SouthernWingsFan

I'm looking forward to Zetterberg coming back, he's without much question the Wings biggest offensive threat when healthy, but let's calm down. It's not like the team is just flat out tanking without him. Anybody would be an idiot to think the Wings' playoffs chances are better without Zetterberg in the lineup, but it's not like the team isn't capable. The Wings aren't a 1-man show.

I haven't read the three pages of posts, so I apologize for re-hashing anything that's been mentioned already, but here goes... 1. It would've been nice for the Preds PA to announce Modano's accomplishment. 2. It's not the job of the Predators organization to constantly keep track of records, especially those of opposing teams. Hell, I didn't know about this feat until Modano accomplished it after the fact. 3. The Dallas organization needs to quit whining. 4. Everybody needs to get along in a time where the NHL, while not on life support by any stretch of the imagination, needs as much positive pub and good business relationships as it can get. This won't really affect much in the grand scheme of things, but you get the idea...

It's a shame about the divorce of the Konstantinov's. Intially when I glanced I thought, "What a slug." But, we have absolutely no idea how difficult it must be for Vladimir in trying to live a semblance of a normal life. I'm not trying to take up slack for his ex-wife, it must have been hard for her too. Hopefully my marriage vows, if they ever come, will be more than that. We'll never know what has happened in their personal lives since the bad accident, nor should we as it's not really much of our business, so we can't really go around saying his wife is a dirty tramp or anything like that. Now, back to the topic at hand. It's good that it looks like Konstantinov is in decent spirits and is trying to do things on his own again. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to do what he's trying to do everyday to recover. I don't even want to fathom if it happened to me. Let's not forget Sergei Mnastikonov (spelling train wreck), the former masseur, in this whole mess as well. He also suffered injuries that will prevent him from having a normal life as well in all likelihood. I hope he's making some progression as well. When I first saw Konstantinov holding the Cup being wheeled around after the Game 4 win in Washington in 1998, it gave me chills...

There's no guarantee that the Wings are going to even win the division to play Colorado or Calgary, they gave it right back to Nashville for better/worse after losing in Vancouver on Saturday. It doesn't matter who the Wings play in the postseason for the first round, every team that makes the playoffs is very capable of making a deep run.

Or how about we don't (despite how much he got a bad rep on here).

Don't Suck *shrugs, out of suggestions*

If Hasek comes back, it's Hasek/Osgood for one more season. If Hasek doesn't, I hate to disappoint some who have dreams about loathing Osgood, he can still start. He has one more year left on his contract so if Hasek departs, Osgood would get more playing time obviously, with Howard being backup IMO. Osgood would get 60-65% of the starts, Howard 35-40%.

The referees were an absolute joke on calls, for BOTH teams. It made the game not that enjoyable to watch. That's all I'm going to say about this one.

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the Wings win the division and having a better chance at home-ice advantage being a #1/#2 seed (remember Anaheim is steamrolling everybody lately, they could be #1) vs. a #4, but Babcock said it perfectly in a recent interview. All the teams in the WC that will be in the playoffs in all likelihood or extremely good. Placement/winning the division isn't as important to me as having everybody healthy going into the playoffs and having some kind of winning streak going into whoever they play in the 1st round.

I'm looking forward to next season. I guess I should expect this now, but on what I have read so far, is that my school will once again probably be one of the better non-BCS schools out there. There's a decent chance we might start the season ranked somewhere b/w 20-25, or just out of the top-25. We play a game at Texas early and a lot of sources are saying that we could give them fits and actually have an outside chance of winning that game. If that happens, then the BCS talk could be starting, but I am nowhere near getting to that point b/c... My school has a new starting QB... Even though we stunned Oklahoma on their turf in 2005 to start the season when they were favored by at least 25 and finished that season 11-1, that was in September and we lost to an average SMU team next week to kiss any BCS chances adios. Last season, we started it ranked and had a pretty impressive win over Texas Tech only giving them a field goal in the 3rd game last season and finished 11-2, people started talking about a possible BCS bid, but we lost our next two games to BYU (which didn't surprise me, they were going to be good this past season) and Utah (good team, but very bad loss on our part). I might make the road trip to that game at UT in late September, it should be a lot of fun if I do go. I'm not expecting a win, but if we actually pull off the unthinkable again, no major BCS talk from me b/c it will still be way too early and running the table in the conference, I don't care if it's the Mountain West that we're in or the SEC or Big 10, is no guarantee at all.

I've been out of touch with college basketball almost all season but I was able to watch a decent amount of the tourney yesterday. The Ohio State-Xavier game was nuts. You root for the underdog in these kinda situations if you're the casual fan, but I was seriously impressed with how OSU kept clawing back when they could've easily folded middway in the 2nd half. Whoever made the 3-pointer (I don't know any of the players anywhere) to force overtime, it was one of those shots that you knew once it left the guy's hand, it was probably going in. Wish I was able to watch more of Louisville/Texas A&M, that seemed like a good game, the same with the Pitt-VCU game. I've actually seen Virgina Commonwealth play a few times in my life, once against the Univ. of New Orleans sometime in the 90s, twice against my alma mater when I was still in college (one home game live, road game on TV) and they usually have decent basketball programs. I watched most of UNC-MSU. It was a great effort by MSU, but North Carolina's depth and experience just eventually won out. On the women's side, I flipped back and forth b/w the Wings game last night b/c of the referees making the game a joke to watch, and LSU's first game in the NCAA tourney. Both were painful to watch. LSU just eventually steamrolled their opponent about 15 minutes into the game, UNC Ashville, and won by about 40 points. I'll be watching my alma mater TCU (10) play midday today against Ole Miss (7). No idea how good/bad either team is, but I think this is the 7th straight trip to the NCAA big dance for the women's team of my school. Never been able to get past the 2nd round.

I got no preference right now, regardless of where the Wings finish, which will be 1, 2, or 4 in the conference in all likelihood. All eight teams are very good, so I don't see a huge significant advantage facing one team over the other for a consecutive stretch of games.

No, he really isn't, and that is a ludicrous statement to make.

Very good article largely on Hudler (and also other Central division tidbits) from NHL.com. Enjoy! http://www.nhl.com/nhl/app/?service=page&a...rticleid=290592

Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

Quoted for truth. Fedorov has to figure things out a few seasons ago whether to remain in Detroit or not. He thought a location change would do him good. Has it ultimately moving from Anaheim to Columbus? That's purely a judgemental call from us fans, and none of us will truly know if he's happy where he's at right now with the Blue Jackets or not. He's not the same player he was back in the mid/late 90s. With getting older, obviously you lose some jump in your step after a while, I don't care who you are. I went to college back in the Dallas-Fort Worth area from 1999-2004, and remember attending a Stars-Wings game where Fedorov was actually playing defense aside Chelios I think. If Hitchock is putting him on defense now, even as he's getting up in age, shoud at least show that he still has some good hockey sense left in him. His skills are probably still there even in his mid-30s. The way he departed definitely left a bad taste in my mouth, whether he was right or wrong in leave (another judgement call that we won't fully understand), but I'll fess up and say that I would entertain bringing him back in a somewhat reduced role, 2nd line probably. He'd still log considerable miniutes.

His performance in the '02 playoffs, especially in the first round where it looked like he could barely walk. Nothing else compares to me, despite all the other magnificent things he has been able to accomplish. Not his 2OT GWG in the '96 playoffs, not being the consistent force winning a Conn Smythe in 1998, and so forth. That first round against Vancouver in 2002 was just inspiring to watch with him just fighting, and fighting, and fighting through immense pain that none of us here will be able to fully understand.

Maybe just get rid of that season engravement completely? Regardless, the average Joe Blow who either doesn't watch hockey at all or just very casually will not really worry about it that much. This person is probably too busy with many other things to start paying significant attention to the NHL in either a positive or negative fashion. I'm not really worried about black eyes or negative perception in the NHL. I like the sport, I don't care if others around me think negatively of it or don't like it because we don't live in a hockey market or think I am weird because I'm like 1 of 500 people here that I like it. I like it, that's all that matters.

I think the point of WL91's post is that with Samuelsson and Lilja...what you see is what you get for better or worse. I actually like what I see out of Samuelsson most of the time. The long shots irk me at times but at least he's willing to fire the puck on net for either a goofy rebound or a draw. I at least am not counting on him to score 100 goals, just try to do his part chipping in with plays in a 2nd-line status, so I don't hold him to too high (or low) of a standard. With Lilja, let's not go there that much. Seriouslly, he's far from my favorite, but being the whipping boy of a sports forum will cause people to be a bit overdramatic about him. I wouldn't want him as a top-3 d-man but he's not as bad as he's made out to be in here. Lighting a fire up their rears or scratching them won't make them any significantly better or worse. There's a good chance, at least in my mind, that getting on Hudler's tail constantly, even when he's doing good, will make him a better player in the future because he's still young with plenty of years left, vs. Samuelsson and Lilja, and you can just see that he could just be a consistent offensive threat down the road if he keeps working hard.

You = Angry at lots of people on LGW That's cute. I didn't know Maltby took a stick around his eye that either reduced his vision or almost ended his career. If that's the case, understandable why he rarely drops the gloves. I have never liked his style of play much (agitate, then creep away from dropping the gloves), but that was before I read about this eye injury thing. His better years have passed unfortuantely I think, but back in the day he was pretty good at it. Nevertheless, his role in killing penalties is still pretty valuable.

My brother and sis-in-law went there, good school. Sorry, carry on with the topic at hand...a new theme (at least to help the players out) Don't Listen To People From LGW

Yeah, those 4 Stanley Cups and multiple Conn Smythe's he won didn't mean squat over his career. I swear, some of the brainfart posts in here never cease to amaze me.

Wrong and arrogant at the same time.

I hope Babcock keeps pushing him hard and getting on his case, he's doing his job then. If Hudler handles that fine from the mental standpoint, he'll figure out (or maybe he already has) that Babcock's on him so much because he can eventually become a really good player in the NHL.

No he doesn't. I want Zetterberg to play just like everybody else but I don't want him dinged up with a nagging back. Get healthy for the playoffs, winning the division is nice but I don't want to win it further risking injury to Zetterberg. Let him heal up for a while.