kipwinger

I'll recommend the same things I always recommend people do when heading to Detroit. Get food at the Sweetwater Tavern (the wings have been ranked among the best in the country), Slow's BBQ, or Lafayette Coney (not American Coney, you heathen). Or better yet, all three. Drinks at the Atwater Brewery are a good choice. The beer is excellent, good atmosphere, and the prices are better than at the commercial places. Cobo Joe's is a fun place to grab a beer immediately pre-game because it's close to the Joe (and because of the aforementioned fire breathing hotties). I'd also recommend trying either of the two newer breweries, Detroit Beer Co. or Motor City Brew Works. Michigan is home to some of the best beer making in the world (true, look it up), so that's never a bad choice. This is just a personal opinion, but I'd stay away from Hockeytown Cafe or Cheli's. It's always a madhouse on game night, it's packed, the service isn't great, and the prices are beatable. IF I go to these places it's usually after a game or night out, when I don't mind the crowd so much on account of the fact that I'm drunk too.

I absolutely love 80's hair metal. No bulls***. And I think Kip Winger is a SUPER underrated musician. But I obviously picked the name based on the relation to the team.

Only one piece of advise... Keep your head on a swivel. That's what you gotta do when you find yourself in a vicious cockfight!

Agreed, Dats in amazing. But how insane is it that Ovechkin is ahead of a world class player like Datsyuk and he's only 29? Dude is an absolute freak of nature.

Why? Because it's more fun to negative about it? Holland said on a number of occasions that he'd make a move ONLY if it would upgrade the defense. If Quincey is out for the season, and Kindl is in, our defense is noticeably worse. As such, it'll be more likely to require an upgrade. When your defense is pretty good, only a few guys qualify as an "upgrade". When it's not very good, a lot of guys could be an upgrade. Sadly, unless it's a real slam dunk trade, you're probably only getting back to the level you were at with Quincey in the first place.

Tonight is the night that Tomas Tatar learns to put the Red Wings on his back. He's been trying to be too good of a teammate lately and defer to Dats, but not tonight. Tonight Tatar has 2 goals and a helper for Helm (a helmper perhaps?). It goes without saying that we win on the basis of this performance (and by an additional goal from Stephen Weiss. Thine will be done. Also, I heard tonight was also the night when some dude was dressing up like a Red Wings loving Nikki Sixx. Just a rumor, but I hear it's got legs.

All the guys you mentioned were depth AND stopgap signings. The fact that they didn't have a huge impact isn't really that big of a surprise to me. There's nothing wrong with this team's pro scouting. Holland and co. are the best in the business at managing a roster. Which isn't to say that he cant make mistakes, but when he does they're typically MUCH less harmful than the mistakes of other GMs.

Howard gets beat glove side high in the shootout. It's his achilles heel. If we go to a shootout tonight, Howard will get beat glove side high. It's the nature of things.

I'll donate 100 dollars to a charity of your choice, if in addition to your Winter Classic sweater you dress up as Nikki Sixx otherwise. Sort of an East meets West thing. The ball is in your court. Edit: For clarity's sake, I'm talking about Nikki Sixx circa 1983. Obviously.

Yes. He is.

Xenophobia. The word is xenophobia. "Canadian" is a nationality, not a race. So defaming Canadians, or any other nationality, isn't racism. It is, however, stupid and wrong.

I'm not ready to anoint Silfverberg some sort of shootout wunderkind just yet. Even your best shootout performers hover around 50% over their careers. He's currently shooting at 69%. Eventually he'll regress back to the mean. A few years ago it was Wojtek Wolski who couldn't miss in the shootout. There's a principle in physics, I don't remember the name, which states that even when you know the probability of something happening, you don't know WHEN each instance will take place. So, even if you know that good shootout performers only shoot about 50%, you don't know whether all the misses will come at the beginning, middle, end, of their careers or whether they'll be evenly dispersed. Flip a coin a hundred times and you might start out getting 7 heads and 3 tails, but you'd be wrong to assume that the likelihood of flipping heads is 70%. And you can be sure that it will even out later.

The research shows that after a fight there IS an offensive surge. For one, or both teams, and not necessarily for the team that starts, or wins, the fight. Both teams get amped up. I never said guys didn't get amped up after fights. Sure they do. But it doesn't reliably make your team play any better, AND it might actually make the other guys play better. Secondly, I certainly agree that chemistry and comraderie are important. But there are tons of ways to develop chemistry and comraderie. The Wings are always near the bottom of the league in fights, but don't seem to noticeably suffer from a lack of team cohesion, while a team like Edmonton (which fights much more often) does. Given how many other methods there are to accomplish team unity, and given that fighting doesn't seem vital to achieving it, I'm going to err on the side of caution and suggest we dispense with the method that kills people's brains slowly.

Yeah, good point. I concede. Fighting rulez cuz it makes the hockey good.

Other than the usual suspects, I was impressed with Kindl, Weiss, and Marchenko last night. Am I mistaken in saying that Weiss was moved back to center last night for while? If so, I think it's a smart move. He's got really good vision and play making skills, and he's a deft skater, but he's REALLY weak on the boards. In Babs' system the wingers usually do the board work, so I'd much rather see him played to his strengths and stuck back in the middle while Sheahan is up on the second. Kindl, still bad defensively (par for the course) but he's seemed really confident with the puck. He's looking to skate, pass, and make plays. Since skating, passing, and shooting are his best qualities, I hope he continues doing what he's doing. It might earn him a regular spot again...even if it's on another team. Marchenko shouldn't ever go back to GR. He's smart, reliable, and makes his partners better. At this point, I'd be confident putting him and any of Kindl, Ouellet, or Smith on the ice as a third pair. A testament to his play, and a hell of a option to have going into the trade deadline and playoff push.

You clearly know more about Soviet hockey than me, so I'm going to take your analysis at face value. I will say though, that I'm generally a little skeptical about comparisons in which you factor out too many variables. At some point it almost becomes meaningless. It's a little like saying "children are better athletes than adults if you don't count the adults' size, strength, speed, and coordination advantage". In the paragraph above you've basically said, if you don't count the Soviets' best teams and players, and you don't count the advantage they gain from being forced to play together all the time, and you don't count the junior hockey records, then it's clear the Soviet system is much worse. Which is probably true, but what does that really tell you?

Because he was pissed off and it was a rivalry game? I'm not sure why you think that's some sort of objective standard by which to measure fighting's impact on the game. Furthermore, as I've stated before, if you want to understand how one variable impacts another, you use science...not an interview with Claude Lemieux. Scientific research has consistently shown that fighting does not positively impact the game. The fact that a bunch of people say otherwise doesn't mean anything unless they're qualified to say so professionally and empirically. For quite a long time everybody just "knew" that the sun orbited the earth, and the world was flat. It was common knowledge...duh. Science says fighting is harmful for the individual and unnecessary for the game. I don't really give a s*** what the athletes say. These are the same types of guys who still regularly use sterdoids, chewing tobacco, etc. They're not exactly to be trusted for their keen insights and objective thinking.

I've always really liked Francois Beauchemin. I hate liking a duck, but that guys a stud.

I'm just happy that at least two people on LGW don't completely hate me. Look who's burning bridges now, Grandma...ya jerk!

Speaking of "ways", if anybody needs a "means" to a "way" they can shoot me a message and I'll provide the missing link. Edit: Or, in less obtuse speak, I know a really good way to watch the game for those having troubling viewing it.

Well as interesting as a bunch of anecdotal evidence is, actual scientific research suggests that fighting has no positive effect on the outcome of the game. The ol' eyeball test is good for finding a date on a Friday night, but if you want to find the truth about real world phenomena...you have to use science. Bummer. https://georgetownsportsanalysis.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/the-true-impact-of-a-hockey-fight/ "We can see in all four of these data sets that there is no evidence that winning a fight leads to better results in the immediate aftermath of the fight. In fact, it appears that the team winning the fight will score slightly less goals in the game than they did previously. In all four groups, the percentage of goals scored by the winning team is within 1.96 standard deviations of the percentage of its total goals scored, indicating that the results are negligible. Thus, we cannot reject the null hypothesis that winning a fight has no impact on a team’s momentum and goal differential." http://blog.philbirnbaum.com/2012/01/do-hockey-fights-lift-teams-performance.html So, I guess, our overall conclusion from this study isn't completely certain. We wind up with a summary like: 1. The effect doesn't seem to exist for run-of-the-mill fights. 2. When a goon fighter on a goon team fights when his team is down, it seems to benefit that team by 1/8 of a goal, or a bit less than a normal power play. 3. But, that effect isn't statistically significant, so we have some doubts that it's real. 4. And, with only 364 such datapoints qualifying out of around 5,000, only a small percentage of fights match the criterion for that kind of boost. If you had to reduce that to one line, it might be: At best, there might be a small effect in certain specific circumstances ... but much, much less than sportscasters make it out to be.

But, I will add that its a moot point because its the type of system you can only acquire by treating human being like interchangeable parts. As machines. So its the kind of system that probably will never exist again. Soviet totalitarianism was able to accomplish some pretty remarkable feats by basically denying people their right to live their own lives, so the so called artistry accomplished by it is bittersweet I'd assume.

I'm on my phone, so I can't look it up right now...but I'm sure you can determine which type of hockey philosophy is superior. Look at all the times the Russian national and junior teams played north american teams and count the record, then weight that record based on the type of ice and rules they played under in eaach instance. My guess is the soviet team is a clear winner, but I'm just speculating.

A couple of things. First, nobody is talking about reducing "all injuries". We're talking about reducing injuries due to totally avoidable dirty plays, cheapshots, and fights. Secondly, nobody is saying that hitting should be taken out of the game. As I've already pointed out today, the NFL has the biggest, strongest, fastest players in the world and yet has managed to seriously reduce (all types) of dirty hits and cheapshots. All without allowing guys to fight and all without getting rid of hitting. Third, even if it is REALLY super duper hard to do. We still need to try everything possible. Because players shouldn't have to chose between playing the sport they love, and facing depression, alcoholism, degenerative brain disease, domestic violence, and suicide later in life.

So? Like a union has never been wrong before. Ask...I don't know...pretty much the entire city of Detroit lol. It's not surprising that the Union would fight hard to keep something in the game that many of the union members are already doing. That doesn't mean it's not stupid and harmful. The MBLPA continuously fights to make sure snuff isn't banned from ballparks and dugouts. Is that somehow a validation of chewing tobacco? It's harmful and stupid. No matter who says otherwise.