break, especially if you're just practicing your slap shot. I was actually pretty good, had a semi-decent slapper, bought a brand new $90 stick, and broke it in my first game. Unlike NHL stars.....I didn't have 30 back up sticks. If you break a stick, it's usually non-returnable. Sure they cost sometimes tripple digits for a good one, but sticks break, it's a fact of life, and no sports store will return or swap it if you're an adult, and it looks like you just took a really bad slap shot. So go cheap, until you have skills to support your costs

I have actually wondered what market they where shooting for. I hope they're not planning on selling action figures and comic books to adult hockey fans. I would be likely to select Bud Light over Miller Light, if there was a picture of Datsyuk on the can (Admit it, you would too), but I'm not going to buy a collection of 30 NHL hockey super hero action figures. And the designs they're using, aren't exactly what I'd think would be appealing to kids. What kid wants a freaking robot with telekinesis specialty over American Cars? If They're trying to appeal to the small niche of people who collect collections of random crap, then I guess that is their best option, but I get the feeling the 30 NHL action figures are not exactly going to be highly sought after by the collectors community. And if they're trying to reach the comic community.....honestly, how many hockey fans are also avid comic book fans? I fail to see what market they aim for, and who they hope will be giving them money for this. I say they unveil it this year. They push it hard at the start of next year. But by the end of next year, "The Red Wing" action figure will be in the Big Lots Clearance Bin.

Atdhe.net has three feeds. Two of them are broken. The third is Pitts audio, but I haven't lagged once. Normally games are unwatchable since I'm sharing a wireless router with multiple other people, and the Internet where I am sucks anyway. This is the best feed I've found in a long time. I think it was the third feed down. It's password protected, but it tells you the password in the description.

They should have done East Vs West. East could be Evil, West could be good. Or Vice Versa. Only problem then is you'd have people complaining about if they were good or bad. Personally, I think Crosby would make a better villian than a super hero I'm not saying I could do a better job than the people in charge of this, but I would do East vs West, and each division could be in a sense it's own league of super heroes. You could even incorporate rivalries, for Example the Wings and Hawks are on the same team, but they still have their own internal disagreements, and even while working together, they are jealous and resentful of one another, during battle attempting to one up each other, and during peacetime, playing pranks and sabotaging one another for kicks. You could have the Penguins be like the genius overlords of the evil team, while Philly is known for being the big mean enforcer that every EVIL superpower needs. Just some examples. Or a telekinetic robot with outdated airplane wings.....whatever. ***.

Huge Rookie mistake by Mac. Oh well. Rookies gotta learn somehow.

+/- is most useful when it's very high, or very low. But it is a very fickle stat. It's one of those ones that you point to if it's good or bad, but when it's neutral it doesn't really mean a great deal. Lidstrom is proof of that this year. Some defenseman will play top line, but also play on the PK. These defense usually have lower +/- because they're not just out with the top lines. Double shifting can really kill a Defenseman as well, as sometimes they're out there with goal scoring lines, and sometimes they're out there trying to keep the puck out of their own zone, and Lidstrom double shifts a lot. Well usually he does time and a half, often playing with one line, and then staying out for a while with the next line. I bet if I did a game by game breakdown of goals for with Lidstrom out there, and goals against with Lidstrom out there, the story would tell more than the numbers do. It is still strange for Lidstrom to be even on his +/-, after having such a solid offensive season, and winning most games. *Shrug*. I use to look at +/- a lot more, but sometimes I just see huge inconsistencies in it.

Great to see Lidstrom get selected. This news brings the total number of reasons I want to watch the ASG up to....One. Good point. I think it will be more competitive than past All-Star games, and we'll get to see some weird pairings. I want Lidstrom to roll out with Green or Chara ----------------- Spell checker recommended the words maelstrom, Stromboli, and midstream as replacements for "LIdstrom". Lol.

1) I liked the concept, and thought it could be neat if they did something cool with it. But they would need an amusing comic book, or cartoons or something. 2) Unfortunately, most of the guardians are stupid, with lame super powers, and a really pathetic story. For most of them they don't even hardly represent the team very well. Here is what would make them interesting: 1) Fire the artists. 2) Fire the writers. 3) Hire new better artists. 4) Hire new better writers. Sorry, it's just VERY poorly done. I am firmly convinced that I've seen six year olds create most entertaining super heroes using nothing but a trash bag, and some duct tape. I get the Jet Wings, since it's a "Redwing", and I get the wheels since it's the motor city, But why in the HELL does he have the super power of "Tracking things", and telekinesis? Sounds like someone just ran out of ideas, and did a classic..... "Ok....motor city. Motor city equals cars. Cars are Mechanical. Mechanical stuff uses Electricity. Electricity....Electricity equals energy. Energy. Telekinesis does stuff with energy. Telekinesis...yes...especially cars from America". Now for the second super power. They were like: "Ok....motor city. Motor city equals cars. Cars often have GPS in them. GPS, GPS helps you find things. Finding things....is tracking. Ah ha, Tracking!!!! Get it....like GPS?" And some ****** is getting paid to do that. Let me summarize: Physical: Outdated F14 wings, Clumsy Tonka Truck wheels, otherwise a big red robot with a bumper decal on his chest, and a hawk shaped helmet just for the hell of it. Personality: He's a bossy general type who demands perfection, but sucks at making decisions on the fly, or adapting to situations, making him effectively a useless superhero if anything goes wrong. Super Powers: Tracking of crap, and telekinesis of mechanical devices, specifically American made cars. I'm just not impressed.

"Welcome to the NHL, rookie!" Clean hit. Love seeing defense-man lay out the "star rookies".

Still tied for 11th in points, and considering there are 90 top 3 forwards in the league, I would say while he's not a top 3 player this season, to say he's not a top 3 forward is still pretty ridiculous.

People always talk about how "Old" the Wings are. Other teams fans, of course. I love that we have all this young depth to come up, and play games at the NHL level, and even when we're down half a dozen top guys, I know and I am fully confident that we can continue to win. How many teams in the NHL could go down both goalies, and a slew of goal scorers, and still have a solid shot at winning every single night? The future of the organization is very promising. We are handling this a LOT better than we did last year. I think we actually have seven injuries now, while the most at one time last year I think we only had six. Technically, we're more injured this year than we were last year, and this is the first time I've seen us lose BOTH goalies at the same time. I think going through this last year, has taught Babcock and crew new strategies for coping with injury. To say we lead our division 7 men short, is nothing short of spectacular.

It amazes me how incredible, and how invisible Bert can become from one game to the next. He's like a ninja. One game he's all over the place, winning battles, taking shots, making chances. The next game he'll slip into the shadows, leaving us nothing but wonder at when he's going to emerge again. Flip is like the Little Engine That Could, sometimes. Sometimes he gets up the hill and does nice things with the puck, other times he poops out and has to try another game. But it seems like for the most part he does try to bring something every game. I get the strange feeling Flip is going to be valuable this year in the playoffs though.

My conspiracy theory is that this is Babcocks way of resting the team, and rapidly developing new talent. Shortly after the All Star break everyone will be magically healthy, and we will cruise to an end of the season mad rush, similar to what we did last year. I just hope we have a better plan for the playoffs though Everyone important, or old gets a nice mid season vacation. All of our prospect get to strut their stuff. Even though it's a conspiracy theory, it genuinely seems like it would be viable

I think Mac is excited to play, and he's getting over his Jitters. I expect a big game from him tomorrow in Detroit, lets see if the crowd behind him can get him going. Hopefully he'll make some amazing saves and earn himself a chant Flip and Bert with pretty good games. It's amazing how win or lose, a third of our team is always playing great, a third is playing s***ty, and a third is injured :-p Least we got the point. Once you go down 2-0, a point is what you start shooting for. 4 Misses in the shootout. I think shootouts are getting to the point where the players enjoy showcasing skills and trying to make highlight reels. Shootouts can be incredibly random, so I think the players just try to have fun with it. Well, at least for teams like Detroit where a SO loss isn't potentially the point to end your season

Pretty good assessment. I think the Goalie situation has been among the most intriguing. This doesn't entirely have to do with "Trades" per say. but selecting your starting goaltender is still an offseason decision NJ - Brodeur on the worst season of his life. The Kovy situation just adds to the distress. Montreal - Price is actually working out for them, even though I think everyone was like "WTF!!" when they traded off Halak. Bravo for them. St Louis - Halak was money in the bank, until he hit his sophmore slump. Bruins - After a 17-18 record in 2009/2010, Thomas leads the NHL in every important category. Howard - Not playing his best, but still the most winning-est goalie in the league. Probably helps that Detroit has the most goals for in the NHL.

NHL.com has been featuring Datsyuk a lot lately too, for the first time in his entire career. Buff will get nominated, but he isn't as great of a defenseman as some other guys. While being the defensive point leader shoes you in for a nomination, I think the league would have to be on Crack to select Buff as 1st overall. Then again, the top three vote getters in the All Star Balloting are from Pittsburgh. That right there shows you just how much of a joke the NHL is becoming. Crosby should be there, sure, I'll conceed. Letang should be one OF the defenseman, but not THE top guy. And Fluery being selected as the top goaltender, especially considering Thomas play this year, is the result of massive fan boy bandwagon vote raping. When I saw Letang jump above Lidstrom, and Fleury jump above guys like Thomas, Garon, Quick, Price, etc..... Fleury is 7th in GAA, 15th in Save percentage, and 6th in wins, so without breaking the top 5 of any relevant category, he somehow took #1 in All Star voting. I don't mean to derail the thread, I'm just pointing out how it's "ALL" becoming a big joke For me, there are 82 games, and 4 rounds of playoffs. All the trophies, events, and extra stuff has become nearly worthless to me. I say, let the fair weather fans have their fun. Lidstrom is Hall of Fame bound, has the most cups of any active defenseman, and at 41 is the second highest scoring D-man in the league. Norris or not, we know who is best.

Great win, but feeling negative Nancy at the moment.... We yet again let in 3 goals. And tossed a lead. We really have to tighten up defensively.

Actual quote from Penguins forums, long long ago. Can't site the actual post, and it might not be exact: "Whoo!!! I don't know who scored but it's a tie and now Crosby can win it!!!!!" I just thought, wow. I thought I would share during the commercials

Draper looks ready for one last cup. I think he gets a little juice, training his replacements Old man wisdom, so to speak.

I agree, especially considering a few of our other trades, have worked out well for other teams. Leino, for example. People love picking up Detroit players, and picking up a Detroit player with some skill, is worth a few pennies on the market. I'm just saying DRAPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our 3rd and 4th lines aren't playing a collapsing defense, and IMO they should be. We were lucky a lot in that period.

NBC just said, "There's nothing like this in hockey. You can go to the super bowl, you can go to the playoffs, there is nothing like this!!" What he meant to say I believe is, "Since I don't get to announce either of those real events, This is all I've got to be excited about this year, so please stay watching what is possibly the worst actual hockey broadcast of the year". I'm dyslexic, but that's what I heard.

At least the Carolina game was good. So was the Toronto game. What does that say about the league, when the Winter Classic is the most boring hockey game of the night.

3.0 and above has been pretty buggy.

No way. This NBC feed rules. It's like a comedy, mixed with a hockey game. All they need now is a laugh track, so maybe you accidently end up laughing at a joke. Go NBC! All this is missing is a Smirnoff comercial, followed by an anti-marijuana ad, and the brainwashing will be complete! Why don't presidents go to important Capitals games anymore? I think Obama should be in the crowd. A black man in a Washington Jersey, caught on camera asking which team is the right one, in support of his country, would be superbly awesome. Late Night TV would go wild.