kipwinger

Hey everyone likes Franzen again. Surprise surprise.

You see our last powerplay? I didn't see Cleary out there but I did see our superstars trying to be awfully cute. You cannot blame whole bad periods on one or two guys. Top to bottom we got beat for the last twenty minutes.

But we're the Red Wings, we've got Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk and nobody else has any hockey players who are worth a damn. Everyone in the league should stand in awe of our two superstars and nobody should ever bother to play hard against us, so it's ok to half step around the ice and poke around the puck with pantsy little drop passes.

Yeah, Alfie's back on the ice.

He literally just said it a couple minutes ago. He may have said it before the replay, but he just repeated it, that's why I posted it when I did.

Ozzie calling the hit a hockey play gone bad. Everybody's thoughts?

Ouch, that hurts the snowbunnies.

Well either way, looks like Smith will be back in the lineup real soon...ugh.

I wanna see that replay, if his head changed level before the hit there won't be any suspension.

I sure would like to see the Wings score enough to make Roy have a sh*t fit over some innocuous happening. Watching him act like a jackass in the face of defeat is one of the only truly enjoyable things I've got in my life.

That's because nothing ever happened between the two. Darren McCarty and Stu Grimson's presence deterred Lemieux from taking any liberties whatsoever. Yeah, I went there.

Do they have Twitter access in Vladivostok? That's clearly Commodore's biggest talent.

Yeah, he's playing like an absolute beast right now. It'll be fun to watch if he can keep up a similar pace for much of the season. If we can keep spreading out the offense, and especially if the second line can get sorted out, I believe he can.

I agree with this, provided he maxes out his potential. There are a few things though that I think he could do to really improve his game so far. In the d-zone he tends to puck watch and loses his man, and then he's caught running around trying to catch up. He's really got to work on staying in his spot and not drifting toward the puck. Offensively, he doesn't seem to respond very well to pressure from the forecheck. When pressured, he'll make bad passes. I'd like to see him use his skating ability (his best asset) to relieve that pressure before he passes. A couple of strides before the pass would help a lot in that regard. Finally, until he's got the experience and comfort level he needs to jump into the play safely, he should only rush to a point. I don't want to see him completely stop his jumps, but he typically ends up way too low for his own good. Until he's got a better grip on when and where he can do it safely I'd prefer he pull up and get back into position before he reaches the dots.

All valid points. It's probable he wouldn't get a raise, the thing that has me wondering though is that IF the Wings wanted him back badly enough, and there is some indication that Babs really wanted him back, then it's possible they had a gentleman's agreement to sign for a little less this year and a little more next. I'm not talking huge variation or anything, but a slight bump as a pat on the back for helping them retain a player that they wanted and still not go overboard with the cap. Such backdoor agreements do happen though, considering that was all the talk this year when the Alfie talks with Ottawa went to hell.

Given how everybody is playing right now, who do you scratch to get him back in the lineup though?

It obviously depends on the year he has, and how much the cap goes up, if any. This year's free agency was a typical for sure, but even then there weren't too many teams beating down Dan Cleary's door. I don't expect him to get much of a raise, if he gets one at all it will be because he signed a very favorable deal for the Wings this year and they feel he deserves an atta boy.

I agree, but you could just as easily say 4th or 10th, doesn't really matter. The average ages are so tight across the league that it's pretty hard to argue that one team is "old" and therefore disadvantaged, while another is "young" and therefore has a leg up. Not that you were making that argument, but others have.

Poor Bert, I liked it more when he had two on the season.

I aim to please.

They're the fourth oldest team in the league behind New Jersey, Florida, and Pittsburgh. But you're right, it's not the point of this thread. http://stats.nhlnumbers.com/teams

Well I guess that in your previous posts you've failed miserably to justify Tootoo's contract based on "bringing energy" and "pumping up the crowd". And how could you not? I mean, with the veritable cornucopia of sound, fact based, information you've provided I can't help but come to the light. I had no idea that being a hype man and "pumping up the crowd" by "bringing energy" was worth so much in your eyes. I guess you've won me over. I'm going to head over to Youtube right now and look up some old Public Enemy videos. Nobody could "bring energy" and "pump up the crowd" like Flava Flav. Good win dude. Good win.

I mean, it doesn't really matter does it. You're responsible for not hitting guys in the head, accidentally or not. He doesn't have a history of this, which should keep the punishment to a minimum, but at the end of the day you can't do that.

I wonder if Babs ever fought when he played minors, or if he'd just healthy scratch anyone he didn't like.

Haha, I read that too and thought the exact same thing. For a while I was an assistant professor at Central Michigan, and trying to relate to the 18 year old freshman was an exercise in futility. Pretty much the exact same thing going on here.