Matt

Come on, guys.... You knew if we were letting Samuelsson walk we had to get a new whipping boy, right? As an aside -- I don't think that this affects the Parise talks one iota. It just may mean there's some more upheaval up front. Soft cap right now us $77 million. He'll play the point on the No. 2 PP unit it looks like. $3-million, though... Well, you got me on that one.

I think the Wings might have a contingent there... but Helene St. James has been steadfast in posting on Twitter that Holland never had travel plans today, that he's at his office in the Joe and his only travel plans today are to go "home". I don't believe I've heard anything definitive that any teams are travelling to meet anyone, just a lot of submitted offers. That's likely what today is -- fielding offers -- and then face-to-face meetings start tomorrow. Same with Suter.

No worries about that. Great, lively discussion going on. Everyone with eyes on Twitter and the TSN/NHL.com streaming feed.

It appears there is a delay in getting the capacity activated, although the upgrade has been purchased. 50 users still the cap, but users are bouncing in and out. Recommendation for now would be to open another tab and refresh a few times to see if you can get in.

There was previously a 50-user limit on it. I just purchased the expanded package -- 250 users is now the cap. Everyone should get in.

This gets posted instantly -- the posts are edited to add. BE PATIENT IT'S COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!

Per twitter...

Won't matter, Chelios is going to ride up there on a horse in full cowboy gear all City Slickers style with Ilitch riding shotgun like good ol' Curly. They'll just lasso Suter and take him back to Red Bird II. One thing = winning? So maybe Billy Crystal is Suter? This is going to be a long day.... I'm already shot.

There is no "official" Eklund thread. He's a rumor monger, believe nothing. Threads such as this will not pollute this forum -- ever -- and if there's even a mention of "Eklund" henceforth it is done so in the Rumors forum, and there only.

Cleary also has a NTC. There was a brief window during the 2011-12 season (the 30 days leading up to the trade deadline) where it wasn't in effect, but that is closed now. __ For other players outside of Emmerton (assuming Holmstrom retires -- i don't think there's room for him) I do like Eaves, but the concussion problems leaves serious doubts. Eaves does have use on the 2nd PP unit occasionally when healthy, otherwise between him and Drew Miller it's a wash. Miller is better on the mucking/grinding part of the game (and health-wise), while Eaves has more offensive upside coupled with injury risk.

Personally, I find it impossible to see Filppula in any form of leadership role. I just don't see it.

Emmerton. I don't think he'll have a hard time clearing waivers. Next in line may be Eaves due to the concussion issues, though he should be ready for camp, if I recall correctly.

Awesome work from The Triple Deke crew: 100% pure awesomeness...

Holland: "I don't know if we were ever in it. We were informed today that we were not one of the teams on his list he wants to sign with."

That's what I was thinking. Suter 2 years younger, better defensively. Wideman has put up more points (marginally), not nearly as strong defensively. A career -39 for Wideman to Suter's +46. Despite looking at that bare statistical comparison, I think Suter's looking at more $7-million to start. $7.25-million I think is the sweet spot, just because he is the premiere defensive talent on the market this year and the options for other clubs just dwindled by 1.

memegenerator.net

$10-million figure doesn't scare me. That won't be his cap hit, but his salary as part of a possible front-loaded deal. NBD.

Not sure if serious..... (Hopes not.)

Let's not forget that Schultz's cap hit isn't a $3.8-million albatross the club has to safeguard against (like stating above, he may only hit $1.8-million total w/achievable bonuses), because of cap overage allowance. The Wings ran into that a couple years ago with some vets hitting performance bonuses when the team was already close to the cap: http://capgeek.com/faq/what-s-a-bonus-overage.php

I wouldn't think this would be the case at all. Management doesn't need to tell us the prospect well is virtually dry of blueline talent -- any way to boost that is a huge deal. Kindl I believe has worn out his welcome and will be either traded or waived (pending something else happening on the blueline). If no one picks him up he'll just stay in GR. Suter and Schultz are entirely different animals. Suter would be a No. 1 defenseman on this club immediately, while Schultz would (potentially) help on the No. 2 PP unit and would be a great asset with his right-handed shot.

Great quotes on Holland. A side of me is a bit happy that he's more apt to take some risks and dive in and do something that hasn't fit the mold of the last two decades. A bit alarming in another respect -- but we're definitely not dealing from a position of strength that we've had in previous years, either.

I was very close to having Howard or Kronwall in the 3rd spot. Full disclosure: I'm waiting to see what happens after July 1st. Everything is easily editable in the original PSD files I created.

Okay.... so who's out there that coached Suter and Parise and they'd *love* to play for him? You know, since "Shero drafted Suter and Sid and Zach are BFFs" and all... (...kidding...)

Due to popular request I've added back the Red Wings news headlines feature that was present in the last message board version. This one comes with a few differences, however. You can see it by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking on the "Show News" tab. The page content pushes down slightly to display three different sets of news feeds: Detroit Media, Red Wings Bloggers, and Wings on the Web. The "Detroit Media" is a feed displaying the most recent articles from the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, and mLive (Booth Newspapers). The "Red Wings Bloggers" feed displays the latest stories from The Malik Report, Red Wings Central, Abel to Yzerman, The Production Line, DetroitHockey.net and others (as many as I could get working -- some I wanted to add didn't have valid RSS feeds). The final "Wings on the Web" column is a Google News feed that gathers the most recent headlines across the web that are focused on the Red Wings. I hope you guys like the addition, which is expanded greatly from what the past version was! Please note: You will likely have to clear your browser's cache (to force the latest version of the site's CSS file) to view the new feature correctly. You should be able to do this by hitting Ctrl+F5.

Okay, who let Mike Ditka into the room?