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Lidstrom and Jagr should have won those respective trophies that year. This can be established simply by Lidstrom's utter dominance in Norris voting in later years on weaker Wings teams. Typically the Hart is awarded as a 'Most Outstanding Player' trophy, so while a defenseman as dominant as Lidstrom has been compared to his peers recently not even being considered for the Hart not unusual, is would be unusual for a defenseman LESS dominant than him compared to his peers (He barely beat Lidstrom) to win the Hart, as he narrowly edged out Jagr. Pronger should not have won either trophy, and only did so that year because he is Canadian. As far as Pronger vs Chelios? The major difference in that comparison...Chelios was hated by Wings fans because he was chippy and great, but he was hated for his greatness FIRST. Pronger is, for one thing, far dirtier than Chelios was. Maybe this has to do with Pronger's elbows being higher, I'm not sure. But Wings fans hate Pronger more for his dirty play than for his skill, while Chelios was hated for his skill more than his dirty play. That's what the big difference is. It's like Sakic. Wings fans hate Sakic a certain amount because he's the face of the biggest recent serious rival. But at the same time, he's the closest thing the league has to a carbon copy of Yzerman, so Wings fans can't really hate Sakic at all. Think about players on rival teams that you hate. The most hated are always good players who play a dirty, chippy style. Chelios came into the division and was disliked for being good against the Wings before he ever did anything dirty against Detroit. Pronger, OTOH, has been a dirty s*** since day one and didn't get good for a while. The order in which player hate develops affects how players are thought of.

What worried me about this game was how rattled Conklin looked after the second goal. He was totally not together; the biggest indication I saw was how he reacted on a Dallas dump in. Dallas dumped in for a complete change. Conklin went behind the net to gather the puck, but mishandled it. The Wings defenseman who was right there picked up the puck without difficulty, so there was no danger even if Dallas forwards were coming in, but Conklin dove towards the front of the net as if to make a save, and his save attempt didn't actually block any portion of the net. After that point, as well as some other evidence later in the period that Conklin was quite rattled, I was hoping to see Osgood start the third because Conklin was clearly off his game at that point.

If I were to decide on the ten nominees based on the "won a Cup" getting you nominated, and then based on the "led team to finals" filling in the gaps, followed by "great players who were considered good captains". After all, this is the logic they seem to have used, and then I were to pick one from each decade (bolded), this would be it. Players repeating across more than one decade are underlined. 70s (70-79) Johnny Bucyk, Jean Beliveau, Henri Richard, Yvan Cournoyer, Bobby Clarke, Phil Esposito, Vic Hadfield, Dave Maloney, Dave Keon, Darryl Sittler. 80s (80-89) Denis Potvin, Wayne Gretzky, Lanny McDonald, Jim Peplinski, Bob Gainey, Bobby Clarke, Dave Poulin, Darryl Sutter, Steve Yzerman, Ray Bourque 90s (90-99) Mark Messier, Ray Bourque, Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Guy Carbonneau, Trevor Linden, Scott Stevens, Joe Sakic, Steve Yzerman, Derian Hatcher 00s (00-08) Scott Stevens, Joe Sakic, Steve Yzerman, Dave Andreychuk, Rod Brind'Amour, Scott Niedermayer, Nicklas Lidstrom, Ron Francis, Daniel Alfredsson, Jarome Iginla If we play this out using the tournament method being used in the actual contest, the next round is Clarke vs Potvin, while Yzerman basically gets a bye having won both the 90s and 00s. I would push Clarke ahead of Potvin narrowly, but the final goes easily to Yzerman. If it were to be played out where the winner were decided from all the nominees, then Yzerman still wins easily, as he was the only player who was captain for long enough and did well enough to receive a nomination in three decades, although admittedly part of this had to do with the sheer dominance of the Islanders and Oilers in the 80s (notice Yzerman was not given the win in the 80s); very few captains won the cup or made the finals, which allowed for the 'filler' captains chosen based on lesser team playoff success, but strong personal resumes and leadership performances. Darryl Sutter is another such example. Several losses by his team in the Campbell Finals to the Cup winners don't make him less of a captain; just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What you are ignoring, which SHOULDN'T be ignored, is that Avery took it upon himself to ENSURE that his comments would be caught on a national broadcast. It wasn't something that happened to be captured. It was planned.

Ok, everyone on here who has pointed out that the defense has not played up to par has admitted that Osgood (and Conklin, for that matter) have not played as well as we would have liked them to. Just because Osgood hasn't played perfectly doesn't mean that the defense hasn't been stellar. The defense, for both goaltenders, has allowed to opposition many great scoring chances and failed to collect or clear rebounds that should have been simple clears, which turned into goals or difficult saves for the goaltender to make. Osgood has made many amazing saves because of chances like that which wouldn't normally have even occurred, and all people like you have been able to do is criticize him because he has allowed many goals due to the significant level of goals that have made it into the net, almost every single one of which he did not have even a remote chance on. If the defense was playing well, Osgood would have stats that would resemble last season. Just because you don't understand that every shot isn't equal, doesn't mean that Osgood hasn't performed well much of the time with only minor lapses. Same for Conklin. Conklin actually had the better stats last night but was noticeably outplayed by McElhinney. In fact, he didn't have the better stats until the end of the game when Lidstrom scored the winner.

The last player I heard the term "howitzer" applied to in a game at Joe Louis was Steve Chiasson. That's old-school lingo right there.

Can anyone explain to me how Hudler can be viewed as too small, weak, and defensively poor to center our second line when: Smaller, weaker, less defensively capable Mike Cammalleri is the #1 center on "tougher" Calgary Flames? Just wondering.

Huh? Have you ever seen EITHER of those players play hockey? The sentence 'Same type of player.' can only accurately be applied to those two is that they finished their NHL careers playing primarily as a winger for the team they started their career as a center for, but they played all three forward positions in their career and did it over a career which spanned both conferences. The differences? Drake was always primarily a defensively elite player who laid bone-crushing hits and was capable of scoring in his best years, and was very good on faceoffs. He played all three positions at various times on Winnipeg's first line during the 1995-96 season. But he was always a supporting player offensively, whose primary role was to open space or to serve as the defensive safety valve, a role he filled quite well. Forsberg, on the other hand, was one of the more physically aggressive playmakers the league has seen in recent years, but he was never in Drake's class physically or defensively. The closest comparison to a prime Forsberg in today's NHL is Joe Thornton, a physically imposing center who is defensively aware but not elite, someone who is an elite playmaker and a decent goal-scorer. The primary differences between Thornton and Forsberg are Thornton is more durable and more physically capable, while Forsberg had a slightly higher level of peak talent, especially when it came to clutch performance. Drake was a completely different type of player.

He put the 'according to Dom' to specific that Dom himself had given that as a reason and he wasn't simply assuming it to be the reason. He wasn't saying anything about the validity of the reason.

Does anyone have an .avi of Hudler's breakaway goal the other day where he outraced two defenders and scored a beauty starting from damn near center ice? Too slow my ASS.

Hudler centering Hossa and one of Cleary or Franzen is what I asked for as the second line before the preseason started if Dats and Hank were together. It seemed like a no-brainer to me.

Ottawa is the only one where I would change it other than teams where I would change it to a logo with only minor differences.

There are two sets of combinations I want to see tried. With DZH, and without DZH. Datsyuk/Zetterberg/Holmstrom Known quantity. Franzen/Hudler/Hossa Power forward capable of playing strong defense and taking faceoffs, excellent sniper/playmaker/decent defensive forward, elite all-around forward Cleary/Filppula/Samuelsson Three solid defensive players capable of contributing offensively at even strength who have shown decent chemistry and the ability to perform as a checking line. Maltby/Draper/Kopecky Known quantity. Lidstrom/Stuart Put a physical, defensive defenseman with Lidstrom as Nick has been less than himself in that respect. Kronwall/Rafalski The top four should still be the top four; Rafalski and Kronwall is the next logical pairing. Meech/Chelios Lebda and Lilja looked like crap the last couple games, and Chelios is supposed to be back soon. Meech has been playing quite well. Lilja gets Chelios' spot until he comes back. ----- Franzen/Zetterberg/Hossa Like Franzen/Hudler/Hossa, but with an elite all-around center. Hudler/Datsyuk/Holmstrom Hudler's shot and skill fed by Datsyuk's vision and playmaking, with Homer wreaking havoc in front? 25+ teams would kill to get this on their first line and PP unit, let alone put it on the second line as a "maybe we can do this."

I think it's a combination of his defense and faceoffs. Franzen is worse than Hudler on faceoffs, but much better defensively. Hudler is ok on both, but he's no star on either. If Hudler improved his defense a bit and worked on his faceoffs, he could center the second line; especially with Cleary and Hossa as his wingers.

You know, if you move Filppula down to the third line, and have him center Franzen and Samuelsson like he did in the playoffs last year during the Colorado series, and then move Hudler up because he's the most capable playmaker left to center Hossa after you've assembled DZH (with Z at center like he was most of last year) then you know what you have? The lines I suggested going into the preseason. Funny how that works out.

I suppose I'm the only person to notice the current top-five in scoring on the Wings goes: 1. Hossa, 26GP, 15 g-14a-29 pts, +10 2. Zetterberg, 24GP, 12g-13a-25 pts, +3 3. Hudler, 26GP, 12g-12a-24 pts, +0 4. Datsyuk, 26GP, 8g-16a-24 pts, +7 5. Samuelsson 26GP, 5g-16a-21pt, +2 Anyone want to bench Hudler for Downey or McCarty? Because you now, he's clearly not contributing anything. In a week he might be the team scoring leader.

Roy has ever played on a team that wasn't a top notch team? Let's hear the comparison.

Osgood has made like four saves in the last few minutes that haven't been credited on the boxscore...wtf?

Wellwood was the second goal, scored from a near-impossible angle. Osgood could have been positioned better but he didn't have time to get set for the shot. The 1st goal was the Pyatt goal scored on a heavy snap shot in the corner on an odd-man rush because of a bad line change. Hard goal to stop. The third goal had three canucks open near the net uncovered and a rebound off the back boards bounce right to one of them with Osgood having to move completely across the crease, as well as good shot placement and timing while Osgood was attempting to stop a shot he was having to guess at.

The Wellwood goal that squeezed through the short side is the only one that was even close to soft...the other two were the fault of the defense.

Lebda? Lilja? Maltby? HELLO? WTF? Lebda and Lilja were doing jack s*** in front of the net, and Maltby should have been getting OFF THE ICE.

Totally should have been a cross check on Draper, are you BLIND ref?

Huddles for the hatty tonight, come on!!

This is where I stopped reading.

The Wings' top 12 forwards in overall ESTOI+PPTOI, as arranged by (ESTOI+PPTOI)/G, are as follows: 1: Henrik Zetterberg 2: Johan Franzen 3: Pavel Datsyuk 4: Marian Hossa 5: Mikael Samuelsson 6: Tomas Holmstrom 7: Valtteri Filppula 8: Daniel Cleary 9: Jiri Hudler 10: Kris Draper 10: Tomas Kopecky 12: Kirk Maltby This is the first method using ice time that shows Filppula outside the top six. It also displays him above Hudler, despite the fact that Hudler has vastly outproduced him offensively during the minutes used in this comparison. The fact that Flip has lost about a minute and a half from the PP compared to his average time from last season might be blamable for his offensive slump, except that he didn't really produce much on the PP last season. And even then, Filppula's time on the PP last year came as a result of injuries to players like Holmstrom, Franzen, Zetterberg, and Cleary, who tended to spend more time on the units normally. Flip is a good versatile utility forward with the potential to be a first or second line player in a couple seasons. But he needs to prove he has that finishing ability and the real playmaking ability or he won't be anything more than a shutdown center with good hands. His best use to the Wings if he can't become a reliable top-six forward is as another team's second line center because he has good hands, good faceoff skills, and good defensive instincts so they will bet that he can be and might give up some good assets for him. Hudler has already shown he's a top-six caliber sniper and is decent defensively. Certainly not Filppula's level, but better than average.