DickieDunn

The worst part of the lineup is that it was supposedly built to make sure the streak was going to continue, that's why it was so important to bring back Helm, extend Glendening, lock Abdelkader up, and sign Nielsen, all for 4+ years and at more money than they're worth. Now instead of being able to go with a youth movement, the roster is clogged with average to bad vets for the next few years. These guys are not going to get better with age and they're going to drag down and sabotage anything the kids they have can potentially do.

He can tinker all he wants, no line combinations or defense pairings are going to hide the fact that the team has no top line caliber forwards or top pair caliber defensemen. Dekeyser is their best defenseman, and he's a good second pair guy. Everyone else is either mediocre second pair or third pair. Up front they have a bunch of second and third pair guys bolstered by a bunch of guys who are fourth liners or reserve players on a good team. That means every night you're going to have a bunch of players playing roles that they're not suited to play. Add that to a coach who has no idea how to implement anything resembling a system and tends to resort to acting like the previous coach when he's stuck and you get a bad team. And before anyone says it, this isn't a reaction to losing the first two games in ugly fashion. This is what I saw as soon as Holland filled out the roster with these guys. It's why I said I'd rather have seen them chuck the vets and go with a full blown youth movement. If you're not going to give yourself a good shot at the playoffs, you might as well get the kids experience and see what you ahve in them.

So glad we have the core group of Helm, Nielsen, Abdelkader, Nyquist and Glendening locked up for the next several years.

Good news is we won't have to hear about The Streak after this year

careful, if you agree with that you might be asked if you're a real person

He better keep tinkering

They look like a house team in a rec league. And WTF was Luke $2 Million Man Glendening doing on that 2 on 1, did he think Luongo was on his team or something?

I have three more Abdelkader will never score 20 goals in a season again AA will average under 14 minutes a night and still outscore Helm and Abdelkader Detroit will be 4-6 points out of the playoffs near the deadline and Holland will make a desperation trade to get them in. It will not work.

Lapointe's deal was without a cap, that matters. Holland still let him go. Abdelkader has scored 20 goals one time. That doesn't make him a 20 goal player. You can't just not sign 3 players and trade for one who makes as much as the three of them and call it good. You still need to pay two more players, and Miller and Ott make peanuts. The recent anchor deals are Nielsen (too long), Abdelakder and Helm (too much and too long) and potentially Nyquist if he doesn't pull his head out of his arse and start playing big boy hockey.

Ducks have to move Fowler to sign Lindholm. They want to move him west. Mantha or AA plus a pick should do it, but because the Wings have no cap room thanks to Holland overpaying mediocre players, they can't do that. I've never said don't pay anyone. Not even close. What I've said is that the Wings' management needs to acknowledge that this IS a rebuild and act accordingly, and that I think overpaying average players on 4+ year deals is beyond stupid. It does nothing for the team. The advantage of a long term deal is either to lock up a star player who you can build around or get a lesser player at a lower cap hit. The deals for Abdelkader, Helm, Nielsen, and Glendening do neither. Where do you get the idea that I'd be complaining about Holland not spending money if he hadn't gotten players on good deals? I've been very clear since last season ended that I'd rather see them leave cap space unused and go with more youth than sign average vets.

His contract makes it matter. When Lapointe, coming off his second 40 point season when he scored 27 goals, wanted to get paid and Boston offered him a big contract, Holland let him walk. Abdelkader had one season where he produced and Holland handed him a big contract early on in the process. There are cheaper ways to get that production, even if it means losing a couple goals. Wouldn't it be nice to have a few million in cap space to be able to go get Fowler or Trouba? But they can't, because Uncle Kenny felt he had to take care of his kids and overpay average players and now they don't ahve any cap room. But hey, at least Kenny has a built in excuse for not making a trade now, it has to be dollars in and dollars out, and the Ducks and Jets don't want to add salary. A smart GM would have had the team right at the cap before Franzen and Vitale went on LTIR, instead of at the cap after their money came off. That would have left them with some decent coin to play with. Now they have nothing.

Most decent NHL players could score 40 points playing top line minutes, even with an aging Datsyuk and Zetterberg. That's what the definition of decent is. Good NHL wingers given that much time with good line mates produce more than that. 15-20 goals in the NHL is nothing special, please stop acting like Abdelkader is some kind of high end player because of it. He's not. He's an average player who uses his size to make up for what he lacks in skill. This isn't hating on him, it's what he is. I had no problem with him playing with Datsyuk as long as he did produce 20 goals. My problem is Holland paying him like he's capable of doing that without riding shot gun for high end players. Every team who has signed a guy like that to that kind of deal has regretted it, especially when the player is approaching 30 years old. Jurco could be decent like Abdelkader is decent. When was he ever really given a chance to play on an offensive line though, other than some games with Datsyuk his first half season in Detroit where he had 15 points in 36 games, not bad for a rookie playing 13:27 a night. The next year he played less, more often on the 4th line in a role he's not suited for. Last year he played even less almost exclusively with Glendening. He has decent speed when his back isn't screwed up, has shown a good scoring tough in juniors and his second year in GR. He's not a grinder though, which is how he's been used exclusively when he's played. Hell, even when he's had a decent game and Blashcock complimented him, he was a scratch the very next game. How is he supposed to have any kind of success that way? That's like hiring doctor to be an electrician and wondering why your lights don't work.

Sheahan is a capable player, but don't tell Holland that or he'll end up with a 7 year $45 million deal. Jurco could be decent if he could stay healthy (bad backs are bad news) and was allowed to play a scoring role, but Square Peg Round Hole Trashill thinks he should be a checker. Ott, Miller, and Glendening are pluggers. Fine in the right role, but Trashill insists on overusing them and acts like they're the new Grind Line or Crash Line or something and puts them in a shut down role where they fail miserably. Given their role, none of them should be playing because none of them can handle it.

Guys like Abdelkader, McCarty, and Lapointe are/were grinders that can compliment two skilled players, doing the dirty work so the skill guys can do their thing. That doesn't make them top 6 players, any more than Ian White was a top pair defenseman the year he played with Lidstrom, or Fedorov a second line center and Kronwall "just" a second pair D in his prime years behind Yzerman and Lidstrom, respectively.

And he continued to be until the Bruins figured out he wasn't capable of sustaining that.

Johnson is fast, Pulk is not.

So Lapointe had a better track record for scoring 40+ points than Abdelkader, and that means Abdelkader has a better chance of maintaining that pace than Lapointe did? I was counting his 27 goal season and the following year for his 2 year totals, since the Abdelkader argument was a two year period.

Except scouts and GMs don't watch the stat sheet, they look at things like size, speed, acceleration, how quick they get a shot off, whether an NHL goalie would have likely stopped a lot of his goals, etc. Fans see "booming slapper" and a punch of goals and assume he's a top flight prospect.

in the unlikely event he does, yes. But he won't. His career year was a product of his linemates, not his sudden jump in ability.

Lapointe scored 44 goals and 97 points over a two year period, never came close to 20 goals or 40 points again.

That requires Holland making a trade. That's hard for him.

Abdelkader is on the 4th line because he's really not that good. He's fairly big, he skates reasonably well, and he hits and crashes the net. That doesn't make him a top 6 winger.

Except he didn't have any trade value. If a team could get him for free, great, otherwise, why spend an asset?

Anything with Helm on a scoring line is bad.