Rice

Great deal. I'm surprised all Prospal could get was $1.1 million.

Not many guys I can see the Wings being interested in. I bet Holmstrom hangs them up and Lidstrom takes a decent paycut. Frolov is the guy I'd look at... unless of course Kovalchuk would be willing to take a huge paycut to play here. That's a pipe dream though.

There's already a thread on this in the rumor mill.

I believe the OP but I really hope the thing about Williams isn't true.

Twitter: This is the second time the Wings have signed Delmore. I think he was signed and waived before the '05-06 season. Like Allen said, nothing major, just a signing for GR.

There's no guarantee the Wings would've taken Green with that pick, but yeah, it kind of sucks. I'm not sure he'd be such a great fit in Detroit, though.

Heatley isn't even remotely a possibility. Think about it. If the Wings were willing to move substantial salary to make room for a scoring winger, why not sign Hossa at $5.2 million (the deal he got from Chicago) instead of trading for Heatley at $7.5 million?

Hey, everybody, let's make something out of nothing!

Count on this not happening.

The Wings have tried to acquire Forsberg three times and he's turned them down each time -- free agency in the summer of '05, the '07 trade deadline, and free agency in '08. He's not coming here.

I'd love to see Zherdev here. The trouble is the Wings would need to clear some cap space to make it happen -- but it looks like that's something they were willing to do had Hossa or Hudler stayed. I assume the top six would look something like this: Zetterberg-Datsyuk-Cleary Franzen-Filppula-Zherdev Love that. I think Franzen would open up a lot of space for Zherdev to work and he'd thrive in a role where he's not the team's first (or even the second or third) scoring option.

According to James Mirtle's Twitter. This isn't the end of the world. I promise.

Their defense is good but their forwards suck. The problem with trading Kaberle for a forward is they'll have no offense coming from the blue line. I'd give them two years.

Rathje has been on LTIR for a while. He doesn't count against the cap.

It's not really a jab; it's the truth. The Senators sucked for a long time but compiled some high picks and got competitive again.

Great deal at only $800,000 a year.

...and between then and how he's had two mediocre, injury-plagued seasons, disappeared in the playoffs, and been bought out of a contract. No thanks.

Are people forgetting that this is essentially the same roster that won in '08? The Wings needed to get younger anyway. The only differences between this team and the '08 squad are Kopecky (who didn't play in the playoffs that year), Drake, and Samuelsson. In their places are Helm, Abdelkader, Leino, Ericsson, likely another UFA, and possibly a deadline acquisition. On top of that, Hudler and Filppula (assuming Hudler stays) should be ready to take on bigger roles. They'll have some growing pains in the beginning of the season (like they did in '06-07 post-Yzerman and Shanahan) but they'll finish with around 100 points as usual. I'm going to say three 30 goal scorers, 2nd in the West, 101-110 points. If they're healthy they have as good a chance as anyone in the playoffs. It's funny, people ***** and ***** about Samuelsson and Kopecky for years and when they finally leave it's the apocalypse. Hossa's loss hurts but he was a luxury, not a necessity.

Arnason signed with the Rangers.

The trouble with Pyatt is his mental/emotional baggage. He tragically lost his fiancee last year. Who knows if he can be the same player again...

Seems like there's a lot of Travis Moen hype for no reason. The board is probably going to crash similar to years past when the Wings lost out on marquee players like Brad Winchester, Adam Hall, Brendan Witt, etc. Moen would be a solid addition but he's not that great.

Smyth's contract is horrible but the Kings have a ton of room. I wonder what's going the other way.

Arnason signed with the Rangers. Calder is crap. No need for Dandenault.

Hudler for Johnson? In a second. It'd take considerably more than Hudler though.

This statement should never come out of a Red Wings fan's mouth.