shoobiedoobin

I still think there was much more to the Colorado/Montreal trade than anyone involved let on. I don't think we would've gotten him, he'd made up his mind that he was going to Colorado before we shelled him. The rumor anyway was Ozzie and Fedorov. Sorry, no thanks.

Antii Niemi is much, much worse than Jimmy Howard. It's debatable but I'd also take Jimmy over Cam Ward, MA Fleury and JS Giguere. Not 2003 Giguere (which is still overrated) but the 07 Giguere who just wore oversized equipment and played "hope it hit's me" butterfly style without ever extending his arms or legs. I've seen glaciers move faster than him. The whole "can a goalie win a cup" thing is just storytelling sensationalism to me. No goalie wins one by themselves. If you're good enough to carry a team for a little awhile, you're good enough to win a championship if your team helps you out. There are plenty of goalies capable of winning championships if the team does their part. It really is a team game. I've watched a lot of hockey for a long many years and I've only seen two goalies truly carry piss poor teams to the finals-The Beezer in 96 and Hasek in 99. Neither won. Just like some teams have gone down because their goalie let in softies. It's not possible at all to win without a full team effort. And Jimmy isn't one of those guys who we groan about because he gives up softies, he's shown he can do his share. You gotta think-if the team in front of him does enough, would Jimmy piss it away? I have a hard time believing that even at my most pessimistic.

Our desire for new toys doesn't negate the fact that the loyalty we show is very appealing to players. We don't treat our players like video game characters or trading cards and that makes us look very good. We take care of our guys.

YO DOG I HEARD YOU LIKE DOG IN YO DOG, SO WE PUT DOG IN YO DOG SO NOW YOU CAN DOG WHILE YOU DOG word

Emmerton's here because his defense is very good, he doesn't make stupid mistakes and he doesn't take dumb penalties. He'll never be some offensive superstar but it's more our fault for wanting that out of a 4th line grunt. He doesn't really have an identity and he doesn't make huge offensive players or hits. And if we can't label or identify a guy, we turn on him. We need players to be easily identifiable. Every player has their rep, Emmerton's more of a blank slate and without an obvious reason to look at him, we turn into ****** bags and hate him. He's quietly got a really good set of hands and can get a shot off quickly, too. He's also a good PKer. I'm fine with him as a 4th liner. He also was rarely a minus player last season and hasn't been a minus in any game thus far. Sometimes it's just good to have a reliable vanilla player who doesn't screw up. Yup, they're always dense and you've always got the right answer that an entire hockey organization doesn't have.

He's slow and can't play defense in his own end according to people who have watched a lot of him. Take that for what it's worth. I think the grass sometimes just seems greener on the other side. Remember when Wings fans coveted Paul Martin and were ready to ship Flip or prospects for him? Most of the time if they're willing to send a player away it's for a good reason.

Yeah but he does games for a big network too. I keep thinking NBC.

I get the hate for Pierre but he doesn't deserve it. He's easy to pick on but he loves the game, doesn't favor anyone, he knows more than anyone on any forum I've ever seen and is in general a pretty good guy. His annunciation used to bug me to death but he's improved. I'd honestly add him to most broadcast teams just for the knowledge. You don't get many guys in this sport who can correctly analyze a play, notice the little things and just overall have his type of hockey smarts. I'm picky too. I really only like Ken/Mick, Thorne/Clement and Al Michaels. Ken and Mick are the best in the biz. It's not homerism either, they mesh perfectly, Ken has the best voice for hockey to me and Mick compliments him ideally with a good voice, good stories, good knowledge of the sport and he's likeable as hell. To boot they're obviously Wings fans but will always respect and acknowledge the other team's talents. Fox sports doesn't have any other local guys who do that. Thorne/Clement are purely just great voices. Their knowledge is mediocre, but good enough that I'm not annoyed. They can make a boring game good, they know exactly how to call a game. And Al Michaels, regardless of what sport, comes off as a guy who really does his homework and tries his best to do his job well. Great football guy, average hockey knowledge but he gets respect from me because you can tell he's trying to learn the players/teams and is a smart sports mind, and gets hockey. CBC is terribad. You get one team of old farts who are 15 years past their expiration date who are 2-4 sentences behind the play and have no clue who anyone is. Then you get the second team of Jim Hughson (and his shameless Vancouver homerism)and some other schmuck. NBC is basically Doc calling a good game but selling the league's agenda way too hard, Pierre offering intelligent analysis and Olcyk screwing up with his idiocy. TSN is just deathly boring and their analysts are buffoons. And those are just the guys calling the games. When I see Milbury and that other fat headed muppet start to pick apart games between periods I just go do something else. Where's Pang usually? His love for the Blues gets annoying when he brings it to nationally televised games.

MacDonald is really underrated. I'm not surprised the CGY scouts saw something in him. He's always been starter material. He'll never be great but he's yet another guy who gets wrongly doomed to backup duty because you just can't shake that rep unless you get the chance, but you won't get the chance if you've got the rep.

He sees him every day or close to it. He sees his practices, his improvement and he's seen his development since day one. He sure as hell saw his great play last season. Maybe it's possible that Holland knows something we don't. Forum logic: The GM must be stupid, it can't be us overreacting.

Cool. Lidstrom couldn't score like Orr. Orr couldn't play D like Lidstrom. I'll take that anyday. Orr as a myth has become bigger than Orr as a player.

^Checkmate.

Yeah, when they want to be. But more often than not Howard has to be superhuman. This topic will go how stuff like this usually goes. Anyone calling him average or below average has to sit here quietly seething, waiting for a bad game so they can full on sprint to their computer and mash out an I TOLD YA SO response. We turn every opinion into a competition to see who is right. No wonder we go back and forth forever.

He's been oru best defenseman, both in the obvious aspects of defense and in the little things most people don't notice. If he keeps this up a lot of people (yet again) owe Ken Holland an apology.

Jimmy could stop a million shots, look like Dominik Sawchuk McCujo and some people would not give up their stubborn opinion that he's average. It's pretty obvious to everyone but them that it's just an emotional reaction to seeing one goal they don't think he should've given up, stuff like that. It's ridiculous. You could take a game where he stops 28 of 30, looks amazing, and if we lose 2-1 he's average and if we win 3-2 he's amazing. Same game, different opinion on our goalie based on goals against the other team. That's the difference between Howard and Quick. Nothin' but the team in front of them. When you support a team you usually react emotionally and knee jerk opinions are formed.

For all the doom and gloom emo kids, every team is going to have games like this. Every single team in the league. The idea is that when you do, someone (most of the time the goalie) bails you out. That's hockey and we've got a goalie who is doing it.

I'm not speaking for the fan base. I'm just speaking for myself. 1:1 I think Jimmy's better. Not by a lot but still. The only real difference is the team in front of them. I saw those late season LA games where Quick "stole" them and while he looked good it was very much the same type of theft that occurred in the postseason, only with his offense showing up. His defense was solid as a rock in those games.

Group opinion isn't very relevant.

Bulls***. "It's not even close" is code for "Quick has his name engraved in something so we're not allowed to say Jimmy's better".

This team just makes the league look bad. Poor ownership, poor management, everything. So go ahead and toll it, make him play for you. That'll make you look appealing to nobody ever.

How is it debating? It's a question. Quick has gotten overrated in a big hurry. I don't think he's done anything Jimmy couldn't with some help from his team. Honestly both teams being equal, I'd rather have Jimmy.

How do we know they vote by watching them? Because I think it's more, a certain few people forming opinions and everyone else following. It's just not possible to watch every candidate in every game. Unless you don't do anything else in a day and you're a machine who doesn't need sleep you just can't watch every single candidate. I don't take awards all that seriously. It's a guide but sometimes more deserving guys don't win. Voters presumably watch every playoff game or close enough and still sometimes screw up the Smythe, how would they know in regards to full-on 82 game season awards?

Sometimes worse goalies win because of their team. Just like in football you can bring up the Dilfer/Marino argument, you can bring up the same thing in hockey with Niemi winning a Cup and Cujo never winning one. What, was Tom Barrasso elite but Hasek wasn't until he was 37 years old? Or is a guy always elite but we're not allowed to bring it up (lest we not have a stat page to back up our claims) until he wins? Either way it's silly and illogical. We create rules and guidelines only to have them broken, so we try to mend them with even more rules and guidelines until we have a spiderweb of contradictions. The only way to tell is to know talent when you see it and even if we did (most people do not, let's just be real) we'd have a hard time tapping into that ability when we're thinking too emotionally about the game anyway.

I'll miss the place. April games walking down the riverwalk on a nice day after a win-nothing like it.

That obviously wasn't the idea. The point was that it's illogical to try and turn a team game with 40 odd people competing for 60 minutes into simply just "goalie a vs goalie b". No goalie beats another goalie in the playoffs. He and his team beat the other team. We just want a simple way to lay judgment and an easy tool to allow us to praise one goalie as superior. Analysis takes hockey IQ and effort. We like quick and easy and safe.