FlashyG

I think Mueller would be a great pick-up regardless of whether we get Parise/Semin. I like the idea of having 3 scoring lines and 1 checking line, he would boost the skill of our third line considerably and can be used on the 2nd powerplay unit, giving it a much needed RH shot as well. I agree with everyone on the length of contract though, with his injury concerns I wouldn't want him signed long term unless the cap hit was tiny.

I'm not sure whats more sad, that this mash-up of the 2 worst run franchises in the league is more than 8 million over the 70.3 million dollar salary cap, Or the fact that I took the time to put it into cap geeks cap calculator.

I agree that if we land both Suter and Schultz, Quincey would likely be the odd guy out or very close to it but I doubt we'd recoup the 1st round pick. Its extremely unlikely Quincey gets offered a contract worth more than 3.364 a season, and anything less than that will net us a 2nd rounder instead. Here is the RFA compensation table for this season

Not to mention the pressure it would put on Murray, being the only player in their entire 2012 draft class.

I think dangling a C at them just adds to the pressure they'd have on them, especially in Suter's case since he'll already have the pressure of trying to fill Lidstrom's shoes. I think Detroits biggest selling point is our consistency and our reputation for how well we treat our players. As much as its been said that Parise and Suter might prefer playing with players closer to their age, it should also be pointed out that if they indeed want to finish their careers where they sign, having a roster full of vets who openly state they'd retire before playing anywhere else has to be a ringing endorsement for the Wings system.

Technically they could be ranked the 3rd and 4th biggest idiots in Hockey. Charles Wang and John P. McConnell would be the biggest for continuing to employ these idiots.

Hopefully there aren't any teams out there looking to do the Penguins any favors like that. I'm sure those teams looking to get to the cap floor would be better of overpaying a FA than they would be trading away draft picks or roster players to get Martin and his 5 million dollar cap hit.

Shero isn't even in the same stratosphere as Ken Holland. That's not to say he's not a good GM, but he took over a team that had drafted in the top 5, 4 years in a row, and had an elite young core already assembled for him. His only real responsibility is to keep it together and he already lost his first ever draft pick with the team leaving Dustin Jeffrey as the only Ray Shero draft pick currently playing for the Penguins. When he transitions the Pens from the Crosby/Malkin era into their next without missing the playoffs or falling below the 100pt threshold then maybe we can start to compare him to Holland.

According to the player polls on where they'd rather play that's not true. Admittedly that's a very small sample size, but I've never seen the Pens ranked higher than the Wings in any of the polls that have been done. Also the Penguins may have freed up some space but they still have roughly 10 million less than the Wings and they have almost all of their best players looking for raises over the next 2 or 3 years. That will hurt their ability to offer long term deals without them taking some kind of discount to play there. I'm not saying the Wings are the favorite to land both the prime FA's this summer but in Suter's case especially I think the Wings are in better position than Pittsburgh. Parise might be a different story though.

He posted his reasoning for not going to the White House the same day the team was attending, so if he was pressed to explain himself it must have been by reporters that were on the ball. If he had just refused to go to the White House I wouldn't care...What I find annoying is how he makes these outlandish statements on his facebook page and then when asked about them refuses to talk about them. If you don't want your political statements to be discussed in public...Don't make them in public. Then comparing the Obama administration to the Nazi's a week later was also a bit disrespectful IMO.

That's one way to look at it, you could also argue that that 4 teams thought enough of him to ask for him in a trade or to sign him as a FA. He's also the only RH shooting defenceman we have right now. I don't really think we should be trading or losing any of our D-men at this point but if we had to I'd be looking to deal Kindl or Quincey.

That average age is counting Lidstrom, Stuart and Holmstrom, if you drop them the Wings are one of the younger teams in the league as I said before. Apparently the Wild were ranked ahead in the mid-season rankings (they were behind at the start of the season) but the point is that the difference between their prospect ranking and average age are slim and one of the teams finished in the top 10 of the league the other in the bottom 10. You can point out Minnesota was leading the league for a few weeks at the beginning of the season all you want, The Wings held top spot for even longer and had to deal with the same injury problems but to better players. Even after losing 2 of our top 6 defenceman, the Wings still have a better defence corp, their forwards are far superior to Minnesota's too. The only place the Wild have an edge on the Wings is at the back-up goalie position and the Wings have more cap space going forward as well

not in 2005, it was a unique year because of the lockout the year before. Every team had a shot at the #1 pick, but not an equal one. You're correct about the rules for the lottery going forward though.

That's not technically true, the Sabres, Blue Jackets, Penguins and Rangers each had a 1 in 10 shot at the top pick, the Ducks, Thrashers, Flames, Hurricanes, Blackhawks, Oilers, KIngs, Wild, Predators, and Coyotes had a 1 in 15 chance. The rest of the league had a 1 in 30 shot.

If Holmstrom isn't resigned the difference in average age between the Wild and the Wings is less than half a year. Wild 27,2 Wings 27.6 Also in Hockey's Future's rankings of prospects the Wings are rated #15, the Wild #17. Anything else you want to make up to support your argument?

There were many reasons people thought you were nuts...saying Helm was going to cost 2 million a year was far from one of them.

Clearly you don't. What you posted is not hearsay its a witnessed account. Hearsay would be "I heard from majsheppard, that the guy yelled he was going to kill him"

Even if the Wings signed Suter, Schultz and DeKeyser I doub't they'd pass Quincey, Ericsson or even Smith on the depth chart, they'd likely get a year in Grand Rapids unless they had an unbelievable training camp. A trade is possible but more likely we'd end up with Suter-Kronwall White-Ericsson Smith-Quincey Kindl - Since I doubt management would want talented rookies like Schultz or DeKeyser sitting in the press box in Detroit rather than playing big minutes in GR.

I used Capgeek's qualifying offer calculator so I guess they didn't follow the NHL rules correctly, but you're right on the value its 100% of last years salary not 105%. You're using last years numbers on RFA compensation though and chances are Quincey will fall into the 2nd round pick category this year rather than the 1st and 3rd rd Picks. Either way the odds of someone signing Quincey to an offersheet are very slim. There have only been 6 players signed to one since the salary cap came out and only 1 where the contract wasn't matched. Quincey's options are likely to be accepting the Wings qualifying offer or take them to arbitration but its almost a certainty he'll be a Wing next year.

In order to get those draft picks should someone offer sheet Quincey, we'd have to qualify him at a cost of 3.25 million, I wouldn't be surprised to see him sign that deal rather than risk arbitration. Given that we lost 2 of our top 4 defenceman, there is no chance at all that Quincey is going to be straight let go. The only way that would happen is if he took the Wings to Arbitration and was awarded a big contract. Also Ericsson's play in the playoffs was encouraging as far as growing into his contract is concerned, he was the best defenceman on the team, during this years very short run.

I think they'll be contenders for years to come but if you were to do this years playoffs over again, I'm not sure they could duplicate this incredible run.

If he regains that form we can talk about trying to acquire him but as of right now he's not even close to being worth Franzen. His numbers this season were more on par with Kindl's offensively. when he played in the last 2 years his scoring pace was not even in the ballpark of previous seasons. 2009/2010 - 1 pt per game 2010/2011 - .49 pts per game 2011/2012 - .21 pts per game

Green has put up a grand total of 31 pts in 2 seasons since he was nominated for the Norris, and has shown no ability to stay healthy either. Franzen is capable of scoring more goals in a single game than Green had all this season. His production would have to cut in half before he even becomes even an average player for his salary. With the rate our centers get tossed from the face-off circle we should have 2 players on every line able to take draws. Franzen killed penalties for Sweden at the WHC and was just fine in that role. Semin wants to kill penalties (at least his agent claims so) but wasn't used in that role any more than Franzen was this season. I will admit thought that his RH shot would be a nice asset to have on the PP Ultimately though, he has all the same (unwarranted) accusations leveled at him that Franzen does, Streaky, Lazy , Floater etc. It happens every time a teams fans develop unrealistic expectations for their players.

Considering we are almost certain to lose our 2nd best goal scorer from last season why would we trade our best for a defenceman that doesn't really fill the hole we need? Green would fill some of the offence we lost with Lidstrom retiring but defensively he's about equivalent to Quincey. As far as Franzen's and his contract goes, how many points do you figure he needs to put up a year to justify 4 million a season? The average # of points for that price range is about 32 pts a season and Franzen almost doubled that. I know he'll regress but I don't see him falling into the 32 pts a season range anytime soon. I'm not opposed to trading him but only if we already signed a replacement FA for him like you suggested with Semin and for a defenceman who provides a more all around game. (BTW some might argue that Semin suffers from the same laziness that Franzen is accused of, the only difference is he puts up fewer pts, hits less and can't take draws. He does turn the puck over less frequently than Franzen though.) We'd need another one after the trade you proposed though as you traded the only other right hander on our D-corps.

Like who? The only Wings forwards making more money than Jagr are Datsyuk, Zetterberg and Franzen all of which out scored him this year.