kickazz

1. "Empty seats" are bought by corporations. All the tickets are sold out. It's always a 100% sell out crowd. Illitch has nothing to worry about. 2. Columbus is one of the best teams in the league. Conclusion - You don't watch hockey anymore or understand Red Wing sales (supposedly a team you cheer for lol)

Favoritism by the coach.

So many speculations

That problem chaps, is that you're still assuming Mrazek is the guaranteed starter for this team and that Howard is for sure the backup. We actually don't know what's going on in Blashill's head. He could very well be back in the "Tandem" phase for the year with his goalies.

Lol shall we start taking bets of if and when Jeff Blashill gets fired? Everyone's favorite look may very well be gone

4-1 You called it though

Looks like the perfect player for a Vegas team if you ask me

Two pages and this thread is already a diss fest. This guy is our first round pick.

If he's still having confidence issues after 4 NHL seasons then he's got to wear his Telly-Tubby costume and sit at home and eat a bowl of ice cream.

Im not reading all that. Someone give me the Tl;dr Is it Blashill?

Because Tatar is having a worse season than Nyuist is and Tatar is on the first line while Nyquist is on the third.

Great defensively?? He's not great. He's average. Great would be someone like Marchand, Hossa, Courturier, Kesler. The best are obviously the tier above that in Bergeron, Kopitar, Toews.

I called it years ago and people gave me s***. He's never been good and he was over hyped. So much that I myself actually got convinced by otheres that he would become a 2nd line center one day. Now I feel stupid. He's a 4th liner at best imo. He'd be a good 4th liner with Glendog and Bertuzzi. He makes only like $2 million so it's fine. Could just be a bad year for him but 5 points in 28 games is really REALLY bad.

06-07 Z took 888 faceoffs and Datsyuk took 845 07-08 Z took around 1200 faceoffs and Datsyuk took around 800. You tell me who played primarily center during those years lol. There's no hard fast rule. Z played mostly Winger in his first few years.

Jimmy didn't get the win so his performance was pointless. Am I right?

Larkin is still a noob with noob tendancies

Passed away in his sleep at such a young age.. Sad http://www.freep.com/story/sports/nhl/red-wings/2016/12/08/detroit-red-wings-ken-daniels/95155720/

I will certainly agree that Larkin/AA over Ott and Sheahan. As I mentioned in previous post, at the very least, D and Z played as 3rd line centers early in their careers. (Datsyuk moreso).

Game's on in the on call room. Woohoo Glendening is better on the 2nd line than Sheahan on the 1st line. And I mean it.

Yes and no one is going to show up to the ER willingly today either so not much going on.

Tell that to my senior resident on call .

We don't really know what truly is better. We're not really experts. Maybe to them the better strategy is to ease the two into the center position rather than a "deer in headlights" type of situation. Neither Datsyuk nor Zetterberg played as top 6 centers for at least 2 - 3 years into their career. So how exactly is this situation any more or less different? They're following almost the same exact plan as they did in the 2002-2005 transition with D and Z. If anything Larkin and AA have gotten more opportunities than D and Z did because they've actually gotten top 6 minutes unlike the euro twins. The only difference is Zettterberg started killing penalties his rookie year so took a good amount of faceoffs during the PK in his initial years. In his rookie year Zetterberg took 401 faceoffs. If AA had played a full season last year his faceoffs would be projected to be around 285 faceoffs. One one hand, Z's ice time was around 15 minutes a night while AA's was 9 minutes a night. I believe mathematically speaking their total faceoff projection is the same in their rookie years (had AA actually played the full season and had he had the same amount of minutes as Z in his rookie year).

We don't even know if AA will end up as a center.. Jonathan Ericsson was drafted as a forward, look where he ended up. Anyways, ultimately AA and Larkin are going to have to steal the center positions. If Zetterberg or Nielsen are performing better on the faceoffs then they won't give away the position to Larkin or AA and risk losing 60% of the faceoffs per night which can make or break close games.

Ironically I met Ken Daniels at Gordie Howe's public viewing this summer at the Joe. Great guy.

Even though Larkin plays wing, the puck seems to be on his stick more often than the other two he plays with. With AA it's not the same, he actually does play like a winger. I'm not too worried about Larkin not playing center because he still approaches his game as a center. The only downside is he doesn't get faceoff practice. I'm surprised his faceoffs didn't get better over the summer. I heard he was working on them with Luke Glendening for a while. Maybe he'll be like Evgeny Malkin and never actually become good at faceoffs.