kipwinger

The best players will play.

If he's got "stone hands in front of the net" then he shouldn't be on the powerplay, since the powerplay is all about scoring and all.

That's the beauty of it. The Detroit Red Wings don't worry about playing to people's strengths. As a matter of fact, in our system, players don't have strengths. Anybody is just as good as anybody else, at any position. Don't t you get it? It's impossible to key on any one player when you use all the players on your team in the exact same way. Brilliant.

In theory. But if Helm were any good at that then his offensive production would be significantly higher than it is. The fact is, so far, Helm's speed has not translated into much offensive productivity. I'm not really sure why he seems to be the guy Babs is counting on to fill holes in the offense. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just see Abby all over again. "Well, put him alongside Datsyuk and he'll score just fine...". *facepalm*

I hope so. I guess I have to give them the benefit of the doubt for now. I just can't help but think they're grasping at straws. Like when they put Hudler on the PP point. Or Eaves. Or Alfie. Or Sammy.

What the hell kind of power play units are those? Helm? Nestrasil? Jesus. I hope they see something I don't.

There are a lot of things that make Helm a better option for some teams than Semin, but it's funny that you picked out speed and versatility. Semin is versatile and really fast too. Semin's got as many facets to his game as Helm. They're just different ones. Helm's fast, defensively responsible, and good on PK. Semin's bigger, also very fast, excellent offensively, dangerous on the PP, and is a righty. oh, and he's actually pretty good defensively too. Per fancy stats... http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capitals-insider/post/statistical-analysis-alexander-semin-criticism-is-unfair/2011/09/21/gIQAMfyClK_blog.html. http://thehockeywriters.com/overtime/alexander-semin-and-ignoring-the-10-percent/ But again, I was really only screwing around. That ship sailed a long time ago.

I thought Weiss looked fine in the preseason. Or, at least no worse than 90% of the rest of the team. I feel like Nestrasil, Ouellet, and Tatar were the only ones that were doing any scoring so I can't really single Weiss out. Get him some finishers and he'll be just fine.

I had no idea that Pavel Datsyuk was the general manager of the Detroit Red Wings. f*** you, Datsyuk, for re-signing Cleary, and trading for Quincey, and not bringing back Hossa...ya know, cuz you call the shots now. (all in jest)

I don't think they would either. I'm being a smart ass. They'll stick with Helm or Abby on the top line wing, because surely those guys are better scoring line wingers than...Alexander Semin lol. But just look at that shot.

Helm and Kindl, packaged together, wouldn't get you much. But they'd probably get you Alexander Semin. Just sayin'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEVLG8oyKnA Then again, Semin's got too obvious a skill set. Babcock would invariably make him the fourth line goalie or something.

Well it's a good thing we don't have anyone like that now.

I'll take you guys' word for it. I'm just skeptical because I've never seen any fan, anywhere, ever, who wasn't a raging dick about their team when said team has the best record in the league. Walk into any bar next Sunday, and the cockiest, most arrogant, most obnoxious a-hole in the place will be the one with the best team in the league. As much as I'd like to think we're different I don't believe we are. Maybe. But it's hard to believe. I just assumed all this "Pavel Datsyuk is magic" and "Mike Babcock is a the world's best coach", etc. started in 2008. The fact that it all came along since then is actually kinda funny. And sad.

I'm not buying it. The team won the President's trophy, pretty solidly coasted through the playoffs (after netting Hasek out of the next), and was never in any real trouble at any point in the season. There's also a little bit of a logical fallacy involved in generalizing from two extreme points of view. Basically you're saying Holland was criticized heavily in 2008, but your proof is 1) People were ok with the Stuart trade after temporarily being worried, and B) Two dummies with dummy points of view. I'm not convinced.

Well I wasn't on the forum in 08, but I suspect that there weren't too many people complaining about anything that season. So I'd be really shocked if there were a bunch of Holland bashing threads back then. In general my guess is that when the team is bad, people complain. And when the team is good, they praise...Mike Babcock.

I doubt very seriously everyone would be so lackadaisical about it if Holland traded Nick Jensen for a two month rental, just to barely scrape into the playoffs before getting manhandled.

Just like demoting Weiss after not registering a point while given third line minutes with Kevin ******* Porter on his wing. How is it that he didn't lead the team in points with opportunities like that?

I'm not really sure what's bothering you guys about it. People are discussing the last trade Holland made, in a thread about the next trade Holland will make. Seems pretty relevant to me. Here, I'll fix it so that everybody around here is happy... Durr...Cleary...Quincey...Durr Hurr...Kindl sux...Durr Hurr Hurr.

You mean fourth line winger. Babs actually had him playing on Glendening's wing lol.

I agree with your conclusion, but for all the wrong reasons. I thought this "going back to Sweden" thing had been put to bed. He was never going back to Sweden. Nobody relevant said he was. And nobody in the organization thought he was. Ryan Martin explicitly stated that this was false. As did Jarnkrok. Can we please stop repeating conjectures over and over again if they've already been debunked?

I actually feel a little bit for Brunner. He's obviously not a fourth line player, but the Devils have acquired a ton of top 9 wingers, so it's probably a struggle to get ice time. Between Ryder, Ruutu, Jagr, Clowe, Cammalleri, Havlat, there probably isn't a lot of ice time for Damien. Hence he's rumored to be on the block. The kid's made a bad decision or two in his time in North America, but he does have the talent to score goals if put in the right situation. I'd like to see him land on his feet.

You're creating a little bit of a false dichotomy here. That he may or may not be better than Quincey is still not a reason to acquire him. "Better than Quincey-ness" isn't a good way to evaluate whether a player would help you much. Where's he going to play (3rd pair at 3.3 million)? What is his skill set (he's a less effective puck mover than Quincey)? Also, I see no reason to believe that Philly would trade a marginal defenseman for a more expensive marginal defenseman. It seems like you're saying that in a vacuum you'd rather have Schenn than Quincey, which I suppose isn't too unreasonable. But that wouldn't address any of the problems with our back end, since the problem is that we can't move the puck, so why bother?

Because we don't need a stay at home defenseman with Ericsson and Dekeyser in the lineup? Because he's not a puckmover or powerplay specialist? Because there's no reason to take a flier on a young kid with upside when we've got an organization full of young kids with upside?

How else would you describe Marc Crawford?

When was he "in-dated"? His points of view got him exactly one NHL game as a player, and one trip to the finals as a coach. That's not exactly a validation of his hockey smarts when you consider the kind of goobers who have been much more successful than that.