SouthernWingsFan

Damn, I was looking forward to being a kid this weekend!!!

Who said anything about not having an opinion?

Yeah, he's mentioned in 499 out of 500 articles, but not this 500th. Heaven forbid, especially when it's just a 4-sentence paragraph. Anyways, I'm holding out hope (like last season ) that Datsyuk will produce in the postseason, since Buccigross mentioned him. I actually think Holland will do something big as well before the deadline, as compared to last season. Here's hoping for Tkachuk (if the Blues decide to become sellers).

Those ice girls are hot! Such pretty skirts, and probably such bright minds as well! Or something.....

And........owned!

It's obvious you don't think Hudler is going to be that much of a difference maker, but others in here might think he will be just that. Maybe not this year, but down the road if he gets more time. I don't know if a halfway healthy Bertuzzi is worth the risk.

FECES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously, this is nothing that I'm losing sleep over. It'd be nice to claim the top spot for the playoffs, I don't care of the Wings track record in recent playoffs because of it, it should be a goal (not the ultimate though obviously) to better position themselves in the playoffs. I don't see the Wings going any worse than 4th, and with the way some of the middle-of-the-pack teams are struggling right now, I'm not just flipping out in fear of playing one team over the other. I'm not trying to say to take the competition lightly, not at all, but you see what I mean...

I am really on the fence on this one. Bertuzzi has pretty much all the deliverables the Wings need in an extra player or two...Size, willingness to throw the body, respectable finishing touch. Will he maintain his health though? That's the same question we've asked with Yzerman over and over again in recent years. Yzerman is the man, no doubt about it, but I don't care how great of an athlete you are...the body slowly fading physically always wins out, for everybody. And Yzerman did a damn good job of defying time physically for a long while. This is the same question we are risking with Hasek and so far (knock on wood), it's working out. I don't think the coach or management has it out against Hudler in terms of not giving him enough ice time or anything like that. I bet he's frustrated, but he cannot get ahead of himself thinking he should get 1st/2nd line minutes instanty when he still has to work his way up some. I'd absolutely love for Hudler to work out in Detroit and eventually get to 1st/2nd line status in a few seasons. I just don't know if that will happen though. I don't like Bertuzzi personally, I think it's embarassing for the part he played in the injuring of Steve Moore (and that's the end of that, I refuse to go in a giant debate over that instance). However, if he were to come to the Wings, I'd keep quiet about my feelings toward him personally. Do we want results now? If that's the case, go with Bertuzzi. Do we want to prep for the future? If that's the case, keep Hudler. I keep going back and forth on this and this would be one of those would-be trades where if it happens, you just don't know if you win/lose until a few seasons down the road.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article.../702200395/1053 Definitely worth a read, how Cleary turned from a lousy attitude to a hard worker in time.

Um, nobody here (or very, very few people here) were saying this.

*Insert inevitable Holland is a dolt slash get it done Kenny post*

You go 14-0-2 your last 16 games, you deserve to skyrocket up in any rankings. Heaven forbid the Wings aren't #1 in these rankings, I mean that's the biggest travesty in the world there... Pittsburgh is ranked ahead of us? Who cares? Those rankings don't mean much in the grand scheme of things and even though we beat Pitt this year, it's not like we routinely see them to have any major jealousy factor.... Not an issue for me.

QFT. And I have nothing against Kopecky whatsoever, I want him back in the lineup, and Williams is on my pooper scooper list as well. But to say Kopecky is better than Williams is stretching it a bit too far.

More power to us if we win the President's Trophy, I'd definitely be happy about it obviously. I'd prefer to play somebody like Calgary/Minnesota (current 7th/8th) vs. San Jose/Dallas (current 5th/6th) in the 1st round, but a few of the teams that were really coasting at the beginning of the season (Nashville, San Jose, Anaheim) are starting to cool down a bit. I'm not saying that they are of zero concern, of course not. We should be concerned about whoever we play and not be overconfident or cock, but as of now, there is no one team that I can say the Wings have absolutely zero chance against or that just flat out scares the be-jesus out of me.

Some people don't even have VS available on their standard cable lineup. Any hockey is better than no hockey. You could have it a lot worse...

It is my strong opinion that Datsyuk isn't going to get traded. This is his last big shot to be one of the better producers in the playoffs. If not, he might walk. It will be frustrating if he or his agent continues to command a high salary if he hasn't produced, but this is a chance/risk that the Wings are going to take, for better or worse. I'm thinking that he will fare a bit better this post-season, but I am not holding my collective breath if he doesn't get it done.

1. The league better get to 3-2-1-0 point format. Three for regular-time win. Two for winning in overtime. One in a shootout if it remains tied after OT (I do like the shootout). 0 points for a loss at any point in the game. No if's/and's/but's. 2. The instigator penalty is dead to me. 3. Soft penalties...what I'd like to see is more calls for oscar clips and embelishments causing the opposing player to get a penalty. Definitely hard to do in the heat of the moment, but hopefully that could be done. 4. Actually against no-touch icing. It's dangerous when you got two guys going full speed into the boards for icing/no icing, I remember seeing D-Mac back in the Wings days actually slide skate first into the boards and take a nasty hit for an icing. You don't want to see any player get hurt in an instance like this, but it's just so infrequent IMO to change the rule. 5. Goalie interference...the only thing (outside of a 2:00 minor) to do I think is keep track of if a player deliberatly charged a goalie. Nothing really changes of a minor penalty call, but if it is a repeat offender, suspend him for a game/two, something like that, and it gets worse down the line if you keep doing it. 6. Don't know what a change in goalies freezing the puck would do. I don't think there's an over-embelishment of freezing the puck by many 'tenders to stop play, and it's also a judgment call to stop play by the referee. This doesn't really get to me one way or the other.

And why not? Because they are a southern team?

I was driving home yesterday evening after checking out a few Mardi Gras parades in my neck of the woods before the Wings-Yotes game and was radio-surfing in the car, when to my shock and amazement, Gary Bettman was being interviewed on one of the talk-radio shows down here. It definitely raised my eyebrows and caused my forehead to wrinkle up because hockey is all but non-existent where I am from. The radio show is local and fairly new, I've tuned into it off/on. Anyways, I didn't listen to the entire interview, and rip on Bettman all you want which I know is popular, I don't know if he was sugarcoating or being rosy during the interview, but most of what I heard was promoting the NHL in media outlets. Here is what I heard more/less to the best of my knowledge... VS vs. ESPN...Bettman said that going to OLN/VS was a long-term decision, he all but understood it wasn't going to be a popular choice the first season or two, since VS is still a new commodity. He says ESPN wasn't going to give the NHL any more focused attention, why would they, b/c they have other sports to broadcast. Basically, after an NHL game was over on ESPN, it was straight to SportsCenter. And he stated that hockey coverage (not including the games itself) on ESPN has been roughly the same, if slightly better, in terms of broadcasting results and highlights and such. With VS, they have a post-game wrap-up show, off-ice interviews with players, etc., and the ratings and viewrship is slightly up as compared to last year. As impatient as we are as fans, generally speaking, I think we have to see how being broadcasted of VS works out in about 3-5 years. The sports conference that my alma mater is in (Mountain West) also struck a TV deal with VS, at least 3 of my school's football games were broadcasted nationally on that network, and they had 1-2 Mountain West games on every Saturday. As expected, fans were frustrated since not many people know the network yet, but again, it's not fair to judge the NHL or Mountain West's deals after just 1-2 years. It isn't the NHL's job to get VS into more households, that is VS's job. If VS can expand down the road, that means the NHL will as well. More on promoting/broadcasting.... This I actually liked from Bettman. He stated that youth today might watch TV as much, but they have so much more options in terms of media outlets (Internet game broadcasts and such). They are downloading music/movies, they use their computers a lot more. The NHL has jumped on this by doing the YouTube thing. I go to YouTube a bit and I regularly see links/screenshots of NHL past games and highlights. I also heard him saying that you can download past games on Google. The Internet isn't obviously the end-of-all-end solutions to generate NHL interest, but I really like how they've tackled YouTube and Google first.

Doug Weight has paid his dues and is a helluva hockey player and is far from a jackass. I'm not sulking that he got traded to Carolina for a short while and won it all.

Wait, Holland has future powers?! Call him up and tell him to cancel hurricane season down here forever! Life and hockey isn't all about the Red Wings, there are other teams that Guerin probably wanted to play for as well.

Who the heck is E.J. and why would somebody who started in the NHL go back to play college hockey?

I'd go bi for Henrik Zetterberg! Did I just say that out loud? *Zips it*

It is of concern, yes, but at least the team is still winning in spite of one line producing so far. Great team defense will do that for ya, and minus the Philadelphia game and a 'Yotes comeback after the final score was all but settled early, the defensive has been top notch lately. Not overly phyiscal (as expected for better/worse from this team), but I don't see many good 2nd chance shots off rebounds, they clear the zone good, etc. etc. Anyways back to the issue at hand and this is not taking into consideration any trades that may happen up to the deadline..... Draper/Franzen/Maltby's role is obvious. Defense first and stop the top lines from creating havoc. It would be nice if they could contribute some goals here/there, but that's not their primary job (first). The current 4th line of Rex/Flipper/Langfeld. I don't know if getting Kopecky back will be that huge of a difference vs. Langfeld. Honestly, I don't know Kopecky and Langfeld that well and never heard of them before they played with the Wings this year, I just don't know their games enough where I should say something like "Kopecky is night/day better than Langfeld". Lang/Cleary/Williams...I think Samuelsson coming back could really help this line. He gets a lot of crap in here, and yes sometimes I think he takes a bit too many clear/unscreened shots, but at least he's willing to shoot. You don't know when a goofy rebound could pop up. He's not a dominating force out there but he's not all that soft and will go in for the ugly goal every now and then. I wouldn't say Williams is ultimately killing that line, but I'd like to try Rex or Flipper at his spot for a while. I don't see Lang/Cleary being broken up soon, so this is the line that really needs to get it done more to help out the 1st. Datsyuk/Zetterberg/Homer...The line that is producing right now obviously. If a trade could be made to better this team to get somebody like Tkachuk, Nolan, Guerin, etc. I'm all for it, but not at the expense of breaking this line up (unless they just completely snag). No knock on Holmstrom, but Zetterberg/Datsyuk can make anybody on that line look good, whoever fills that 3rd spot, but Holmstrom I think completes that line. He has a different, less-talented game than the other 2 which involves primarily going to the net for goals within 10 feet, something that Zetterberg/Datsyuk don't do as much.