FlashyG

Maybe no 3rd period goals...but they've definitely had shots.

Did you know that Datsyuk trusts his eyes to Dr. Rahmani?

Nevermind, he just made another appearance.

Did I miss a Tatar injury? I haven't seen him since his first shift of the game.

They had one on Clune boarding Kronwall, but you're excused for not noticing it, sometimes Wings powerplays are difficult to see.

It would also allow Datsyuk and Zetterberg to re-unite on the top line.

Thanks for the Props! If the regular GDT maker here doesn't post his you're welcome to use it. I've also posted some previews of some upcoming HFboards GDT's in the creative and media works section of the forum

Clune is wearing a shield to cover up stitches he got recently, he won't be fighting anyone any time soon He didn't say Tootoo is the most frequent hitter or the best hitter he said he was one of the "hardest hitters". Tootoo absolutely fits that description, in one of the most recent player polls he was voted by the players as the 2nd hardest hitter in the league behind only Chara. Tootoo was the best signing the team made in the offseason and IMO he's been the best player in our bottom 6 so far as well. The hit itself doesn't have to create the turnover. if in anticipation of the hit, a player makes a rushed inaccurate pass ending in a turnover the result is the same as if the hit caused the turnover.. Tootoo causes defenders to make plays far quicker than they want to, and is easily our best fore-checker. You may not like physical hockey but don't deny its effectiveness...just look at what almost every team does to the Wings defence.

Bouwmeester would be more likely to make our defence worse than he would make it better. He would help the PP though. We need someone who can cover for Kronwall's lack of defence and Bouwmeester isn't that guy, He's too much like Kronwall and would only increase our need for defensive minded D. What makes you think you'd be better at managing an NHL roster than our current management?

You are contradicting yourself...You say we don't have much to give and then follow it up by saying that we have very many truly tradeable assets. I assume you meant we don't have much to trade but I disagree, we have a ton of valuable prospects that would be interesting to other teams, by my count we have at least 15 that would be of interest, not to mention all of our draft picks.

The league can't enforce rules differently for different players. Despite Datsyuks abilities playing the puck with his skates, 99 times out of 100 the linesman would blow that play offside because while letting a puck bounce off your skate may lead to control, its far from having the puck in your possession. I don't think it was a case of the linesman thinking he had control of the puck, I think it was a close play and one of the few where the linesman just misjudged whether the skates or the puck crossed the line first. Regardless though I'm glad it was missed because it was a beautiful shot and led to a much needed 2 points.

It wasn't anywhere near as bad as Duchene's but Datsyuks highlight reel goal against LA was offside as well...Glad the Linesman missed that one.

You rarely trade away someone who is playing well for you unless there are contract issues or he requests a trade. Most trades involve prospects or usually productive players that are struggling in the hopes that they will regain their form with new scenery and teammates. Almost all the biggest trades since the salary cap was instituted have involved a bunch of prospects for an established star, or a bunch of draft picks for an established star. Its rare for very good established players to move both ways. Ericsson isn't good enough to bring in a bunch of prospects, so he's not really trade bait. If the Wings were going to make a deal for talent, it would likely mean moving someone like Sproul/Ouelette/Jurco/Tatar/Nyquist/Sheahan/Jarnkrok etc... Depending on who we moved I could live with that, but not for Sproul, I consider him untouchable.

I don't think the problem is the personnel as much as its how they are used and the system they follow. If they are hellbent on using the same system they have been then I'd rather see 2 defenceman on each unit with our scoring forwards spread out better so we don't have all of them playing on unit 1, with Flip stuck with Cleary and a rotating cast of grinders. I'd rather they just roll out the top 2 scoring lines than their current PP lines, they probably wont score any more but it should stop all the shorthanded goals we give up. If they want to keep the same units together than I think they could more effectively use the first unit. I'll describe what I typically see when our first unit is on the ice. To get into the zone Kronwall or Brunner will carry the puck to center ice while Datsyuk will sweep behind them, they will drop the puck back to him and he'll skate right through the middle and between their 2 PK forwards, then dump the puck off to either Kronwall or Brunner at the point. Datsyuk will then set up along the boards on one side with Zetterberg setting up opposite him, while Franzen goes to the front of the net. Kronwall or Brunner will then have 2 options with the puck because generally the PK is right on top of them preventing any sort of a shot. They can either move the puck between themselves or move it down the boards to Datsyuk or Zetterberg. When it gets to the boards the PK takes away the cross ice pass and makes Zetterberg or Datsyuk attempt to either skate the puck to open up another pass, or forces them to move it back to the defence again. This happens over and over again until eventually a bad pass is made or a shot opens up that usually goes wide or is blocked. All too often when the shot misses the Wings don't retrieve it and it ends up being shot down the ice starting the whole process over. Worse still is when the shot gets blocked we have one of our 2 worst defensive players attempting to break up an odd man rush and we all collectively hold our breath hoping to not give up a shorthanded goal. I think having both Datsyuk and Zetterberg on opposite sides of the rink makes us much easier to defend, why not have them both work the puck on the same side of the ice with Franzen in front. No one defenceman is going to be able to defend both Datsyuk and Zetterberg so chances are if they stick to their box one of them is going to be able to skate right into the slot for a scoring chance. The only options the defence would have is to either collapse a forward down low to help his defender cover the 2, or leave Franzen alone in front. I think most PK's would move a forward down as leaving a man alone in front would be a recipe for disaster. When the forward collapses that leaves either Kronwall or Brunner open to move down for a great one time opportunity with a screen in front of the net. It also leaves our 2 best players down low to retrieve a shot that misses or Franzen in a 1 on 1 in front of the net on a rebound.

Its true the Wings schedule gets tougher, but they've got just as many pts against the best in the conference as they do against the worst, and they've done it with a patchwork line-up of a bunch of rookies with (until recently) no goalie to spell Howard. If we aren't in a playoff spot by mid march it will be time to panic.

The only way this roster is going to be "blown Up" is if Holland, Nill and Devellano are all fired and even then its a longshot to happen this offseason. Missing the playoffs for one season won't change the teams philosophy. The only thing that will change if the Wings do miss is that we'll get a better draft pick that will still end up playing at least 1 season in Grand Rapids before making the roster. I don't really get why everyone thinks that getting younger is going to improve our fortunes, we have 5 rookies playing right now and the team is performing worse than when we had all the veterans playing. Other than Tatar, and Lashoff (on some nights) none of the rookies have been better than the guys they are replacing. We just have a couple guys who are making a tremendous amount of mistakes that keep costing the team goals. Kronwall in my opinion needs to be played on the 2nd pairing, or even 3rd. He can't defend the oppositions best players and he keeps screening our own goalie. Cleary should be either in the pressbox or on the 4th line, he has no business being on the PP or anywhere near the top 6.

I wouldn't want to move E unless its for a big overpayment. I think E is our most valuable defenceman right now. I hope Sproul makes some of our defence expendable, but I'd happily use some of Colaiacovo's money to give E a raise. I highly doubt we'll keep Colaiacovo anyways and his 2.5 mil a season contract ends at the same time as Ericssons.

The Farm club obviously isn't a big part of a GM's evaluation but to say it doesn't matter to an Owner isn't exactly true either. (Fan evaluations are irrelevant as they don't have the power to replace a GM) If a GM has stockpiled talent in the draft he won't be fired after 1 bad season if that talent is developing and producing on the farm team. He might be if they don't perform at the NHL level, but a championship AHL team can save the job of a GM with a poor producing NHL team. Look at Bob Gainey in 06, Steve Yzerman last year, and Brian Murray in 2010/11. All 3 missed the playoffs with a franchise that was expected to do well but all 3 teams had championship AHL teams. Not surprisingly all 3 GM's kept their jobs.

Lashoff is not that good of a defenceman. I'd much rather Sproul play with someone like Ericsson who is far more defensively sound. Although I think Lashoff will finish this year with Grand Rapids, and if the Soo get eliminated early in the OHL playoffs maybe they can develop some chemistry in the AHL playoffs.

Another game another 4 assists for Sproul

That's a bit of a strawman argument. The performance of the Farm team will absolutely be reflected in the evaluation of a GM. If an AHL team is winning championships every year and none of the talent is being called up then the NHL team isn't being managed properly. But if your AHL team has consistently sucked while your NHL team was successful and for 1 season it reverses, thats not really that big of a deal. If anything it shows that more NHL success is on the horizon. If that trend were to continue for several years he might get the axe, but that hasn't happened and given Hollands track record as a GM I don't expect it to.

Where to start...I'm assuming to do this you've gone back in time to last years Free Agency period and not signed anyone of the guys that we did. Conceding that here are some problems I have with your roster. A goaltending tandem that was average in the AHL, led by a 21 year old with 1 game of NHL experience and backed up by a guy who should be playing for Toledo. over 40% of our cap space spent on 3 players, none of which worth anywhere near 9 million dollars a season. No depth whatsoever...every injury would require a FA signing, which we couldn't do because of lack of cap flexibility. What happened to half the roster? you can only buy out 2 guys, did Abdelkader, Eaves, Quincey, Bertuzzi, Samuelsson, Miller, White, Kindl and Mursak all retire

So in other words you expect him to be promoted? That I would agree with. You don't retire and stay on at a higher salary in a higher position. That's like saying he retired as Assistant General Manager after 1997 but stayed on as the GM.

How do you know what Jimmy does and doesn't do for the Red Wings? Sure he's getting up there in age but he's younger than Bowman was when he was still working for the Wings. The GM is evaluated on the performance of the organization as a whole, not just the performance of the top club. The fact that Holland and company have a farm club stocked with enough talent to battle for 1st in the conference while half the team is called up to fill in for the Wings is not going to be lost on Illitch. The success of the farm team also showed in spades tonight, Tatar was one of if not the best player on the ice for either team. Do you honestly believe Holland is going to be fired?

Quincey would be closer to good in my opinion. Even in tonight's train wreck of a game he finished as a + while playing first pairing minutes. He's definitely not scoring and that's a problem, but he's not getting scored on, which is why he's 22nd in the entire NHL in +/- Our #1 defenceman in Kronwall is 1 goal away from being in dead last in the NHL in the same stat. Not sure about all season as it seems to change night in night out, but for tonight's game Good - Tatar, Andersson, Emmerton, Quincey and Eaves Bad (Or Average) - Kindl, Ericsson, Howard, Tootoo, Abdelkader, Miller, and Nyquist Ugly - Kronwall, Zetterberg, Brunner, Filppula, Lashoff, White, and Cleary,