kipwinger

Jesus you don't pay attention at all. Smith CAN'T have outstanding passing skills if he leads the defense in turnovers...which he does. Also, he has three more points than Quincey but leads the defense in offensive zone starts, Quincey has the lowest number of those (meaning Quincey has to go 200 feet to score and Smith has to go 75). It makes a difference. Finally, Lashoff is better defensively because not only does he lead Smith in categories related to defense (hits, blocks), but he also plays on the PK, which is entirely about defense. How convenient that you "don't care about stats" when EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM defy the argument you're trying to make. Smith's not very good, and if you believe the hype (despite all the evidence to the contrary) then I don't know what to tell you. It's not "picking and choosing" when EVERY stat says Quincey is better. Seriously, the only stats that favor Smith are assists (Smith has three more) and penalies (Smith have five less). Literally EVERY other stat favors Quincey. I'm not picking and choosing s***.

Yeah the difference is that most rookies do at least one thing pretty well. Tatar scores, Lashoff kills penalties, and Dekeyser is good defensively (and better offensively than Smith too). Smith's an offensive d-man who doesn't score...or play defense. People don't expect Tatar to be great defensively, people DO expect Smith to be able to pass and play offense and he's not good at that. As noted above, he starts in the offensive zone more than any of our other defenseman and still only barely scores more than Quincey who starts in the d-zone more than any of our defensemen. Keep making excuses for Brendan, you're only proving my point. The stats don't lie. He's not very good. And the more you try to make it seem so, the more you show that you're going to defend him no matter what the truth is. Here's a thought, why don't you tell me all the ways that Smith is better than Quincey, or Dekeyser, or Lashoff...and I'll post links to tell you how wrong you are. Or I could just do it for you... Smith's gritty: Lashoff and Quincey have more hits and blocked shots. Smith's Offensive: Quincey has more goals, and Dekeyser has more points. Smith's safer: Nope. leads the defense in turnovers. Smith's versatile: Nope, doesn't play any special teams. Smith only does one thing better than the rest of our defense...turn the puck over. Everybody else has at least one thing over him. But keep telling me how good he is and how bad they suck. Dekeyser and Lashoff are both rookies, why don't they suck as bad as Smith defensively if it's merely a product of being young? Lashoff's better defensively, and Dekeyser is better offensively AND defensively (while playing fewer games). Being young's not an excuse. Smith is young AND bad (right now).

Nice try. Quincey doesn't play on the powerplay, and he still scores as often as the offensive dynamo Smith does. Smith's an "offensive" d-man who doesn't score. At least Quincey's a defensive d-man who plays defense. Edit: Oh man, I just looked up our teams' offensive zone starts. Looks like Smith gets more O-zone starts than anyone on the team other than Lashoff. Wanna take a guess who gets the most D-zone starts? You guessed it...Quincey. So not only does he do his job better than Smith...his job is actually quantifiably harder to do that Smith's too.

This is what I'm talking about. You're using turnovers to criticize Quincey and willfully ignoring the fact that Smith has MORE of them. It is a FACT that despite almost 3 fewer minutes on ice per game (average), Smith still has MORE turnovers. And here you are saying Quincey's bad because he turns the puck over too much. Am I eating crazy pills? Quincey plays more even strength and special teams, has more hits, more blocked shots, fewer giveaways, more takeaways, more shots, more goals, and fewer missed shots. Smith has five fewer penalties, and four more assists than Quincey. That's it. In no other way is he a better player, and yet everyone around here will defend him to the death and blame Quincey to the moon. Smith didn't piss in my cheerios. I do, however, get frustrated when purported "intelligent" fans A) don't see that Smith isn't all that good (yet), and B) blame his mediocre play on someone else (as if his failure to shoot, hit, block shots, pass, or take the puck away is somehow Kindl, Lashoff, or Quincey's fault).

100%

I thought they were going for the Staal Ovechtrick?

I think they're talking about moving Eric Staal, not Jordan.

Are you insinuating that our offensive attack is unimaginative and at times formulaic? How dare you! To get over my anger I'm going to go watch youtube videos of the Wings force feeding point shots on the Power Play with no success and then silently weep as I pine for 2008.

I'd honestly like to see Z-Dats-Jurco. He's a big strong kid, and he's really good on the boards. Plus, Nyquist-Sheahan-Tatar are murdering it.

Based on what you've just said I can conclude that you think interference makes a guy "dirty" and also that you think Kyle Quincey is a "dirty" player (since you just used "Q like" to explain why Orpik is dirty). Quincey is not a dirty player. Also, interference doesn't make one a dirty player. If you feel differently fine, but I question your logic. Also, for a guy who "loves hitting from behind and taking guys knees out" he has remarkably few penalties every year, only topping 70 PIMs once in the last seven seasons. He also has only had two major penalties in the last six seasons despite playing huge minutes in almost every game and not ever missing serious time with injury. He's just not dirty dude, no matter how hard you hate the Pens.

To an extent I agree with you, in the sense that I REALLY WANT Howard to stand on his head. It would be super nice if he did. But there's no substitute for quality play in front of the goalie. Look at Ryan Miller. The guy's a stud, a veteran, a guy that can steal games for you, etc. etc. etc. Except he wasn't stealing games for Buffalo, he was getting murdered. You could say the same things about him as we currently do about Howard. Then, all of a sudden, he goes and plays on a real team with real hockey players and he's a superstar again. And it's not just that he's benefiting from St. Louis' system, because he's playing better than Halak or Elliot did with the same team. When we talk about goalies "stealing games" it's easy to think that top flight goalies can play behind HORRIBLE defenses and win games all by their lonesome. That rarely happens. Usually when a goalie steals a game it's because either two very good teams, or two very bad teams are playing and the goalie ends up being the difference. When it's a bad vs. a good team the goalie rarely overcomes that.

Weiss is a really good player. He's going to be good here, he's just had a run of crummy luck with the injuries. Also, I'm not sure that he can be bought out (since he was signed after the lockout). Well, he could be regularly bought out, but they couldn't use a compliance buy out. And he has an NTC, so he's definitely not getting traded. So it's probably him over Legwand (who hasn't been bad at all).

I'll agree that he's better than he was last year. So is Brian Lashoff. But Lashoff doesn't get his own special thread and unlimited praise/excuse making. Despite the fact that, unlike Smith, he actually contributes to this team in critical situations (read: Penalty Kill, the one thing this team seems to excel at). I guess if we're to the point in which "Smith f***s up less than a year ago" is somehow worthy of acknowledgement, then so be it. But I'm still not sure why so many people are just dying to get that off their chests.

Here's a video of the game highlights, about 10 seconds into the clip Mickey and Ken talk about how the Babs had changed the defensive pairing. It was about 8 minutes into the game, and the only penalty in the period had occured 5 minutes before. Could he have been tinkering? Sure. But if the Kronwall-Smith pairing was such a resounding success as others (not you) have made it appear, I don't see why he'd need to. The truth is, while Smith wasn't bad last night, he didn't really have much of an effect one way or another. So I don't understand all the back slapping. Our penalty kill won the game for us last night, and Quincey and Lashoff had HUGE nights on the Pk, but I don't see anyone going to such great lengths to congratulate them on their contributions. But if Brendan Smith manages to go one game without a mindblowing f*** up it's a cause for celebration. http://www.mlive.com/redwings/index.ssf/2014/03/red_wings_show_resiliency_batt.html

Orpik isn't dirty at all, I don't know where you got that. Neal is, and Cooke was, so I get your point. But Brooks Orpik is not a dirty player.

Yep, he played so great with Kronwall that Babs split them up 8 minutes into the first period and only once, sporadically, in the second period allowed them to play together again. And, as I've said, he was fourth on the team in time on ice as well. So I guess my question is, if he was playing so good with Kronwall as everyone says, why was he demoted from the top pair and why didn't he get more ice time? Babs probably just has it out for him huh? He'd rather give the ice time to an "undeserving" Quincey because he's purposely trying to ruin the season? Maybe it's Gary Bettman's fault? Or maybe, just maybe, you and all the other Smith apologists are seeing what you want to see, and making excuses for a guy you want to succeed.

I like Dats, Weiss, Sheahan, and Helm as our four centers. But I don't like Legwand on the wing. He doesn't shoot much, and hasn't played there too often. I'd rather we go get an actual winger, I hate this team's insistence on lining up centers at the wing. It's no wonder we have such a hard time scoring goals. But that's just me. And hopefully having Tatar, Nyquist, and Jurco on the wings moving forward will help.

Well I'd definitely prefer Legwand have more situational awareness, but in hindsight, good on him. Very veteran move. Reminds me of Chelios. Let those punks know they don't get to do work on you easily. Edit: The outcomes are good all the way around. I'm glad nobody got suspensions. In my opinion these are both VERY borderline plays, illegal? Yes. Severe? No. Penalties were enough in both instances.

If we resign Legwand we'll have like...what...200 centers?

Smith's still getting sheltered minutes. He played fewer minutes than Kronwall, Dekeyer, and Quincey tonight, and no special teams of any sort. He just had someone better covering up for him tonight, it's not like he stepped his game up. All the hard minutes went to the guys previously mentioned. Here's the crazy thing though, if you paired Kindl or Lashoff with Kronwall they'd look better too. That's naturally what happens when you play with guys who are miles better than you are. I'll start thinking Smith has turned a corner the minute he plays his way into more responsibility. So far he hasn't played his way into s***, he was paired with Kronner because of an injury after being the odd man out on the d-core the game before.

Neal's a good player, but he's dirty. f*** that guy. Honestly I hope nobody gets a suspension, but if Legwand does, then Neal does too.

Mods remove my posts, and I still bask in my nuclear sunshine. We're the Detroit Red Wings, maybe you've heard, winning big games is what we do! Welcome opposing fans, you're truly welcome, but please believe we're not rolling over on some trash talk. I just moved to Washington D.C. for work, and you wouldn't believe how Caps fan get punked by Pens, Bruins, and Flyers fans around here. I was in a Caps bar about two weeks ago and they lost to the Flyers. Bunch of Flyers fan walked up in the place and took it over. Not happening with Wings fans. Not happening in Detroit. Reppin' it till the death of it!

If you think that's funny you're probably downright beside yourself when you think about how your team just dropped three straight to mediocre teams. Bodes really well for your chances of getting past Boston, Tampa, Montreal, or Philly... Oh s***, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say Philly this close to a Pens' fan's bedtime. I don't want to give you nightmares. Have a good sleep, you'll probably drift away like a baby knowing your team absolutely murders bottom feeders like Detroit...oh wait. Nighty night.

I'm sorry, what's going on? Did I miss a memo that said you had to debate "penalty calls" with a fan of the opposing team who just lost to our AHL team? Scoreboard my man!

I cannot believe that just happened. That's about the best possible outcome we could have hoped for.