DickieDunn

Doesn't help Miami.

He's so d the same thing about a lit of prospects. 95% of what coaches and GMs say is pretty meanngless

Atlanta was also a horribly run team. Bad teams aren't usually well supported.

He has no real chance barring injury, especially if Alfredsson is back. Zetterberg, Franzen, Nyquist, Tatar, and Alfredsson have 5 of the scoring line wing spots locked up. Jurco should get the other, but Abdelkader probably will because they need to save a lineup spot for Danny Boy.

Jurco uses his size. From what I've seen Mantha is more like Franzen.

And Sean Avery

Not if Jurco is. Zetterberg-Datsyuk-Jurco Franzen-Weiss-Nyquist Leaving Miller-Helm-Abdelkader for the 4th

I'd like to see Tatar-Sheahan-Alfredsson on the 3rd line. Keeps pressure off the younger kids, less wear and tear on the old man, and it has a 2 Kids and a Goat feel to it.

It's not about putting your 3 best players on the first line, next 3 on the second line, etc. It's about balance, chemistry, and making sure that everyone has a job that they can do effectively. Datsyuk and/or Babcock likes having a bigger guy on Datsyuk's wing. Franzen, Ceary, Jurco, and Abdelkader qualify there. Franzen doesn't use his size a ton, Abdelkader has stone hands, and Cleary can't skate anymore. That leaves Jurco as the best option. Cleary's contract pretty much guarantees that he will play in at least 10 games. At that point, they will have a cap hit of over $1.5 mil for the rest of the year if they bury him in GR, and if he retires instead he won't get the money. The only way they get out of the cap hit is if he gets hurt and sits on IR the rest of the season after getting his gift. That means someone is going to get waived who should probably be on the team over Cleary.

I'd buy that

The only problem is that they'd skate single file to hide their numbers, so they'd have horrible spacing.

If by so.ething else you mean one of the worst teams in league history, then yes they are.

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Cleary used to be a very good role player. Now his knees are shot and he can't skate. Unless he found some magic pills that healed them, he shouldn't be anywhere near an NHL ice surface. If they really wanted him back he should have gotten a tryout deal. Now I'd he doesn't make it the Wings are stuck with 2.5 mil in cap hit because you know he'll get his 10 games in.

It is absolutely a problem to keep a player who is not NHL caliber on the roster. Unless he gets a lot better, Dan Cleary is not NHL caliber.

Comparing stats directly is pointless because they played in different eras, so let's look at how they did against their peers, in terms of top 10 finishes in the league in goals, assists, points, All star game appearances, and then awards. Player -Goals-Assists-points-ASG-Awards Yzerman-6-5-6-9 Lindsay, Smythe, Selke, Masterson Fedorov-1-1-2-6 Selke (2), Hart, Lindsay Datsyuk-0-5-3-3 Byng (4) Selke (3) Zetterberg 1-2-2-0 Smythe Yzerman is the best center to ever wear the Winged Wheel, and if Howe hadn't been a Wing he'd be the best forward ever. Fedorov didn't have a ton of top 10 finishes, but he was the Wings' #2 center for a lot of his time here when Yzerman was healthy, and his Hart season showed what he could do when given the ice time. He was also one of, if not the best, defensive forwards in the game. He gets a lot of crap for how he left and his hold out. Datsyuk is a better passer and defender than Fedorov, but he's never been a big goal guy. Zetterberg has changed his game from more of a scorer to a set up guy.

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Because Buttman would have considered it a bigger failure to move a team from Winnipeg to Glendale and then back to Winnipeg than start an expansion team in Atlanta and move them to Winnipeg.

Atlanta was moved as quick as it was because Bettman wanted to stop the "move the Coyotes back to Winnipeg" talk. If Atlanta had a competent ownership group and front office and hadn't been a joke for most of their existence I think they would have been relatively successful. Instead, they got moved as soon as it was possible while the league has done everything possible to keep the failed experiment in Glendale.

Holland hasn't stepped down for two simple reasons. He thinks he can still do the job and he's not ready to be the next Jimmy D.

Every game will be sold out and the arena will be empty. The casinos will buy the tickets and give them to guests who won't use them.

Read the Holland re-signs thread, there's some question there. At their age and with their injury histories, I don't see those kinds of numbers again.

Taking a team like TB or Dallas and improving it is a lot easier than what Holland is trying to do. I'm not sure how people trying to compare the three of them can't see that. Let me know when either of them guide a team to the Cup. Holland is juggling a time bomb right now, eventually it's going to blow up and the wings are going to crash, but so far he's done a hell of a job keeping the team from falling off into the league basement while overseeing a team that had the core age out, half the payroll cut, then start seeing the new core aging out, and he still has several good to great prospects coming up. The one concern I have is a lack of top line center potential, unless Larkin turns into one soon.

Quincey likely would have been signed well before now

Compare how Fedorov and Yzerman compared to their contemporaries to how Datsyuk and Zetterberg compare with theirs. Yzerman and Fedorov were 2 of the best ever.