kipwinger

Not true. He's really good at "an integral part of the game", as fight fans will tell you ad nauseam.

Pure f****** Class. Per Malik: "On Wednesday May 7th, 2014, Kelly Rothe, made it know about her surgery she was about to undertake, the following day the Detroit Red Wings organization brought Kelly and her family down to The Joe for a special private dinner. There she was surprised by local Detroit band, Kaleido, who gave her a private acoustic set. Then they took her to the Red Wings locker room where her favorite player was there waiting to surprise her." My grandmother is a breast cancer survivor, and my aunt passed away from breast cancer. It's absolutely mind-blowing how difficult the decision to have this procedure must be. Especially for a guy, like me. So to see her choke up and say "you don't even know" when they ask what the Wings' gesture means to her...Jesus Christ.

I get it, you don't think Burke is any good. I honestly don't give a s*** about this debate. I'm not the guy's best friend or anything. I said he's good, not great. You disagree. Woowee.

Well there you have it folks, any idiot can do what Burke does. He's just a stupid, old, brainless, fart and all of his accomplishments across a long career were the product of pure unadulterated luck. Just lucked his way into an NHL executive job. Lucked his way into a Stanely Cup. Lucked his way into an Olympic Silver. Luck, luck, luck. We should all be so lucky.

Well, everybody knows my position on fighting...but having said that, if you're going to spectacularly disappoint your fan base each year the very least you can do is let them watch Orr and McLaren beat people up. So we'll call that a net positive for Burkie despite it's having exactly zero effect on winning games. p.s. I also want to add that I'm in no way trying to make Burke into some super hero. He's a good GM, but not a great one. However, he did have them moving in the right direction and history has shown that he can put together a winner if left alone. Since giving the team to an inexperienced knuckledhead you've seen the results...and TOR can expect the same under Shanny considering he has ZERO front office experience was well.

Ericsson is nasty along the boards, but I'll agree with Dickie (first?) that he's not a big open ice hitter. However, to say he isn't physical (as someone else implied) is untrue. Exhibit A: Last year's Chicago series. See below:

Jesus I hate the Toronto Maple Leafs. These dumb bastards don't know which end is up. If they'd just left Burke alone they wouldn't be in this mess and they're too dumb to know it. All he ever did was bring the entire nucleus of their team together...including Kessel, Lupul, Van Riemsdyk, Phaneuf. They were trending upward too, then they fire Burke and they've had two fantastically massive implosions in a row. f*** the Maple Leafs!

It's hard for me to comment negatively on this because I don't want Vanek and agree with you in spirit...but Datsyuk's two best years were both played with Holmstrom PLUS a highly skilled winger (Zetterberg in 2008 and Hossa in 2009). I know you're going to say, "Zetterberg plays like a power forward" or "Hossa's a big body"; and you may actually believe that but they're not power forwards. Van Riemsdyk, Pacioretty, Carter. Those are power forwards. Zetterberg works hard, and is physically tough, and Hossa is a large dude, but neither play a power forward's game. Let's be honest. Zetterberg-Datsyuk-Vanek would score...a lot. I just don't want Vanek because the cap hit and term on that guy is going to be nuts. Oh, and because we could get just as much production out of Kesler for less (just sayin').

Like he did last year with Nyquist and Tatar instead of Cleary, Sammy, or Bert? Regardless of how you feel about this coaching, it's kinda hard to ignore the fact that Babs leans heavily on his veterans. The chances of a vet losing a job to a rookie in training camp are pretty slim.

Yeah but how do you feel about Brendan Smith?

Right, because Roberto Luongo signing a 12 year contract as the age of 32 is totally comparable to Jimmy Howard signing a 6 year contract at age 29. Totally.

I know it was popular to think so after the Boston-Detroit series, but the truth is the Bruins are not some super team or "the best team in recent memory" as some were suggesting. Apparently they're perfectly human if you don't make dumb personnel decisions and actually execute a game plan.

I'd just like to see Emelin sit Lucic on his ass with a nice, big, clean, hit. No dirty stuff, no suspensions, just step into him in the open ice...hard. Emelin's a good hitter, he can manage it. Then again maybe I won't have to worry about it if Boston doesn't figure out some way of stopping Subban from carving them up.

Beat me to it.

Pulkkinen is a 5'10, 195 lb. skill player. Not really sure why you'd think he's a "piano puller" (ugh, I hate using that phrase).

Sure, so long as your fantasy is grounded in some reality. Mainly that Babs would only play him as a fourth line winger, give him the fewest number of shifts on the team, and say he's not "heavy" enough.

I've been waiting all day for that haha. In my defense, I created that account ENTIRELY to troll Ansar Khan. Everyone else is just collateral damage.

That guy's not having a good playoffs or anything is he?

I'm not sure if I'm not being clear or if you're being obtuse on purpose. The "Jarnkrok back to Sweden" rumor didn't amount to s***. It was predicated on hearsay and was debunked by the Wings assistant general manager, as well as Jarnkrok himself. Are we on the same page now? I'm not sure how much more obviously and clearly I can make that point. If you choose to believe it, and base your opinion of the trade off of it, I don't know what to tell you.

I don't think I'm being clear. I know that Babs isn't leaving. He said so. But there are rumors to the contrary anyway. Much like there are rumors that Jarnkrok would leave for Sweden despite his publicly stating the contrary. So why believe the rumor in Jarnkrok's case and not Babcock's? The only credible person who reported Jarnkrok leaving was Bob McKenzie, who said Jarnkrok "may" go back to Sweden. Later that day Wings Assistant GM Ryan Martin told Steve Ambrose of Fox17 that he'd never heard Jarnkrok wanted out of the organization. Why believe McKenzie and not the assistant general manager of the team? The point about the Iginla trade was to suggest that EVEN IF a credible person reports it, in this case Aaron Ward, they sometimes still get it wrong. Ward reported that Iginla to Boston was a done deal, when in reality he had blocked the Boston trade and picked the Pens. Basing your opinion of the Jarnkrok-Legwand trade on this rumor, which has zero corroborating evidence, is stupid. And since you're not a stupid guy, you should probably reconsider using it as the basis for your evaluation of the trade. Doesn't mean your position on the trade is wrong, it's just based on a faulty premise.

A year ago Jerome Iginla "allegedly" had signed with the Bruins too. That, right before donning that Penguins sweater. Hard to put that much stock in a comment that has no known source. I don't know why you'd choose to believe this and the the myriad other rumors which go unfounded each and every season. For instance, have you heard Babcock doesn't want to resign with Detroit and may instead be headed to Toronto? Yeah, neither did anyone else. But it's been alleged.

I'm fairly sure that this guy is the same troll who frequents Mlive. There's a guy over there who constantly rants about getting Ovechkin and moving Ericsson and Smith to forward. It's super clever.

Dude whatever. Ovie sucks. No way could some bum, who doesn't play defense, is notoriously selfish, and and only stands around looking for the one-timer, help us. Even if he's good on the PP. Wait...what's that?...You've got a picture for me...oh. FML.

But I don't really see how Blysma riding Crosby all season is bad coaching, but Babs riding Nyquist into the playoffs is good coaching. In neither case was there some genius level strategy involved. Also, if you're going to (erroneously) discount Blysma's coaching because he's got (one of) the best teams around, then you should probably also discount everything Babs did between 2005-2009, since he CLEARLY had the most talented team in the world during that span. And if you're (erroneously) excluding that, then it begs the question "What's Babs ever done anyway?". Malkin (missed 22), Neal (missed 23), and Dupuis (missed 43) all missed twenty or more games. That's three of their top six fowards. Letang and Martin both missed more than half the season. That's literally their entire top pair of defensmen gone for half a season. Our injuries weren't worse. If anything, we'll say it's a draw.

Babcock deserves the Jack Adams for coaching a team with a bunch of injuries into the playoffs, but Blysma coached a team with more injuries into a better playoff position AND won a round and he didn't even get nominated? I don't get it.