kipwinger

If we're out of playoff contention by the deadline I'd like to see us explore trade talks on all the guys I mentioned above. In addition, I'd move Dekeyser, Svechnikov, and a 2nd for Dougie Hamilton. Losing Svech would suck, but we've got a ton of wingers. It's an organizational strength. The only thing I absolutely wouldn't do is trade our 1st rounder if we're having a draft lottery kind of season. Trade for Hamilton and put yourself in the best possible position to draft a high 1st round center.

If it looks like we're a playoff bubble team, or if we're out of the picture by the trade deadline, I'm taking offers on any UFA to be, any veteran, and any underperformer. That means Jurco, Sheahan, Ott, Smith, Vanek, Green, and Neilsen. You have to. If we're out of the playoffs this season we are obviously going to need to rebuild going forward. Given that we'll be a lottery team we'll want to bank as many picks as possible this season in order to have the flexibility to move up in the draft. Say you're drafting 8th overall and you got a 1st for Vanek and a 2nd for Smith (not unreasonable given what Kris Russell got last season). Move that extra 1st and the 2nd and you may be able to move into the top 5. Lots of good centers going in the first part of the draft this year.

Yeah, Tatar's play this season has definitely worked him down the depth chart, but selling low on a guy like him right now is silly. He's a good player. With AA healthy I'd think about something like this though. Nyq-Larkin-Vanek Z-AA-Mantha Tatar-Neilsen-Abby Jurco-Glen-Sheahan

I don't consider Hall a "superstar". I don't even consider Lundquist one. But I also realize it's an arbitrary distinction.

I genuinely don't know what his problem is. He's done these boneheaded things over and over for a couple of years now and I've never quite understood them but kept giving him the benefit of the doubt. But at some point results speak for themselves. If his plan was working we wouldn't look as miserable as we do because, again, while not the MOST skilled team in the league we're not as hapless as we look each night. For instance, I've been yelling at my TV for several games now because Blash has Sproul and Green on the PP together (along with Vanek now). It's ridiculous. All it does is ensure what one of the two defenseman can't use their shot from the most effective area to shoot from. I thought I was crazy until the commentators said something about it last night. But even then it was "oh look at all our righties on the same PP unit. How things have changed durrrr hurrrr". Also, I have no idea why in hell we don't use a 2-1-2 forecheck. We're one of the fastest teams in the league and we're soooo conservative. Using the following forward lines you could forecheck Larkin/Nyquist, Tatar/AA, Neilsen/Abby, and Glen/Helm. That's a SUPER fast team. Nyquist-Larkin-Vanek Tatar-AA-Mantha Z-Neilsen-Abby Glen/Jurco-Helm-Sheahan

While I agree that having superstar players in their prime is a HUGE factor, I don't think that's why we're as bad as we currently look. Check out some of the teams out performing us right now. Columbus, New Jersey, Carolina, Ottawa, NYR. Not a lot of star power there. Aside from Karlsson I'd say there are no "superstars" in the bunch. Maybe Lundquist, but Jimmy is playing just as well as he is. I think this pretty squarely falls on Blashill's shoulders. I don't think he optimizes our lineup when healthy (Green AND Sproul on the same PP unit), he doesn't play at all to our team's strengths (we're fast but don't forecheck), and our team is wildly undisciplined (turnovers, icings, bad line changes, etc.). Maybe we're not a top seed with a different coach, but we should be better than this with the talent we have.

Forgive my ignorance, but what reason is that?

You've found pretty much everything I read. As I said in the first post, Friedman speculated (I don't even consider speculation a rumor). However I saw today that both McKenzie and Dreger said he's been "on the block" for a while.

I honestly don't know. He scored 43 points for them last season, and his advanced numbers are excellent, so it's not like he's played bad. He's also 23 years old and like 6'6 and 210 lbs. I'm baffled why they'd be looking to move him. But if you're Detroit you've gotta look hard at this. Dekeyser isn't playing too well, and Kronwall legitimately could (speculation) retire soon if his knee stays this bad. Even with as good as Sproul has looked you've got to take a run at Hamilton if he's available.

Didn't see it posted elsewhere, but did anyone else see the "Dougie Hamilton to Detroit" trade speculation from Elliotte Friedman today? Pure speculation, but Friedman does get quite a lot right. For those not familiar with him, he was the one who broke the "Datsyuk retiring" story a month before Datsyuk acknowledged it. I'd give Dekeyser + Svech + 2nd for Hamilton.

My preference would be something like this with everyone healthy: Nyq-Neilsen-Vanek Tatar-Larkin-Abby Z-AA-Mantha Bertuzzi-Helm-Sheahan Jurco Smith-Green DK-Sproul Kronwall-Ouellet Ericsson Win or lose with it, but get Larkin and AA at the center positions where they belong. And get the best possible puck moving defense corps on the ice permanently.

I know. A 5-1 win in which their entire top six looked abysmal. You can't expect defensemen to score hat tricks too often. Nor your 3rd line to continue to be the different maker all season. We need our top six to be good. They aren't...yet.

So Pulkkinen currently has more goals than 5 of our top 6 forwards...and Jeff Blashill is keeping the same lines together tonight. Good call.

I'm not suggesting that your facts are wrong. I'm saying that, in general, negative corsi tends to yield more goals against over a full season regardless of what happened in our instance last season. Not much different that saying good corsi numbers tend to be associated with playoff teams. Sure the Avalanche made it two years ago with terrible possession numbers, but that's generally an anomaly. My only point is that if you can ice a roster that would likely yield better possession why wouldn't you? And I think we can.

I'm not convinced that over the long haul of a season the negative possession won't result in substantial goals against, especially if their ice time starts sneaking up relative to the rest of the team. Remains to be seen, but certainly negative possession isn't good regardless of how many goals are scored against. At the very least it's substantial time each game in which we're not likely to score either. I'm not really that interested in railing against these guys to be honest. My biggest argument is that I believe we can ice a better lineup and aren't currently doing it. As I said in another thread, based on everyone's play so far I'd do the following for the 3rd and 4th lines: Z-AA-Mantha Glendening-Helm-Sheahan You could shelter the 3rd line, especially until Zetterberg is up to speed, and the fourth line I proposed is one that I wouldn't mind seeing play more minutes than your typical bottom line.

Hmmm...lots of good ones here. And I'm reluctant to do any this year so as not to spoil my success from last year. But here goes. 1. The Colorado Avalanche lose in the Western Conference finals 2. Tortorella fired midseason, Blue Jackets BARELY miss the playoffs 3. Ovechkin FINALLY lifts the Cup, despite a down year in goal scoring.

Ott, Miller, and Glendening DO hurt us. They're terrible players. Watch how often they get trapped in the defensive zone. Their corsi against is abysmal. I'd MUCH rather have two cheap kids sitting on the bench, and the fourth line populated with guys who can actually get the puck out of the d-zone.

Admittedly I missed yesterday's game. But based on what I've seen so far I'd do something like Nyquist-Neilsen-Vanek Tatar-Larkin-Abby Z-AA-Mantha Glendening-Helm-Sheahan Z looks sloooooooow. Keep his minutes down until he's back in game shape. Plus, how sweet is it that he started his career as the "kid", and now he'd be the "old goat"?

Our "fourth" line last year played as much as our "third". Glendening had more ice time than Tatar. So play Helm and Sheahan on the fourth and call it the third, who really cares what they're called?

Time already HAS told. It's not like this is speculation. There's a reason why puck possession matters. It has for years. Everybody already realizes it. Go look at the best possession teams in the league, by year, and you'll find a laundry list of playoff teams and Cup contenders. Almost never will you find a bad possession team who's had any success (I can't really think of one). So intentionally icing a line which is astoundingly bad at possession is insane. It makes no sense. Unless you're a dumb ass old dinosaur which thinks having the puck and getting it out of your zone is less important than how hard you work while you're losing it. Sadly Holland seems to be slipping into that camp.

Ken Kal is just carrying water for the organization. First of all, Ott-Glendening-Miller isn't all that tough. We're not talking about Clutterbuck-Cizikas-Martin here. They're only marginally more "gritty" than average and probably LESS gritty than a line of Sheahan-Helm-Callahan/Bertuzzi/Jurco/Nestrasil would be. Secondly, who cares about "grit" if it means you're getting trapped in your own zone and getting scored on all the time. Ott, Miller, and Glendening are AWFUL at getting the puck out of their zone. Quantitatively. They're amongst the worst players in the entire league in terms of CA/60. So unless someone can tell me how to "grit" the puck out of the back of your net I'd say that's just a bulls*** excuse to agree with the status quo by Ken Kal.

I'm not sure why people don't understand how stupid this is. Andrej Nestrasil, for example, scored roughly as many points last year in 55 games as Drew Miller and Steve Ott have in their last 200 combined games. He's younger, bigger, and cheaper too. He's quantitatively better at the game of hockey than they are. So while losing him doesn't amount to anything earth shattering, the fact of the matter is that we are currently paying MORE money for worse players than we would be if we had simply done nothing at all. None of Pulkkinen, Frk, Ferraro, Nestrasil or anyone else needs to be a budding superstar to validate their spot on our roster. They only need to be better than someone who's currently on it. In most of those cases they are. I can't believe how cavalier people are being about the fact that our GM seems content to ice a WORSE roster than he has to. For more money (while we're over the cap). It's absurd. Holland's Red Wings are getting as bad as Team USA was in the World Cup. He genuinely believes that things like heart, and grit, and moxie, and pluck, and gumption, are to be valued MORE (in some cases) than being good at hockey is. I'd understand if the choice was Pulkkinen vs. Helm, or Frk vs. Jurco. But it wasn't. It was Pulkkinen and Frk vs. Miller and Ott. Neither one of which has any value to our team which isn't surpassed by someone else who was already a regular on the team. They aren't good defensively, they aren't good penalty killers, they don't provide speed, or energy, or skill, or anything at all. They are, at this point in their careers, nothing more than Cory Emmerton was during his. A plug. And not even a cheap one. A fourth line of Jurco-Helm-Sheahan, or Bertuzzi-Helm-Sheahan, can do ALL the things Ott-Glendening-Miller can do. Only better. And we could ice that lineup more cheaply by inserting guys on ELCs on the third line and as the healthy scratches.

I don't think anybody is saying that Frk or Pulkkinen are future stars, or top line material. In a nutshell my argument for why losing them sucks is that this lineup (Blashill and Hollands): Tatar-Neilsen-Z Abby-Larkin-Sheahan Nyquist-Helm-Vanek Ott-Glendening-Miller AA Jurco Is worse (AND more expensive) than something like this: Tatar-Larkin-Abby Z-Neilsen-Vanek Nyquist-AA-Mantha Jurco-Helm-Sheahan Pulkkinen Frk So why lose those guys when the alternative is better and cheaper?

Jensen has looked like hot garbage so far this preseason. A far cry from how he looked the last two.

Nice one timer by Frk. Kid can really shoot the biscuit. That's the exact type of thing that Pulkkinen needs to do at this level. Unfortunately he might be a bit too slow and/or small to go into traffic and get a shot off like that.