kipwinger

Whatever the reason, the guy's a bust. He's 30 years old and has had exactly one strong season in his career, which was (by every indication) the exception to the rule. He's undisciplined, lazy, and consistently underwhelming. There's also no reason to think he'd score MORE on a team that would require him to play a 200 ft. game, as Boston would. He scored well that one season in Philly because he was on an all offense team, with good linemates. That ain't Boston's game. This is a guy who has ALL of the worst traits of Franzen, Hudler, and Filppula and none of the good ones. He and his former teammate Linus Omark are destined to have the same exact careers. This will end predictably. I get the concept of a low risk/high reward move. I do. So I'm not blaming Boston here. But this is a low risk/low reward. So why bother? Maybe they just needed one more live body for training camp. Who knows?

Well apart from the fact that he's absolutely the antithesis of "Bruin Strong", he also hasn't scored a goal since 2012. He only had 12 assists and zero goals in 58 games last year. So yes, I'd say he's a worse option than Cleary if you want goals to be scored. A year ago Cleary had more goals than good knees. What's Leino's excuse?

Har har. I'm going to leave it rather than edit it...just so your post makes sense. But for the record I meant 6'4.

Agreed on Mrazek, especially considering his size. If he had the same attitude and work ethic and was 6'34 I'd buy the jersey tomorrow. But his stature will always be a concern until he shows it doesn't matter in the NHL. I'd love for him to be the next Quick...but I'm not holding my breath. Hell, we currently don't have a good enough defense for him to be the next Osgood.

Problem is, you're going to pay Kindl one way or another and waiving him only gets you minimal cap relief. It's not a situation like Samuelsson where you waive him and only have to pay for the remainder of the season. In Kindl's case you'd be paying for 3 more years. Best case scenario you start him on the third pair, and second PP. Hopefully he can produce (initially) at the pace he did a couple years ago and he'll have some trade value. Right now he's got no trade value and he's too expensive to demote.

Unless you're the type of guy who has maintained all along that the Red Wings struggles of late have less to do with injuries than everyone seems to think. But what kind of man would that be? Where would we find him? Who does he work for? Only time will tell.

You definitely do. But read over the last three or four pages and you'd be shocked by the number of people blaming KH for this deal not being done. Ya know, cause he's a screw up and Dekeyser is just an honest local boy with a heart of gold.

I think it's interesting that everyone is blaming KH for this deal not being done, but if it were Tatar instead of Dekeyser we'd be inundated with comments about how Tats is an egomaniac who puts himself before the team. Double standard much? Dekeyser has only played 72 professional hockey games. Whatever he and his agent are asking based on his modest point production and ice time is almost certainly too much. But god forbid anybody call them out, because he's from Michigan.

I sure hope so. I think 25-30 is a little more realistic given he won't have a quality center and will be required to play defense. But you never know.

Yeah, it'll help that we've got top six talent (Tatar, Jurco, Sheahan) on good contracts and occupying the third line. That's huge for depth. I'd be absolutely thrilled if we had that depth plus somebody to occupy that top line wing who can score 20 and play big minutes (Alfie could score 20 but couldn't handle the top line minutes). Maybe Helm will be that...but I'm not sold on it yet.

I think both of you can be right on this. It's not unreasonable to suggest that we probably need a top line winger who can score better than Justin Abdelkader. However, having a 40 goal Hossa-in-his-prime type of player is a luxury and not a necessity. I'd be thrilled with a 20-25 goal guy occupying that spot if he was doing everything else right.

Haha, I knew Harold would be all over this one. I was just waiting to see how long it took. You didn't disappoint.

It's all in good fun. You are a reasonable guy, I'm just giving you a hard time lol.

It wasn't a critique of European support. It was a critique of how aggressive North Americans can be when fueled by a healthy dose of booze and groupthink.

I predict the games will be more fun...right up until fans from the supporter sections start beating the hell out of opposition fans. I get the feeling that in North America this will turn violent. Then again, maybe not. The Canadiens already have an atmosphere very much like this, and as far as I know nobody had been injured.

That fight slays me because the announcers are laughing and lamenting that they didn't have Colton Orr mic'd up for that game. It's not everyday that sportscasters openly mock players during play.

They'd need to take back equal salary or else eat some of his current salary. I'm not paying Semin 7 million a year. But I'm certainly intrigued by the thought of him on Pav's wing. Most of the same criticisms that Semin gets were leveled against Gaborik before he got put with a big time center and started scoring like a monster. I don't know if it would work out the same way, but it's an intriguing thought.

Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun reporting that Brunner, Semin, Stafford, and Chris Stewart are all on the trade block at the moment. Any thoughts? Keeping in mind, of course, that teams can now retain up to 50% of a player's salary in a trade. http://www.ottawasun.com/2014/09/06/ottawa-senators-in-the-market-for-top-9-forward?token=a6f6ffb3f7280c952b2e844b025c59fd

I don't really care about whether we got Diaz or not. I saw no harm in offering him a tryout, but it's not some big loss. I also don't think it's some indication that players don't want to play for the Wings. That said, I think it's a bit simplistic to think this decision was entirely about opportunity. Our defense isn't that good. Spots are ripe for the taking. And even if it's mildly harder to make our team, it seems like it would be worth the effort considering how much better we are than Calgary. So all that said, I don't know why he picked Calgary. But I'm not convinced that this was some rejection of our franchise, any more than I'm convinced that it's just that much more difficult to make our team. Both cases seem implausible.

Yep, you're correct. Got my wires crossed there. Yep, you're correct. Didn't do my homework. Yeesh...this topic isn't doing me any favors today. I guess this is the cosmos telling me to shut up about Raphael Diaz. And I'm taking it's advice.

I"m not sure that's a fair comparison. But dumping Kindl wouldn't be hard...waiving him isn't a problem. Trading him would be hard, you'd have to package him with something much more valuable cap wise. Which gets me speculating...any chance this Diaz thing is the precursor to some future trade? Seems unlikely given Hollands debilitating fear of trading away homegrown players. But never say never. Why not waive Kindl? It would give you about 1.3 million in cap savings as opposed to Lashoff's 900k.

I said this in another thread, but if you look at their numbers, Diaz and Anton Stralman are basically the same player. The biggest differences seem to be that the Rangers went to the Cup finals so Stralman immediately gets a bump, and Diaz was mismanaged by the Canadiens so his icetime is a little lower. Either way, provided he isn't rusty I'd sign him and dump Kindl or Lashoff. Why not?

Diaz is the exact same player as Anton Stralman, one of the guys everyone wanted Holland to sign as a UFA. Diaz will come cheaper and do about the same things. I'm for it. Cut Kindl, or Lashoff, or whoever if the kid shows he can play.

He played on the same Swiss team as Zetterberg and Brunner that year. I'd imagine Z has a good idea of what this guy can do, and if he got offered a tryout I'm sure that Zetterberg must have given a nod of approval.

Weiss is also really fast. Hard to tell from last season given his wonky groin situation. But he's actually a really fast skater. He and Gus should be able to fly together.