kickazz

This one got me right in the feels. I miss those guys at those specific ages.

That was just by one guy tho (Bill Berzeench), the other 4 were raved by at least 5-6 members.

These are good teaching moments for us. Pulkinnen, Kindl, Smith and Jurco.

If the healthy scratches keep up right after trashing Detroit.... KARMA FOOL.

We decimated them dude no one remembers much of that team.

Wouldn't have made the playoffs in 2014. The West was too good at the time and the East was terrible. We got pretty lucky the year we moved. Datsyuk never said he wanted to leave the team in 2013 that was fan speculation which he completely shut down on his twitter by saying he's looking forward to playing with the Wings for a few more years. All he said was that his dream was to retire in Russia (eventually). Which it looks like he is (albeit one year earlier)

Yess!!!! Finally someone is in on the joke too. I've been making "Sad!" posts for days.

He's trolling ya'll and ya'll taking the bait. shocky2002 - 1 everyone else - 0 I'm going to start keeping score of how many times he bait wins on the forums.

Oh please tell me you said that word to imitate our leader? If so I shall continue laughing my ass off.

What the Blackhawks fans are saying about Tomas Jurco on HFboards "Jurco is horrible. I want hartman hino hossa. A line that clearly proved it could produce together. " " Haven't been impressed with Jurco to this point. If the he needs 10 games to be eligible for the draft is correct I'd let him get that in. " " Yeah Jurco has been pretty bleh. He's shown some decent flashes like when he set up Kero for a partial break last night but in between that is a whole lot of nothing." "I have stated from game 2 Juro, or whatever his name is (Jurco), sucks. Period. End of story. I mean he can't play on a bad DET team, he isn't good at hockey. I would take Hino 11 out of 10 times ahead of him." "Jurco has shown zilch. Hino at least brings something to the table. " "Times running short for Jurco."

Agreed. We don't see anything behind the scenes but you can tell a lot about someone's character through even with one or two interview statements. Very unprofessional of Jurco imo to bad talk the city that way. Well with the healthy scratch him and his girlfriend probably had plenty of time to hang out in Chicago.

We were probably a more popular dynasty because we had more big name players. Hard to have that in salary cap era.

Tomas Jurco was a healthy scratch today against Minnesota. Has 0 points in 6 games with Chicago while playing with Hossa on the 3rd line. http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/article138068438.html

Lol. I can't believe I have to repeat myself for the 9 millionth time. This time I'm just going to be blunt as hell and use classical deductive reasoning to make things simple. Dickiedunn quote: " A good coach takes what his players do well and makes use of it. A bad coach has a rigid idea of what they need to do and expects them to conform, and it usually doesn't work." Yet Bowman did not "take what his players do well and make use of it", he happened to change the entire style of players such as Steve Yzerman. Scotty Bowman had a rigid idea of expecting Steve Yzerman to conform to defensive hockey. By deductive reasoning either Scotty Bowman is not a good coach, OR Dickiedunn's quote is incorrect. The problem is as soon as I started pointing this fallacy people started back tracking and saying "the problem isn't improving on weakness, the problem is he wants Larkin to be a powerforward" < --- when the hell did Blashill say that btw? I'm still trying to figure that one out. Or making excuses for Bowman because "he won". Hell no the principal is still the same. Blashill can expect AA to be defensive and be a 200 foot player as he pleases. Bowman did it, Babcock did it and Blashill is allowed to as well. Doesn't make him a bad coach. Didn't make his predecessors bad coaches either, in fact his predecessors we're considered greatest of all times. What makes Blashill bad are issues of inconsistency and not scratching players who should be scratched and issues with fixing his special teams etc (PP). Not changing players style of playing, that's done plenty of times in hockey. Well what do you know I did paragraphs anyways. O well.

As I said, say that to Yzerman and Bowman in the early 90s. You do realize this is a team sport right? Coaches can't exactly have players go out there and play free-for-all just because "WELL THAT'S HOW I GREW UP PLAYING HEHE" Coaching entails having players work as a unit and play strategically. In Blashill's case his strategy is failing and all the other stuff we both seem to agree on (inconsistency in his decision making with certain players). That's the difference. For instance look at Quenneville with Chicago. In Jurco's interview he says that Chicago's style is all about creativity and making plays first rather than dump and chase. Well what if Player X never played with creativity in juniors? What if Player X has always preferred to play "safe hockey"? Does that make Quennville a bad coach for forcing Player X to break off from his safe style of play and start being more creative? No it doesn't. Oh but Quenneville wins so he gets a free pass.. no judging Joel. My overall point is you're taking an extreme argument on Blashill. He's bad, but not terrible.

1. Show me proof that Blashill has told his players to focus "ONLY on defense" and specifically asked Larkin that he needs to be a powerforward. Exactly words please. You're acting as though he doesn't want Larkin, Mantha to score or something. It's not that black and white. 2. I'm not arguing about who won and who didn't. I'm pointing out that your statement is incorrect that " good coach takes what his players do well and makes use of it. A bad coach has a rigid idea of what they need to do and expects them to conform, and it usually doesn't work." And I'm pointing out to you that good coaches contradict your statement. Specifically Bowman. Case and point - Yzerman was never known to be defensive. He learned to play defense under Bowman. Blashill isn't a bad coach because he has a certain idea on how to approach a game that you happen to disagree with, he's not a bad coach for making changes and expecting his players to play a style of game and expecting them to have a certain ceiling. What makes him a "bad" coach is his inability to get the most out of his players and his poor PP set up and continual use of Sheahan on it. What makes him a "bad" coach is his inconsistency in his decisions, what makes him a "bad" coach is his inability to scratch the players he should be scratching (Glendening, Miller, Sheahan). There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting Mantha to be better defensively, and there's nothing wrong with expecting Larkin to gain weight for his own good. Players bulk up all the time. Mantha gained weight this summer on his own accord. On the other hand Jurco lost weight this summer to gain speed on his own accord. You don't always lose speed by gaining weight btw. There's an algorithm where you can gain a certain amount of weight just fine without losing your speed.

He's not good no. I'm ranting because he's being put out as a guy that's doing all these "terrible" things, when clearly other coaches do the same thing. It just happened that those coaches were successful so nobody ******* about it. Blashill's got a crappier team to work with and on top of that he's not nearly as experienced. For the record I'm no fan of pure defensive hockey either. I prefer a mix, we obviously had good offense along with good defense when we won those cups.

Well what Bowman and Babcock did led to 4 stanley cups. So I'll take their word on defensive hockey instead of LGW computer GMs lol. The last 7 Stanley cup winners are Boston, Chicago and LA and Pittsburg. How funny that 3 cup winning teams also happened to have Jonathan Toews, Anze Kopitar and Patrice Bergeron, all of whom the franchise defensive forwards as 1Cs Datsyuk and Zetterberg btw became better defensive centers under Babcock. That's WIDELY known. He's doing the same with Nazem Kadri right now in Toronto. And 3 out of 9 things working still led to Staney cups. If you don't tell Yzerman to play defense, you don't win the 97/98 cup, if you don't put Franzen on the wing, he doesn't score like he did in the playoffs, if you don't put Zetterberg on Center, we don't have a 1-2 punch in the playoffs against teams. Just because "only" 3 of the 9 things made a significant impact doesn't mean coaches were wrong to make changes. They change things over and over until something results in success. That's the nature of life in sports and literally everything. This was Dickie's quote. That good coaches take what players do well in and make use of it. He's factually wrong. Two GOOD coaches have made plenty of changes in their players and team and SUCCEEDED with it. Unless Dickie is sticking to his guns and implying Babcock/Bowman are bad coaches because they too made changes. Which I know wouldn't bode well for his quote. Ya'll want to ***** about Blashill over something Babcock and Bowman did and succeeded in; isn't helping your argument. But Blashill, Babcock and Bowman did what coaches league wide do. Make Adjustments. It just happens that we're losing and no longer a playoff contender so it's easy to point fingers. But when Bowman did it not a peep out of fans. And everyone knows I'm no fan of Blashill. But making generalizing statements such as the one I quoted.. I just get an itch when I see that type of stuff that's clearly untrue.

Changes made by Babcock/Bowman. 1. Fedorov switched to defense. 2. Dandenault switched between forward and defenseman. 3. Zetterberg groomed and switched from Left Wing to Center 4. Ericsson drafted as a forward switched to defense. 5. Franzen switched from Center to Winger, switched from corner winger to net front presence. 6. Abdelkader switched from bottom 6 grinder to top 3 scoring power forward. 7. Glendening groomed from Winger to Center, switched from 4th line grinder to top 6 powerforward. 8. Yzerman asked to put focus on defense even though his entire career all he did was offense and SUCKED defensively. 9. Brenden Shanahan forced by Bowman to change from a chery picking Winger to a defensively responsible PENALTY KILLER. You think Yzerman and Shanny knew how to play defense of cared for it at all? They didn't Bowman forced them. It was never part of their game. It's no different than asking a guy to play bigger and using his size. You're acting like coaches don't change a players game, I'm not sure where you've been the last 25 years because it's been happening, very famously.

By your standards Scotty Bowman was a bad coach for forcing Yzerman to start playing defense, putting Fedorov actually on defense. And Babcock is a bad coach for telling D and Z to play 200 foot game rather than light up opposition 100+ points a year in mid 2000s. Mind you Datsyuk didn't start killing penalties until the 2005 or 06 season when Babcock got him to focus on defensive side of the game. A coach can do as he pleases in his player usage. Whether it works out or not is another story.

Agree with the first part but the bolded part shouldn't be an issue and in a way is a "right" that coaches have over their players. That's a grey area to argue.

I'm also saying that it doesn't seem like he has much of a choice with our player personell going up against the type of defenders in the NHL. Jurco is being captain obvious in a way. Of COURSE Chicago can be creative. Has anyone seen their roster?! With our s***ty defensive core, plethora of small mid-tier forwards, being safe is probably all what Babs and Blash can think of.

AHL =/= NHL. Harder to play against the defenders in the NHL. Dump and chase is a defense mechanism teams are prone to in the NHL.

Which reminds me, even with Babs we had troubles in playoffs. WE NEED NOLAN PATRICK!! DRAFT LOTTERY HERE WE COME.

Hmm, I believe Detroit's offer was going to make him the highest paid coach technically, just not as much in amount or term length as Toronto. Plus it felt as though Babcock wanted to leave and couldn't turn down the higher offer and term length. But it sounded like he wanted to stay if Holland would have matched Toronto's offer, which he didn't. So I guess I would say "we didn't want to pay him the ludicrous price that Toronto did".