shoobiedoobin

A bitchin team and probably the biggest cake walk to a championship ever. Giguere I always thought was blown insanely out of proportion. At least in 2004 he could move his arms and legs. In 07 he'd become a shell, just skating past his crease, butterflying and relying on his stacked defense. If Giguere, Niemi, Ward, Fleury or Khabibulin can win, Howard definitely can. We just judge off of what we immediately feel when we think of a player, mostly rep, and like anything in life we wait until it's safe to change our minds. We will say Jimmy can't win one, until he does, and then he'll be viewed as a winner. People last offseason said the same thing about Jon Quick and a lot of other goalies until they won.

Attitude is so overblown. Antii Niemi won a cup for crying out loud, and not only is he mediocre but he can get junior hockey-style shaky and lose his confidence. Even in that playoff run he looked like ass a lot of the time. JS Giguere won a championship and his attitude is as plain jane vanilla as it gets. And for argument's sake, there's nothing wrong with Howard's demeanor. He'll defend himself far more than most goalies will, he sticks up for teammates, he's actually openly shown more swagger and bravado in his crease than most goalies in this league. If anything I'd say hiw he carries himself is one of his positives.

STL to me is one of those teams that gets by because they're intense, all the time and play hard. Often too hard and turn into total goons but regardless the result is the same in their opponents-teams just say screw it and look to the next game. It's why teams like that I think do well in the reg season and lose in the playoffs-because in the playoffs, not everyone will say screw it and take a rest. They'll play you hard and beyond your physicality, especially in the NHL today, you need skill and while they're good, they don't have enough. If we play them hard, we can not only win but embarrass them. That's if we want to play hard. The upside is we'll hit the ground running whereas a more slack team could lull us to sleep and minus 34 games, slumps are slightly magnified and can bite us later.

^Personally I think we need a lot better than Edler. Maybe my standards are too high but we need more.

Ah, I thought you meant the playoffs. Sometimes I forget about this whole reading thing.

LOL yeah I guess I did didn't I? Heh, but really he's a good guy. He's excitable and easy to pick on but he knows the game very, very well.

It's this type of abused wife mindset that allows his poisonous attitude and play style to keep infecting the team. His goal scoring is massively overrated and his abilty to "win games on his own" not only was a little overblown, but those days are gone and any possibility of a return is out of the question as long as he's floating. Just like the beaten wife can find someone better, so can we. I don't often whip out the cap comparables, it's usually silly and not indicative of much but seriously look at this list and tell me all things considered you'd take Mule. http://capgeek.com/comparables/?player=292 He's the only guy on the team who has a cap compable list that makes me sad.

No, it doesn't seem nearly that unlikely. I think he's a good candidate and it would help us but we won't buy him out because we don't do that to our players unless they really ask for it. It's not our style to pull a stunt like that and maintaining a good relationship is what's made us an appealing team to join. But really, his 3.9 mil could help us and I definitely wouldn't be surprised if we attempted to rid ourselves of him if he plays as lazy as he has the last couple years, and we know we need that money for something else.

^I'll say this until I'm blue in the face-Quick's playoff performance has been vastly overrated. He had a very Brodeur-like run, in that his defense swept up rebounds off of great saves but all we remember is the save. He hardly faced multiple shots, and didn't face nearly that many tough chances. He did, but with the way he's been talked up you'd think he just put on a Hasek show. Personally my vote for MVP would've went to Kopitar. He was absolutely everywhere. Defense, scoring, setting up, leading, physicality, etc. I won't even get into the fact I think they shouldn't have gotten past PHO anyway... Reminds me of when everyone thought Datsyuk was a playoff choker because we didn't get exactly what we wanted, instantly, and blew the problem way out of proportion. I remember Kings fans being impatient with Quick. Hell, a ton of goalies go through learning periods in the postseason before doing anything. And Howard wasn't even that bad.This thread's become kinda funny though, ranging from no, to yes, to Jimmy is untradeable, to Jimmy wouldn't fetch anything (LOL!). I dunno where we get some of this stuff from. If you make a judgment on Mrazek based on comparing stats to Howard, just stop, that indicates absolutely nothing. May as well just type IDK because it's the same thing, just quicker.

Sammy, Mule and Quincey had better earn their money. I'm not bashing them (I think we're too hard on Sammy and Quincey as is) but if they don't earn their money, that's a very valuable 10.5 mil or so we could put towards other players(Perry@roughly 6.6, Edler at roughly 5 or someone around that value in a trade) Insert one of our young kids, Tatar, someone like that.

On paper yeah, he's been talked up like a lot of prospects before. What separates him though is when you watch him, you see an absolute beast. It can be tough to tell the difference between someone who looks great because his teams are great, and someone who is just truly great. Mrazek if I had to bet hasn't rode the talent of his teams from all I've seen. I've watched him at the juniors, in the wjc, the AHL, and man does he ever look awesome. He looks more like one of those goalies who is pure skill and will need something to stop him from dominating, rather than the guys who are so-so and need something to help them dominate. And I'm as critical as they come. If I can judge one thing it's goalies and Mrazek makes me giddy.

That's partially the point of the question. By then, Jimmy's value may be too low to fetch the same elite player we would've gotten previously. I think this attitude is smart but it can also bite you in the ass. We can wait for Mrazek to become a sure thing and miss out because in this league you have to anticipate and sometimes it doesn't pan out. I think the GM job of a hockey team is tougher than we realize.

Personally what I saw was a guy ready to develop at the NHL level. I will say that the very first time he came up, before his last (and longer) stint, he looked so patient, so skilled and so mature. When he came up most recently, he looked a tiny bit more lost. Same player, and my opinion didn't drastically change, but he looked slightly more like a rookie. It happens a lot and happened to varying degrees with Jimmy and E and other players I've seen over time. I think when you come up initially you play like you have nothing to lose, but when your up again later, longer, you try to do too much to earn your spot. Nyquist looked like he was holding the puck a beat too long, trying to dangle around guys and was just playing the game too much in his own head. He also got taken off the puck very easily. But that's nothing that will worry me, I think in time he'll be just fine.

That's not bandwagoning, that's just overreacting and being too emotional. Internet forums seem to attract chicken littles I've noticed.

"Any team with that much success is sure to have bandwagon fans." "but surely a lot of them are only fans of their success" Typical amateur writer fluff. Lots of "well I don't know at all, but I assume you'd think this should be true..." type of garbage. I think he was right about Chicago, they went from barely selling tickets to selling out arenas and jacking up season ticket prices to highest in the league IIRC. It happened because the team began to win and it became the trendy thing to do to go to Hawks games and drink your ass off. But as is the case with writers like this, even if he ends up right it was by accident.

We wanted Nyquist up right away and I think we're just a little miffed that we don't get to play with our new toy right away. The season is short but it's not 25 games, it's about 50 or so, that's still a lot. I know personally after the first 32 games of a regular season, I'm never sitting there thinking "man the playoffs are almost here". And these are just the starting rosters. If Nyquist doesn't make it up I'd be surprised. It's better to keep Gus ripping up the AHL for now while Sammy, a vet who knows how to keep up in this league, plays. We could use his defensive responsibility and right handed shot. It's just smarter. Less fun, but smarter. And in time, Nyquist will be up.

I think in previous years we could get by with second tier additions because of our roster. Now we need to go all out to get Getzlaf or Perry and some sort of defense option. I wouldn't throw Filppula out there, he's so hugely underrated by even us. He's such a complete player with great work ethic, I wouldn't give that up. I'd pray for some sort of great statistical season from Franzen so we can send him somewhere else in a fair deal. Someone out there will put up with his laziness, I just hope it won't be us for another few years.

I don't think Burke has that extensive an understanding of hockey. He played a handful of games and none were in the NHL, before becoming a law studen at Harvard. It seems more like his knowledge of politics, schmoozing and everything else in general props up his mediocre understanding of hockey. You listen to him speak about team building and he sounds like the educated guy at work who only watches 20 games a year but thinks he knows everything. I think you find this a lot in sports, guys who are brilliant in regards to everything surrounding the sport but don't have a gut for the actual game. I don't think Brian Burke fully understands hockey like some. To me it's a crime a guy like Burke not only remains employed because of his overrated successes and self promotion-style attitude, and a great hockey mind like Pierre MacGuire can't get a GM job. I think in the end the absolute best managers are the ones who get the details and the game, too.

I agree about Connor. He and Helm were fap worthy. Every now and again a guy like Connor, a jobber on paper, comes along and just has a play style where you notice him all the time. Good things happened with him out there. I will hardly ever question our management and coaches but not only dropping Connor to GR but letting him go to another team altogether was a mistake.

Burke made stupid moves. Giving up way too much for Kesler, sending away Versteeg for a handfull of magic beans and the Paradis/Trlusty trade was a joke. Rutherford fleeced Burke, like c'mon. Not to mention the Exelby/Kubina deal was laughable and the Tyler Biggs fiasco had to have Leafs fans pulling out their hair. You make something like 40 deals in half a decade and it starts to lool like you're shuffling deck chairs to look like you're doing something. Likely to disguise the fact you can't draft or build a team and never could. He built his rep on the Sedin deal just like another overrated GM built his rep on handing Patrick Roy a pen when he went to Colorado. He just seems to be a schmoozer behind the scenes. Make friends, get them on your side, and you'll have hockey people talking you up in spite of your poor management skills. After every stupid move, other schmoozer types like Dreger and the like always compliment him and it always comes off so buddy-buddy.

If Flip regresses it'll be for the same reason he didn't score as much before-his obsession with playing defense. And that's not even a bad thing if he has wingers who can play deeper. He scored more this season because Hank took C, and played more responsible D (as a C should in our type of system) allowing Flip to take more chances offensively. Tell flip to play C and he's going to have a tough time scoring when he's in the neutral zone at the first sign of trouble. Personally, I don't care who scores as long as we win.

So if we switch the lines, they all get younger? They're all 5 years older, regardless lol. We're viewing the whole depth thing as a one way street, when it's really not. You can try too hard for depth and all lines can suffer, and I think since 2008 that's partly what's happened. I think with Flip, Mule and whoever, we can afford to "stack" the top line. Teams around the league do it and fare pretty well. Some use depth. It depends on your roster. I think we can afford to put Hank and Pav together again, especially if we find a good forward for Flip and Mule, by either trade or someone on the roster playing well with them. It's about chemistry most of the time anyway. And Mule's effort level, too. Flip has a great work ethic, fingers crossed it rubs off on Franzen.

Burke is and always has been overrated. You could just see this day coming the moment he signed in Toronto, and even moreso when he started making his trademark bonehead moves. Not to mention he's always so bitter and angry over everything, and is a total ******, so firing him can't be that hard a task for whoever has to do it lol. The guy practically asks for termination.

You sound just like the people on those tweets. I've lived in both countries, I'm a dual citizen, and I love both. Each has it's advantages and disavantages. And it's funny whenever a Detroit fan discusses USA and Canada considering Detroit is in the US but it's so damn close it feels Canadian sometimes. Hockey isn't Canada's game, it belongs to everyone. If you lay out some ice, skate on it and play hockey, it's your game.

Funny how the guy who signed the contract that more or less sent the s*** into the fan now wants to avoid the league. I can't even wrap my brain around that. I figured Pav would come back. I couldn't picture him staying put, he's not like that. Not that guys like Kovy or Ovie are evil trators but that just ain't Pavel's style to ditch on his deal and his team.