kipwinger

I'm being glib. He'll definitely make it and he definitely deserves it. That guy is a beast this season. I'm particularly thrilled with how he's turned into kind of an on-ice bully this season. Like he throws elbows and slashes guys and stuff. We need more of that attitude. More mauler sh*t.

Sadly, unless he goes on an absolute tear he won't hit 30 goals like he was projected to hit. Bums me out, I REALLY wanted AA to be the first to 30 since 2009. Instead it will be Rasmussen a couple years from now, which will be almost as good. Haha, I'm right there with you man. First his acne, and then his spindly little legs, and now late period penalties. I'll tell you this much right now, the most manly things I can possible think of are 1) WWE superstar Razor Ramon, and 2) Lil Wayne's song "I'm Me". Neither of those things had acne. F*ck Dekeyser.

Seriously though, I'm genuinely excited about where this team is heading. We're loaded with good prospects, we're about to have another huge draft, and we have TONS of cap space for UFAs going forward. Long as we don't do anything stupid like fire the GM who's navigating this ship we're going to be a top team in the east in like 2 or 3 seasons.

Yeesh...you got oddly specific there bud. Hope everything is ok at home ;-) But yeah, Dekeyser is an estrogenic beta male.

We don't need luck, we've got the best GM in the biz leading us down the winning path. Everybody talks s*** now because we're fans and we're all super fickle. But in two years when Cholo and Hronek are scoring like maniacs and Lindstrom and McIsaac are smashing dudes in the open ice a-la-Kronwall everybody will be singing a different tune.

Tell me that you haven't at least once or twice thought to yourself, "Danny Dekeyser was conceived by a weak sperm". Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

On the one hand I'm glad to see them win one for the dads. On the other hand, I'd like to slap half those dads in the head for conceiving these hacks. I can't wait until we have a real roster.

There Mantha, was being an alcoholic, sleazing on drunk college girls, stickhandling in a phone booth, and deking defensemen out of their jocks. He woke up in a cold sweat, his senses slowly coming back to him, and smiled contently once he realized he's just the same giant pud he's always been. Welcome back to reality Anthony.

I'm convinced that when Anthony Mantha looks in the mirror he sees Patrick Kane.

I'm not making any judgements at all about Trotz. I'm just saying that quite a lot of people were not convinced that Trotz' system was conducive to playoff success prior to the Caps win. He was regularly talked about as being too "old school" and defensive to win in the modern game. Clearly people were wrong about that, but that's kinda my point. Nobody ever thinks these guys are any good until they win, then suddenly it's like "I always knew this guy was great". People literally did the same thing with Ovechkin actually. I remember like 3 years ago when people were saying he was washed up and needed to be traded.

I mean, why not use Jerry "The King" Lawler? At least he's from Tennessee (and as far as I know isn't a bigoted, wife swapping, douchebag). In other news, imagine how often AA would score if he wasn't on a line with Glendening and Christopher Ehn. Someone like...I dunno...Matt Duchene.

Did I just hear Hulk Hogan on a Predators promo package? Do you think the Preds media team knows he's a gigantic racist scumbag?

I'm confused by this Blashill debate. Is the argument that some coaches are better than Blashill, because that's pretty obviously true. Or is the argument that basically ALL coaches are better than Blashill, because that's a stretch. This is sorta revisionist. While plenty of people considered Trotz a top NHL coach prior to last year, plenty of other people thought he was massively overrated given his abysmal playoff record up to that Cup win. Far from any consensus that he was a top coach until now.

Mike Babcock does that constantly and yall can't get enough of that guy. Toronto fans were freaking out about this last week as a matter of fact. Speaking of which, I can't wait until Toronto gets bounced from the playoffs this year so I can point out how it's the third time that Mike Babcock has be unable to win the Stanley Cup with an absolutely LOADED roster.

Our intermission guys are on fire tonight. John Keating called Dekeyser "elite" and Darren said Mantha is better as a shooter on the PP than as a net front despite that being demonstrably untrue using really basic powerplay statistics.

I actually see Jensen as a Daly type guy. Since he's never been all that offensive anyway, there's not much of a fear that his production will drop off. His longevity is almost entirely dependent on how well he can continue to skate and defend. And I don't see either of those things going away. IF we re-sign him, I wouldn't do it for too much money. But I'd expect his value to remain pretty constant for the next 4-5 years because what he does well doesn't go away overnight the way offensive production can.

Too many variables here to really know. In theory I'd be willing to trade Jensen OR re-sign Jensen depending on a few things. Is Kronwall retiring? Do we get an NHL ready defensive prospect at the trade deadline? What term might Jensen want on a new deal? Hypothetically, if the Wings got Fabbro (I'd rather have Toews) as a return at the deadline then you probably need to trade Jensen. If we don't get a defensive prospect a the TDL, and we're not planning on chasing a UFA defenseman, and Kronwall is retiring then we need to re-sign him. This is the calculus Holland and co. need to navigate on this one.

Those are easy: Didn't watch Dragonball Z Batman. Aside from kryptonite, Superman is highly susceptible to rich guys (Lex Luther). Bruce Wayne is rich b*tch. And he's a violent maniac. He's probably already got a plan to take Superman down. Maltby, McCarty is like every washed up druggie from my high school. AA, cuz razzle dazzle all day. Leftwinger. Lefty can be histrionic at times, but Frank was like if you took the most contrarian college freshman of all time and turned him into a dumb hockey fan. Can you just please, please, please, use your magic Veleno voodoo to make sure he turns out to be at least as good as Ryan O'Reilly? That's all I ask.

I'm not really worried about all this Kronwall stuff. Zetterberg said all the same things his final season in Detroit. Sedins aside, most guys don't call it quits prior to the end of the season. Think Rafalski, Lidstrom, Z here.

I wasn't suggesting they were game changing talents. But all those guys were drafted in the 2-5 rounds. You're not EXPECTING game changing talent in those rounds. That doesn't mean they weren't really good picks. They were. Particularly Tatar. If you get a guy who scores 20 goals a year, ever year, in the 2nd round you've done a REALLY good job. I do agree though that we seem to be back on track with our drafting. And it's not even that we're drafting higher either. Trading back for Mantha/Bert, and Cholo/Hronek, were awesome moves that don't get talked about enough. Also, people LOVE to give Nill and McDonnell credit for Holland's successes but I never hear anyone say those guys are on the hook for Kindl, Smith, and Sheahan.

Not really draft duds though. As I pointed out above, from 2005 to 2013 we drafted in the first round 3 of out 8 times. THOSE picks were duds. But elsewhere we did really well in the draft. Guys like Abby, Helm, Nyquist, Tatar, Jensen, and AA all performed as good or better than their draft position would suggest during that period. You could add Shawn Matthias and Calle Jarnkrok to that list as well. They were good picks, we just traded them. We generally got good results from our picks, we just missed on the late first rounders, which hurt us. But considering we didn't pick in the first round for 5 of those 8 years, the lack of high end picks hurt way worse than the three duds. And you can't really blame Holland for trading 1st rounders during our Cup contention years when every other GM does the same thing.

I think that's a fair criticism on a very specific point, but I don't really think it means Holland isn't best to run a rebuild. Starting around 2010-11 we started losing D-men and seemed content to replace them with puds (Cole, Colaiacovo, Commodore) rather than legit d-men. I always thought we should have landed Wisniewski, but Erhoff, Hamhuis, Suter come to mind as well. But mishandling UFA d-men isn't the same thing as rebuilding, which is centered on the draft. And in that area Holland has done very well over the years.

The reason I ask is because from 2005 to 2012 we drafted in the first round 3 times. Kindl, Smith, Sheahan. In 2013 we drafted Mantha and Bertuzzi and what is now considered the "rebuild" was underway. Relying on Nyquist/Tatar/Dekeyser/etc. was less a strategy than it was a function of the fact that we didn't really have anyone else better in the farm system. I think it's fair to criticize how we drafted during that period, thought most of the guys you mentioned exceeded expectations, but I don't think we deliberately chose to "retool" with substandard talent. Secondly, if our window didn't close until 2014/2015 and we were already drafting for the rebuild in 2013, then I'm not really sure what the problem was. It's standard practice around the league to go all-in during Cup contention years, so that's not really something I think you can criticize Holland for doing. Maybe (big maybe) he should have started a few years earlier (2012-2013), but if that's true then we're really only griping about one or two years of mismanagement. Just doesn't seem that acute to me. Here's what I think happened. Holland went all-in starting around 2005 because his team was stacked and he wanted to rack up as many Cups as he could with Dats/Z/Lidstrom/Kronwall. That mean that we didn't draft much in the first round, and the 3 times we did turned out to be late first round duds. That meant that toward the end of our contention period we were pretty thin on the ground, and when it became clear that we just weren't going to get it done again Holland started hanging on to his first rounders (Mantha, Larkin, Svech, Cholo, Ras, Zadina), selling at the deadline (Mrazek, Smith, Jurco, Vanek, Tatar), and stockpiling extra picks (Bertuzzi, Hronek, Veleno, Berggren). What should he have done differently?

Let me ask you this, when do you think our Datsyuk/Zetterberg/Kronwall/Lidstrom/Franzen/Hossa/Rafalski era Cup window officially ended? I mean, I realize that our last trip to the finals was 2009, but even in 2013 we were within 1 win of beating the eventual Cup champions (Chicago). So, like, when do you think that door was finally and definitively closed?

Yzerman never managed a team to a Stanley Cup.