kipwinger

That's a joke right? Lucic is one of the worst possession players in the league for his contract. Part of the reason they blow is because they gave Looch 6 million a year to be a possession killer.

I remember when Detroit used to dominate the puck possession game like Tampa is doing now. Its crazy to think we've changed so much over the years.

Why is our team full of reasonably fast guys so freakin' slow?

Sweet! That means Erin Andrew is going to be back on the market. Thanks for being a sucker, you sucker.

Remember that time that I said it would be a bad idea to make this series all about Subban? I vaguely recall saying that's the exact type of scenario he thrives on. And then everybody said "I hope he gets beaten to a pulp", "kill him", "punch him to death in a fire", blah, blah, blah. And then Ottawa made the series all about Subban. And then he was awesome the next game. Soooo, did anybody want to just let sleeping dogs lie, or do you folks want to double down on the "punch Subban" nonsense? As I said before, you might want to minimize his effect on the game. Not give him a reason to play harder. He is, after all, one of the very best players in the entire world you know?

I understand what you're saying, but it's less imperative for them to have a good defense and good goalie, because they've got the puck all the time. They don't play in their own end. Don't let last night fool you, if we continue to play that way we're going to lose badly. We need to figure out a way to play with the puck, or else we're going to be putting an awful lot of pressure on our rookie goalie. We simply won't win too many games getting out shot 50 to 15. Our offense HAS to show up.

Rowdy Canadians? Lol. Is George St. Pierre going to be there? If not, I wouldn't worry.

Fun fact: Detroit ended the season 25th in the league in even strength goals. We were better than Edomonton, Carolina, New Jersey, Buffalo, and Arizona. We were just worse than Boston, San Jose, Toronto, and Philadelphia. Unreal.

Speaking of which, anybody remember that time Vancouver fired Alain Vigneault and hired Torts? Lol.

In a game with 7 penalties for Tampa, I wouldn't read too much into ice time. It's going to heavily skew toward players who contribute to the pk (hence why Tatar, Nyquist, Weiss, Jurco didn't get much). Otherwise, I'd say we're all better off just sitting down and enjoying the ride. There's not magical set of line combinations that's going to make us play like Tampa did last night. It's a system thing. If we're going to win this series, we're going to win it on the back of our goalie, huge individual efforts by our stars, and flukey garbage goals. And that's fine. New Jersey did it successfully. Babcock has done it successfully in the past. Just don't start thinking that we're going to dominate teams in the offensive zone. We aren't. Look at Babcock's successful seasons in the past. They've all had the same characteristics. Giguere played out of his mind to get to the finals and Osgood played out of his mind to get to the finals. In Anaheim's case they came up short because they had no offense (they got shut out in three of the four games they lost in the finals), while in Detroit's case they had Dats, Z, and Franzen all in their primes, and all on fire, at the right time. To win, we need Peter Mrazek to play INSANE, and two or three offensive players to carry the load. We're not going to win this with dominating puck possession. It's not in the game plan.

I've said it before. We are the least creative team I've ever seen. We are the new New Jersey Devils. Except without all the big badass power forwards they had.

Kyle Quincey rules. He's like Mad Max. Screw you Flip!

He'll get 3:30 minutes of ice time, an assist, and a shorthanded turnover. So, the usual.

There's really no need for further punishment for anybody involved. It was an egregious slash, and he got the maximum penalty allowed for an egregious slash. But fining the coach for being pissed off that his guy got slashed would have only made things worse. I'd assume that for the remainder of the series, Subban won't get any leeway from the refs, and the Sens will get considerable leeway as they rough him up, hit him, face wash him, and generally try to make his life hell. Which is pretty much exactly what should happen. Suspensions for anyone would be overkill.

It's good theater, I'll give him that. His team was pretty massively outplayed. If his comments spark them, then I'd pay the fine if I were the owner. But I really don't see it happening. It's certainly not to their advantage to be shorthanded for the remainder of the series. I get what he's trying to do, but I think he's going to have to really manage the team well in order for it to work. Playing completely undisciplined hockey now, and letting tempers flair, is completely opposite of what got them here in the first place.

This series is going to be ugly. Fleury is a playoff flop, and the Rangers are a juggernaut. Yikes.

They didn't fine him, but apparently the league called both the Habs and the Sens and issued warnings to each teams' management.

I think out of all the teams in the West, I'd like Winnipeg to do well. I like their team, tons of their players, and the fans and city deserve it. Short of the Wings, the Peg is my preferred Cup winner.

No Ladd or Perreault for Winnipeg tonight. That's rough. Either way, I think they beat Anaheim in 6. Anaheim is a playoff dud and Winnipeg is absolutely stacked everywhere but in goal.

From what I understand he was just ribbing Zetterberg. Filppula used to sit by him, and it seemed like he was just clowning about Zetterberg being horrible to sit next to. Nothing serious.

And if Smith left it would be? How about Jeff Blashill, now THAT would be a heal turn. How many times have you seen someone turn heal because they're sick of living in someone else's shadow? No more playing second fiddle for Blash.

No they don't. Babs was using him in the middle of the ice on the PP recently, AND he's got all of two point on the powerplay anyway. I'd rather have guys that don't score much, but do other things well than a guy who doesn't score much and doesn't nothing else well. Despite the fact that he's clearly an excellent AHL player, Pulkkinen has not figured out how to translate that success to the NHL game yet. Until he does he's pretty much a non factor in every game he plays. ____________________________________________________ In other news During a media scrum today, Filppula said "I feel sorry for the guy sitting next to Zetterberg in the locker room now". That guy is Stephen Weiss. I feel sorry for him too. But not because of who he sits next to.

The third man is clearly Babcock. Who will complete his heel turn when Bischoff...er...Yzerman signs him in the offseason.

Because he's not an effective NHL player on most nights, and because games are super important right now?