kickazz

But what if the scenario I said plays out? Would you be sad?

Imagine if he becomes the starter, wins the Vezina and takes us to the Stanley cup and we end up trading Mrazek. You won't be too happy will you?

It's the veteran factor. Jimmy's been calm and collected this entire season. Seems like a different guy to be honest. His performance has always been heavily dependent on his confidence. I guess when you get sidelined as a backup it changes you.

Yeah Glendening sucks. Honestly like Ott more than him.

Howard is better than Mrazek right now. And that is a fact.

I mean he has 2 goals and our team leader has 4. The question is if anyone on the team gets a bonus for scoring under 10 goals. Lol. Denial is the first step. I guess it can last for years.

Maybe he likes the forward balance it's weight provides for his helmet?

... so you're finally on board with us about this? He's been trying to reduce their usage from what I've seen. Miller being scratched is a start

Philly was the hub of breaking streaks last night.

Slap to the Blashill's face

Welcome back Bill

Unless Babcock is his regular season coach Crosby's prime will last a while. Ovie is a freak of nature strong guy, he'll probably last a while too. But I can see McDavid overtaking them withn a couple years because he might be that good

OH WELL would you look at that. Howard in net again. Miller scratched. Trying to ice a better 4th line and playing the hot hand. So easy to say things online, Blashill decided to listen to us knowitalls. Cuz its ez pz lemon squeezy. Nevermind the fact that he's probably using his brain to come up with solutions like some of us here are.

I feel kinda sorry that you're still not over it. You do realize they're here for like the next half decade or more right? That's 5 years of stress for the blood pressure that's pretty avoidable.

As expected. Time to move on. Whose left? Fowler?

Bertuzzi is an impressive player I'm not gonna lie.

They must have heard my bitching finally. Then you would be labeled as a whiny loser like Drouin. Thank god Mantha seems to have more class than that.

It's not that we trust Howard. It's that there's people trusting Mrazek and labeling him out to be better than he has been.. we're merely pointing out that it's not the case... that in reality he isn't all that clutch at the moment, and Howard is just the steadier goalie at the moment. Nothing more, nothing less. But if people are going to talk crap about Howard, then others will definitely call Mrazek out if he's underperforming. It's just the way things go. Equal treatment bruh. It would all be nice if people gave Howard the recognition when he does well and not call him out for goals that aren't his fault and then hypocritically try to defend Mrazek when he lets a similar goal in. It's would all be nice if people treated the two goalies objectively. But they don't and so here we are. This will go on and on until Howard is traded lol.

Right, mediocre roster or not, stagnancy isn't going to help in this league.

Yeah a 2-1 loss, your boy Mrazek would have made it 4-1 though.

Bold part about Zetterberg. We won't know unless we try. But that's two years in a row now where he ended his seasons pretty badly and lost a lot of his speed some point into the season. I'd say there is a correlation to how much he's played vs his fatigue. He hit a wall in 2015 and then after a summer off he came out to start off the 2015 season leading the league in points and was around a PPG average for the first 25 games or so. And visually speaking he looked a lot faster and quicker on ice in the beginning of the 2015 season than he did at the end of the 2014/2015 season. Maybe it's not just ice time that needs reduction, maybe it's having actual games like the back-to-backs off. And it's common knowledge that fatigue has a direct correlation to body usage as far as physiology is concerned. In Zetterberg's case it could be that and a multitude of things that we don't hear about. Could be mental, or it could be due to his postoperation something termed "chonic postoperative fatigue/ chronic fatigue syndrome" that's been researched by clinicians recently. Bold part about my assumptions. I've already stated that it's a risk benefit ratio. If something seems like it could help in theory then try it, if it doesn't work, at least you tried. It never hurts to be wrong as long as you learn something out of it. There's a lot of issues I think within our control and I know for a fact has been brought up by the media or by coaches or players themselves. So I know that they're thinking about it as well. It's not like my thoughts are wild dreams and fantasies.

The tune has really changed since the summer. I remember the media and LGW.com was all over Holland when he said the exact words of "I'm not too optimistic about trading Datsyuk's contract". Now we see the opposite. Just take a look at this article and the top 6 or so comments by the people on the article http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/ken-holland--not-overly-optimistic--he-can-trade-datsyuk-s-contract-194609755.html And now we see people online talking about how trading the contract was a dumb decision because Nielsen and his contract suck Hindsight.... 20 out of 20 baby

And it's not complicated in coach interviews either. Because most of what I've said has been talked about by Zetterberg, Blashill and others in their interviews. And don't get me started on the things Babcock said with his "you just have to shoot the puck" attitude. Or "I put D and Z together to get them going" when asked about his insane line juggling. You're acting like things posters here say hasn't been alluded to by management or coaches as if we're just talking out of our asses. Some of what I've said has already been a work in progress with the exception of icing a better 4th line (they don't seem to budge on that at all). Didn't you point out yourself that AA's minutes have increased the last few games? Also we just found out they've decided to go with Howard for the upcoming game naturally because he's been good. Additionally Zetterberg's ice time was low in the first two games which leads me to believe they tried to reduce his ice time but then after the first two losses in the season they reverted to giving him more ice time upto around 18-19 minutes. Then when we hit our new skid they increased his ice time even more to 20+ minutes a night. If my prediction holds and his ice time continues to be high he will likely hit another wall by the time February comes around. Lots of small issues that can be cleaned up. A few things have been attempted, a few changes have been tried, a few things have been open for discussion, but a lot of things just revert to their old ways for whatever reason. Also, just to let you know, posters don't just sit here and come up with crap because they feel like it. Yeah maybe some people do. But a lot of us actually read and study what we see from other teams/coaches. Why do some of us think the 4th line of Glendening/Miller/Ott shouldn't be out there? Well, there was that article that came out with about Dave Tippett looking at "defense differently" and thinking of possession as the new defense. That's just an example. We read, we try to understand and learn from different systems and we make our own judgement about how things should be. And then we come here and talk about it. We learn from hockey minds themselves, no different than a student learns from a professor in a recorded lecture online. Dave Tippett is just an example. There's also coaches such as Babcock who believe "shooting the puck" gives you an advantage over the course of a game. I learned that from Babcock too and agree with it. I even use that strategy whenever I play pickup games for fun. Tippett hasn't won a cup and Babcock has only won it once. Nonetheless they stick to their belief systems as should any fan on these forums.

You're giving yourself away bro. But I know you still got my back!

Max Domi learned well from his dad. Wasn't much of a knockout but with today's standards I'll take it.