kipwinger

During last night's telecast, Mickey stated that because Weiss is coming off injuries and because he's coming from a team with relatively no system, he believes Weiss won't begin to hit his stride until about the 20 game mark. Because Mickey has played professional hockey and therefore knows how hard it is to go from team to team, system to system, and bounce back from injury, I'm going to go with his assessment. That said, Weiss hasn't lived up to expectations. Which is hard for me to say because I lobbied hard for the guy in the offseason and was thrilled when he was signed.

It was pretty brutal. Everyone not named Tatar skated like they were on mud. Everyone else half assed most of their shifts. And to top it all off, Babcock changed the lines about twice a period. Justin Abdelkader actually played on all four lines tonight at one time or another.

Because our lines change every two minutes. According to Bab's philosophy line chemistry is for weak minded p*ssies who don't "want it enough".

Definitely agree. If we had a tough guy there's no way we'd be losing this game right now.

Hahahahahahaha, he did mix the lines up again. Nothing like developing chemistry by playing with six different guys in three different periods. Here's a thought, why not use the same lines you did when you beat VERY good hockey teams in Boston and Colorado? You know, winning lineups.

In an effort to salvage this game, I think Babs should shuffle the lines at least two or three more times in the third. Other than Pavs, Hank, and Kronwall, every player is just as good as every other players. Our entire team is interchangeable from game to game.

Haha dude you can't give up. The internet rules clearly state that if you don't make common sense points over and over ad nauseam, those very points are thus invalid. So the choice is simply, admit Ryan is better than four guys or keep arguing until you're exhausted.

Would it kill our defensemen to knock off the asinine stretch passes from deep in our zone and perhaps carry the puck up the ice before hitting a forward in flight?

What did Mickey say about Helm a few minutes ago?

Bertuzzi and his stupid wraparounds eh?

Ugh, going to be one of those nights.

It's good to see that after being healthy scratched for three of Detroit's best games, and then making his way back onto the lineup because of injury, and finally playing one decent game, Brendan Smith is being rewarded with top pair minutes. Other young guys can't seam to crawl their way onto this team, yet Brendan gets top minutes for some unknown reason. What's that you say? It's good for his confidence? Definitely. In the sense that anyone would be confident if all they had to do was play a decent game out of every ten in order to get prime minutes. Hell, with that as your only stipulation Kyle Quincey ought to be promoted to defenseman of the world and play alongside Superman with the Incredible Hulk and Thor as a second pairing.

As I mentioned in another thread, it's not Quincey's job to make Smith look good. Quincey is playing good hockey for us right now, and he stepped up huge for us last night against a VERY good hockey team. Last year when Quincey struggled, I didn't hear anyone saying that it was somehow Smith's job to make him look good, so where does this expectation come from? Good on Smith for having a good game last night, but that's no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. As of right now he's our weakest defenseman and if he needs a rookie prospect as a partner to bring out the best in his game then he's got a very very very long way to go before we can say he's ready for a bigger role.

In case some of you missed it, Kyle Quincey stepped up big time last night against a VERY good hockey team and played pretty damned well. Probably the best d-man on the ice aside from Dekeyser. I have no idea why people are saying he's the most expendable, or that he's holding back Smith's development. The only thing holding Smith back is lack of experience and dim witted decision making, not Kyle Quincey, he's been very good this year. Also, kudos to Jakub Kindl for his minutes last night. While I noticed him turning the puck over A LOT, I had no idea the kind of minutes he logged for the first time in his NHL career. Atta boy kid. Finally, Brendan Smith. Good game. Keep it up.

ugh, my boy Kindl is having a hard night tonight. He's like Smith, they both need to take a play out of Dekeyser's book and skate a few strides before making the pass. Neither does worth a damn when trying to pass under pressure. On the plus side Quellet looks good. Very poised under pressure.

I know what you're saying, but I think you're selling our defensive d-men a bit short. Also, I think another puck mover would help fill the void on the second pp unit point where we don't have a quality defenseman OR forward to fill the spot. I'd like to see something like this... Kronwall-Ericsson Kulikov/Del Zotta-Dekeyser Kindl-Quincey/Lashoff That's a solid puck mover and defensive d-man on each pairing. Plus, then you'd have Kindl-Kulikov/Del Zotto as the points on the second powerplay unit.

Word around the internet rumor mills is that both Dmitry Kulikov and Michael Del Zotta are on the block. I'd love for either of them to be the puck mover on the second pair here in Detroit.

I'll take Dmitry Kulikov thank you very much.

Damn, I didn't see last night's game. Was it that bad? Anybody want to give me an overview?

I don't like to see boxers play hockey and I don't like to see hockey players box. I have nothing against violence in principle, or in sport, I just don't see what's to be gained from doing it in hockey.

I've got anger issues, everybody knows that. It's why I self-censor my own curse words on these threads. Yet, nothing will make me turn into the Hulk quicker than some reactionary fan claiming a guy on our team is "slow", "terrified", or like "Robert Lang" and then immediately backpedaling once called on it. If you had only said that he hasn't looked as good as you'd like, we wouldn't be discussing this. You went above and beyond that when describing him the way you did. To use your words, you "roasted him". And now you're trying to worm your way out from under it. It's nothing personal, or unique. You're just another in a long line of posters on these forums who makes up ridiculous b.s. to get under people's skins and then backpedals when called on it in order to be argumentative. It's actually pretty stale by now, but foolishly I still can't help involving myself.

Thanks for the advice, I don't know how I'd be able to discuss hockey calmly without your patronizing asides. Also, if you're going to claim you're not "roasting the guy" perhaps you shouldn't describe him as "slow", "terrified", and "more like Robert Lang than Filppula".

New in town eh?

It wasn't too long ago that a significant portion of this forum were talking about how washed up Alfie is, and then he rattled off a zillion points in about two minutes and everybody shut the f*ck up. And then they switched over to Franzen...until last night. Now Weiss...ugh.

Nice save Monster! x2