kipwinger

IMO Bouwmeester is not the answer. I like that he can skate, log big minutes, and play a shutdown role. But I absolutely hate that cap hit. It doesn't seem likes he's ever going to touch the kind of point production he had in Florida, which is what that contract was based on. A d-man who can play big minutes, shutdown top forwards, AND score 40 pts. is worth 6+ million dollars. A guy who doesn't score much, while doing those other things isn't. There are an absolute ton of good shutdown guys around the league who can do everything that Bouwmeester does, and don't have the cap hit. TSN reports that Ladislav Smid is on the block. He plays a lot of minutes, is a shutdown guy, has size, and plays well against top forwards and his salary is only 2.25 million. I'd take a guy like that over Bouwmeester and day of the week.

Yes, hilarious. Because obviously I believe that putting a team on the ice GUARANTEES a cup win. You totally nailed what I was getting at, and accurately too. I was talking about filling a couple of glaring holes on an otherwise competitive team, and in doing so giving the Wings as good a chance at the cup as anyone else. Thanks for responding to my post in an obviously fair way.

Good god, watching Abby and Cleary constantly bumble ******* around with Datsyuk is almost heartbreaking.

Kindl looks good tonight.

We played the best team in the league to an overtime loss and a shootout loss. We've split our two games against the defending cup champions, and we've beaten the third, fifth, sixth, seventh, and all the teams tied with us for the 8th seed. We're as competitive or more so than any team in the national hockey league right now. How are we not a piece (or maybe two) away from having a real chance at the cup? A rebuild now is pointless, especially as the core of our team continues to age. We can rebuild in two years when Sproul, Quellet, Jurco, Jarnkrok, Sheahan, Mrazek, etc. are NHL ready and Datsyuk may or may not be leaving. For now, trade Tatar, Nyquist, or both and some picks and acquire the pieces to put us over the top.

nope, cap hit, size, and lack of defensive acumen says it all.

Right, which is that getting guys back is LIKE a deadline acquisition? Take ANY competitive team, which we are, and add 4 top nine forwards and depth defenseman and it's impressive. Or to put it another way, if our team was made up of the exact roster that we're putting on the ice tonight, and then on April 3rd we traded for Filppula, Helm, Samuelsson, Bertuzzi and Colaiacovo, people would go nuts over how awesome Ken Holland is. If anything, people should be mad at how obviously true his statement is, not that the logic is somehow flawed.

Right I agree, and I've stated all along in this thread that we need another d-man and a top six winger. My point is that I don't think Holland is saying "we like our team" when he says that getting injured guys back is like a deadline acquisition. I think he's just pointing out that we're already a competitive team, even without Helm, Flip, Bert, Sammy and that getting those guys back only makes us more effective. He's obviously aware that we need another forward and a d-man because he explicitly said so in a different interview about two weeks ago. Everyone is so frustrated by the lack of success that they're misinterpreting him this time around.

As stated above, Holland has been saying all year that this team is a work in progress and that it might not even make the playoffs. Not once has he said "we like our team". Your criticism is noted yet completely erroneous and misguided. If you want to criticize Holland focus on things like how he lacked a long term vision for how we'd transition into the post Lidstrom era, or how he consistently lowballs helpful free agents because he's cheap and afraid of the cap. It's pointless to keep parroting something he said years ago when we were frequently competing for cups.

I disagree that we don't have anything to trade, we've got a lot to trade in terms of picks and prospects, and considering the cap is going down next year picks and prospects (that have shown something) are more valuable than ever. Take a team like New Jersey for example, they have to resign Elias, Zidlicky, Clarkson, Henrique, Ponikarovsky, Liktionov, and they're going to have less cap space to do it. Surely, they'd consider moving Volchenkov and his 4.5 million dollar cap hit in order to facilitate that. Especially considering they've already got a glut of NHL ready defensemen. Tatar and a 3rd would come close to getting it done. They'd get a pick and a cheap winger who can contribute immediately, we'd get a top four defenseman to play with Kronwall, and we'd lose a good prospect but not one who's integral to the future of this team. Then we move White or whoever to replace the pick we lost.

So you think the top six and be stabilized by players already on the roster, but who are either injured (Flip) or could be freed up to play in the top six once an injured player returns (Tatar)? That sounds almost exactly like what Holland was saying to Pierre LeBrun in the conversation linked above. For the record, I agree with you about Abby and Cleary, and I do believe Holland should make a move (see my post to Leftwinger above) to solidify the top six. But barring that, I still think that the return of Bert and Sammy makes us a better team than we are right now. Even if you have to put Bert and Sammy on the third line after you promote Tatar and Andersson goes back to GR.

We have plenty enough assets to get what we need, IMO. Which is, a big minute stay at home d-man to play with Kronwall on the top pair, and a big(ish) winger who can chip in supplemental scoring. For the sake of argument I'll say Blake Wheeler and Ladislav Smid. You could also swap these guys for Nino Niederreiter, Troy Brouwer, Sam Gagne on offense, and Mark Stuart, Henrik Tallinder, Robyn Regehr, or Anton Volchenkov on defense. And best of all, pretty much any of these guys could be had for a combination of prospects, picks, and lower level roster players. Then you simply move our throw away guys like White, Colaiacovo, Sammy, Eaves, Kindl, Miller, Abby, Cleary, etc. for the picks you lose landing the impact players. Wheeler-Datsyuk-Flip Brunner-Z-Franzen Kronwall-Smid Smith-Ericsson To me this looks a hell of a lot better than what we're fielding right now. Fill in the bottom six/bottom defensive pairings however you want. If you honestly think we're a better team with Cleary and Abby in the top six rather than Sammy and Bert then I'm not going to argue with you. I still maintain that while Holland should make a move or two, the addition of those guys makes our team considerably more competitive than it is now. And given that the point of trading is to make your team better than it is now, there's nothing misleading about Holland's comments.

Why do you always think that we need star players? When you have star centers you don't also need star wingers, you need quality wingers who can support Datsyuk and Zetterberg and provide supplemental scoring. James Neal and Alex Burrows aren't star wingers in their own right, they're quality wingers who have big success because they play with elite centers. That's what we need here. The equal but opposite is also true, if you've already got star wingers, then you can use quality centers to support them. In the salary cap world it's nearly impossible to have both of any length of time. Teams that have both, like Chicago, are an anomaly.

His level of play suggests otherwise.

He hasn't said the first one in years. All season long he's called our current team a work in progress and even hinted at missing the playoffs, so I doubt he "likes his team". Getting Helm, Bertuzzi, and Sammuelsson back IS like a deadline acquisition. And many of our prospects ARE over ripe in the minors, hence they're (Tatar, Mrazek, Lashoff, and Andersson) having a real positive impact while being injury call ups. Whether Holland makes a move or not (I hope he does), you're being wildly reactionary with this statement, presumably because you're frustrated at the lack of success this team is encountering. I share that frustration and think there are many things to criticize Holland about, but these statements aren't really very legitimate criticisms.

I really like that line as well, they seem to work really well together and bring the kind of tenacity that is often lacking on this team (especially with Helm out of the lineup). As a matter of fact, I'd love to see our top six forwards attacking more aggressively the way that the line up mentioned does. Seems like all of them, including Dats, Z, and Brunner are always looking for the open ice rather than attacking and forcing the defense to make plays. Filppula is especially bad about circling back rather than attacking the net when on a rush. Ugh.

That's definitely true if you believe he was indeed "standing on the ice when three of his teammates scored". If he factored in to the play from the back end, perhaps by making a good outlet pass, keeping a puck in the offensive zone that otherwise would have been cleared, standing a guy up and causing a turnover, etc. then he may not end up on the score sheet, but was doing something far from standing around, that facilitated the eventual goal. I don't know whether he did or didn't in the games you mentioned, I'd have to go back and look. But considering Detroit's system has for years generated offense from the back end, via the transition game, I'd expect to find that he did factor into the play in a positive way.

Anybody know anything about Nino Niederreiter from the Isles? Scouting reports on him seem positive, but I haven't seen him play. Edit: Plus, Garth Snow is an idiot so fleecing him shouldn't be that hard right?

Don't you think that the top six you've just laid out would have problems playing in high traffic? Seems like they'd just be pushed to the outside the way Nashville did to us last year. I think you need power forwards to counteract that problem.

When it comes to plus minus I always see the argument that bad players can have good plus/minus because they indirectly benefit from being on the ice when guys like Datsyuk, Malkin, Stamkos, etc. score. It's always used to denigrate the play of guys that aren't considered stars. But I never see the argument that good players will have bad plus/minus because of screwups by bad players. And considering blown coverages, turnovers, bad line changes, etc. happen far more frequently than goals, you'd expect that the effect of bad play would skew that stat downward for star players far more than it would inflate the number for bad players right?

Anybody else think that maybe the reason we're seeing these half assed line combos out of Babs is because of some sort of dissatisfaction with Holland and the personnel he's brought on board the last couple of seasons? A la Billy Bean or something. Babcock's been calling for top six forward and top pair d-man help, and I guarantee he wasn't thinking Mikael Samuelsson and Carlo Colaiacovo when he said that. Perhaps this is his way of showing that he's not really been dealt the hand he wanted. Also, on an unrelated note: Kudos to the defense for once again playing a pretty good game. I like the way these guys are shaping up.

Makes me wonder if there's more the the story than we're privy to. Last year Babs has a love affair with Ian White. This year Babs won't keep the same defensive pairings for 3 shifts, let alone three games. Then, White of all people is the odd man out when Babs finally does decided on a group to stick with. And White is obviously pissed off about it. I wonder if there wasn't a locker room conflict or something. This seems too sudden and acrimonious to be a case where White was simply played out of his roster spot by Lashoff and Kindl.

To be fair, in his presser after the San Jose game Babcock singled out Kindl yet again for his play and did so without any reservations. Two games in a row he was mentioned by name for his strong play.

Tatar definitely plays a more north/south hustle, go to the hard areas, etc. sort of game. Nyquist clearly has the more dazzling skill set, but I think as wings fans we've watched Pavel so long that we tend to want to see that razzle dazzle all the time, and we think it translates easily to the NHL game. It really doesn't. In almost every other instance the best offensive players in the league are the guys that play a simpler, more aggressive, direct sort of game.

That's reasonable. I certainly don't want to make it seem like I don't think Nyquist is a talented player with a decent future. But if Tatar hasn't earned his way onto the top six with his play, I don't see how other people's call for bringing in Nyquist for that role are justified.