kipwinger

Hopefully this will be something fun for a boring Monday morning. The Rules: You get THREE predictions for the whole league. They need to be BOLD but not fantastical (based on your discretion and subject to LGW scrutiny), and you can't use a paragraph and a half to explain each one. Keep it short, simple, and BOLD. Any shenanigans should be immediately called out by the LGW faithful I'll start. 1. Kessel scores less than 35 goals on Crosby's wing. 2. The Florida Panthers make the playoffs, the Canadiens don't. 3. Neither McDavid, nor Eichel, win the Calder Cup (but I don't know who does).

Its almost like I know what I'm talking about eh? Lol. To be fair, McDavid would clearly have won the Calder if not for his injury (he still might), so we will call it 2 for 3. Still, kudos to me for the Kessel and playoff picks. Nobody called that, either on LGW or in the hockey press, at the time.

Brayden Schenn? Hell yeah, I love that guy! Gritty and can score, what's not to like? Id totally sign him for 5 million. What's that? The other Schenn? LUKE Schenn? At 5 million? No...s*** no man. No, no, no, no. NO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

No thanks on Yakupov. We already have too many small, skilled, euros, and he's not better than most of them (except maybe Pulkkinen).

They look tentative because they never, ever, leave the defensive zone with speed. Everyone looks tentative if they're standing still while the other guys are skating hard. Can we please get Helm down with Nyquist and Tatar up with Datsyuk? Not sure why that's so hard.

Why can none of our defensemen one time a puck? Man that pisses me off. Of course you don't have shooting lanes if you tee it up on every shot.

Tatar and Nyquist have not played good together, ever. I'm not sure why Blash is so intent on using them on the same line.

Helm back in the top six. Jesus Christ.

Tatar-Datsyuk-Mantha score two last game. Break them up. Good call. Why not put Tatar and Nyquist on the third again? They've scored like gangbusters when together all season...ugh. And AA on the fourth...obviously.

Dumb lines again tonight. Atta boy Blash.

New pp coach, keep the kids up, get rid of old dead weight, and activate the defense. Our coaching at even strength is WAY too conservative and as a result we can't move the puck our play to our team strength (speed).

Apparently there's some speculation that you don't need to protect rookies, they'll be automatically protected, which is a huge boon for rebuilding teams like ours. You can protect 7 forwards, 3 defensemen, and 1 goalie, OR 8 forwards and 1 goalie. We wont be in any harm of losing any of our quality players. Maybe a Howard, Sheahan, Jurco, or Pulkkinen, but nothing we couldn't live without.

To protect: Forwards: Dats, Z, Larkin, AA, Abby, Tatar, Nyquist. Defense: Dekeyser, Green, Kronwall Goalie: Mrazek With any luck they'll take Howard off our hands.

We are actually pretty good when we press the pace. Maybe we should do that the whole game. Heaven forbid we try to score goals and lose occasionally rather than, you know, losing more often when we don't.

There's the Wings fans I know. Proacrtively setting the stage to complain about the refs.

MOAR JAM!!!

Anybody remember when Babcock was our coach, and Edzo accused the Wings of "subtle interference" and everybody bitched about it endlessly? Anybody remember when Babcock went to Toronto and we played them and they did the same thing CONSTANTLY? Looks like Edzo was right.

There's just something about his stupid fave that gets my goat. I realize its irrational. I do. But I don't care.

William Nylander has a punchable face. I'm sure he's a really nice kid and all, but when I see him I generally imagine the satisfaction of punching him.

Unfortunately Babs will try to trap his way to victory, so I anticipate this will be a boring game. Ugh, I hate his style of play.

If we play like we did yesterday we will bury these hacks. I hope Larkin gets a hatty and Babs cries himself to sleep tonight on his mountain of money.

Screw Young Floating Mike Babcock. This team needs Joe Cool Jeff Blashill.

I wish I knew whether the last two period against Winnipeg, and all of this game, were the result of some schematic change on the part of the coaches or whether the guys just buckled down and got their s*** together. But this looked like a totally different team than we've seen of late. I did think the defensemen looked more active today, which may have helped, but I don't know if that's the case. Also helps when you win 66% of the faceoffs. Gotta admit I was wrong about keeping Larkin at center for the remainder of the season. Moving Zetterberg back to center has been a good move for the last few games.

I really liked the Helm, Glendening, Richards line today. And Green was awesome all game. When he free wheels like that he's a dangerous player.

I'll repeat it. Even though we didn't get a regular powerplay goal (I realize we got one 6 on 4), I still thought our powerplay looked much better today. More structured. Way less willy nilly, which is how I typically see it. Hopefully we get a little confidence going, and stop playing so worried. This team has hellish wheels. When we use our speed and attack the opposition net we can win games.