kipwinger

I think you and Mike Babcock have fundamentally different views on what the fourth line and bottom defensive pairings are supposed to be doing. Seems like you think their role is to hit, fight, be abrasive, and generally a pain the ass to play against. Mike seems to think bottom end players are supposed to kill penalties, play defense, eat up minutes in games that are out of reach, and not take penalties. So rather than crossing our fingers and hoping Mike Babcock changes his mind, why not just find guys who are better able to execute his game plan...like I dunno, Abby and Helm. Couldn't they get put on the fourth line, since that's where they should be anyway? And once there, wouldn't they be (along with Miller, or Callahan, or Cleary, or whomever) the best fourth line in hockey?

If it's "more of the same" with Cleary and he's still on the ice then it's not his fault. It's Babcock's.

I completely agree. What gets me is that everyone ALREADY knows they're going to make mistakes. That's what bottom end talent does...league wide. Every single team in the league has bottoms end talent making mistakes, and yet when our guys do it there's a huge "I told you so" uproar. It's dumb. If these guys didn't make mistakes, they'd be top end talent.

How exactly are you going to upgrade your special teams, puck movement from the back end, scoring depth, or shoddy goaltending with "toughness"? The kinds of guys that Ryan Barnes is arguing for (e.g. goons) don't play special teams, don't move the puck well, don't limit shots on the goalie, and don't provide scoring depth. They maybe...maybe...could help keep other guys healthy...maybe. But that's it. This whole argument that we've been bad because we're not "tough enough" completely overlooks the fact that there are a lot of SERIOUS problems with our team that have nothing to do "toughness". Fortunately many of the problems outlined above are resolved by adding Nyquist, Jurco, Tatar, Mantha, Ouellet, Sproul, and Marchenko (none of whom are goons, but all of whom are skilled) and removing/demoting Kindl, Lashoff, Quincey, Cleary, Bertuzzi, Sammy, etc (some of whom are tough, none of whom are skilled). By adding more skill, our real problems are likely to get solved. By adding goons you solve zero real problems and only address this "toughness" deficiency which isn't really tied to anything tangible anyway.

What a creep lol.

I'd argue that we've got plenty of toughness and not enough skill. For the last several years we've had awful special teams, defensemen that can't pass the puck without turning it over, marginal goaltending, injuries, and ZERO scoring depth. More skill will help ALL of those things, more toughness will help exactly ONE of those things.

Didn't you know..."OMG Cleary does suxs"! For the remainder of the season, whenever possible, Cleary, Quincey, and Kindl will be ragged on and denigrated to the absolute maximum. Because, ya know, a bottom six forward at the end of his career and tweener defensemen make all the difference in the world to the teams success.

They haven't won a Cup in the Holland era without Lidstrom either. And I don't think he ever had a fight, or led the team in hits either. The softest of the soft, the skilled of the skilled. So what? You could just as easily argue, based on this fact, that we should go MORE toward "skill" because after losing Lids we're not skilled enough. You keep saying this like it means something. He didn't even play in the 08 finals. Mike Babcock thought him so irrelevant that he scratched him, and yet here you are making it seem like he's not only important but vital to win. He's not. Get over it. Edit: Also, McCarty played exactly 3 regular season games that year too. So it's not like he was out there night after night protecting Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Lidstrom. He played 17 playoff games as the Wings steamrolled Nashville, Colorado, and Dallas, and then rode the pine once we had to play an actual team.

And I'm not saying we need a team full of sissies either. But the Shanahan/Lapointe type guys just aren't available anymore. And when they are, the price is so high that nobody wants to move what it takes to get them. Anybody want to trade Nyquist right now for Evander Kane? He's tough, and skilled, and all that. But that's what he'd cost. If Holland pulled the trigger on that trade people would ******* riot. Let's see, who else is tough and skilled? Kesler? Yeah, everybody said he was too expensive as well. So if you want toughness you end up taking bottom six toughness because its cheap and available. And that ends up looking a lot like Aaron Downey, Brad May, or Jordin Tootoo...and Babs doesn't want guys like that.

He's getting off to a slow start. I wonder what's going on with him?

I'd agree that in general you'd want a big guy paired with a little guy to help out in the d-zone. But the broader point would be that regardless of his partner, Hicketts (like Torey Krug) is too small to defend against NHL forwards and would have to be EXTREMELY sheltered. Krug, for instance, only played around 14:30 minutes per game at even strength. He just got a TON of icetime on the powerplay (led their team). So in a role like that, I could see Hicketts being viable. But at his size, unless he turns out to have Rafalski like passing, he should never be allowed to sniff top four minutes.

True, but I think that inflates his value a little too much in 2008. That year he played one game in the finals, had 6:00 minutes of icetime, 11 shifts, and no fights. He didn't do anything that Abdelkader and Helm don't do better. For all intents and purposes that was a pure skill team with a pure skill win. However, your point is taken for 97, 98, and 02. Those were tougher teams than our current bunch, but still near the bottom of the league in all major "tough guy" categories. Making comparisons against ones' self is always precarious because it tends to skew all relative contextual information. By comparing the 97 Wings to the 08 Wings you'd conclude that one was "tough" and one wasn't. But once you factor in the rest of the league you realize that neither were tough. In 97 our less tough team absolutely obliterated the tough guys from Philadephia who were supposed to be so much and powerful and scary. So while I agree that our older teams were tougher than current ones, they were still by no means "tough" teams by NHL standards. Also, in neither case are those Wings' team indicative of whether or not "tough" vs. "skill" philosophies are better, they just happened to be better that year.

I thought Chara and Boychuk were a pair? I never, ever, heard that Krug had been promoted to top pair minutes last year.

According to Malik it isn't. But I have yet to check any of my usual streams to see if something will be up and running.

I don't know about other teams, but I suspect that your characterization of Wings fans' attitudes is right...yet incomplete. People around here buy into Kenny's philosophy partially because they don't have an alternative, and partially because it's been SUPER successful during his tenure. If he espoused a "no fighting" philosophy and we missed the playoffs every year I imagine fans wouldn't be so quick to go with it. Likewise, Peter Chiarelli's teams are "pro fighting" and they win, so why argue with it? If they started losing consistently I'd imagine fans would be less enthusiastic about the organizational philosophy.

I usually send out a press release. But you LGW bozos are too busy reading about hockey to read them. Hockey...the opiate of the masses.

And if Pittsburgh had Orr, McGrattan and his soccer hair would run away or get his nose broke. So what?

I agree that we're a young team, and I by no means bemoan the fact that we're "old". But, I think it's at least worth noting that while only a handful of guys are over 31, they're all our best players (with the exception of Cleary). D, Z, Fran, Knonwall, Weiss all have VERY important spots on this team. So I think the point could be made that while we're not old overall...the most important parts of our team are getting up there.

No I'm not serious. I was making a joke about his growth potential. He's only 5'8. But if his dad and mom are both over 6', then maybe we'd have reason to be optimistic. And LGW optimism is reason enough to invade the privacy of a couple of middle aged Canadians. I made a funny. Ugh.

There are "Lemieux" beatdowns all the time. Not a year goes by that there isn't some big line brawl. Look up line brawl on youtube and you'll find a TON of them. And here's the funny part, they usually take place between the same teams. Buffalo, Boston, Philly, Toronto. Nobody is using them to keep other teams honest. They're doing it because they're the types of teams built to do it. Last year Toronto and Buffalo had a line brawl because John Scott tried to fight Kessel. And Buffalo acquired John Scott because the year before that Lucic ran over top of Ryan Miller. This crap just perpetuates itself.

"I have it on good authority that Brendan Smith's game will be risk free this year. And that he's the best yahtzee player on the team. Oh, and he makes a mean lasagna. And he once beat a polar bear in a dance-off. Oooh, ooh, and he's as handsome as a young Richard Gere" -Brendan Smith

Didn't Athanasiou grow two or three inches in the last year alone?

Congratulations to Joe "The Cricket" Hicketts for signing a 3 year entry level deal with the Winged Wheel. Atta boy kid.

Aha. I'll say this about Smith. For two years everybody around here has been talking about how Smith needs to get some PP time. For his confidence, for his numbers, etc. Supposedly he's going to get it this year. Everybody knows I don't like Smith. That's no secret. Thus far in his career he's been an offensive defenseman who neither plays defense nor puts up points. I'm willing to cut the guy a lot of slack if he shows he's an offensive defenseman who produces offense; something he hasn't done yet, but might with PP time. That's his role. That's why he was drafted. If he does that, I'll gladly overlook his boneheaded defensive miscues. But woe to him if he gets PP time and still doesn't produce. At which point we should be able to agree that he's trash.

Was this directed at me?