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Gimme a break, I just woke up a little while ago. But he was initially signed as a defensive specialist, and tied Kirk Maltby, whose only purpose on the team is his defensive ability. As far as Rick Nash getting a 5th place Selke vote...that's just sad. Rick Nash is not one of the top 120 defensive forwards in the NHL, let alone one of the top 5. Yes, he plays the PK for Columbus...but only because despite his terrible defensive play he is still one of their best options at forward because their roster is so terrible. Samuelsson would play first-unit PK for Columbus if he were a Jacket. EDIT: I also find it interesting that Nash received a 5th place vote...but Peca received no votes. Odd at the very least, given that Peca is the best defensive forward to end the season in Columbus by a WIDE margin, yet Nash was the only Jacket forward to be mentioned by Selke voters.

I suppose Vezina contender was the wrong term. One of the league's top goalies would have been beter, as he finished seventh in voting for the postseason All-Star team. Of course, even the people who vote for those sometimes make mistakes; How does Miikka Kiprusoff end up 6th for All-Star team and 5th for Vezina WITH A FIRST PLACE VOTE with the kind of season he has last year? It boggles the mind.

They can put Ovechkin and Crosby ahead of Lidstrom if they want...but if you ask 95% of people who spent any significant amount of time watching the Wings this season, Lidstrom is the best player on the team. if you're ranking based on playoffs, maybe you can move Zetterberg to the top spot...but Lidstrom still belongs ahead of Datsyuk; and all three should be ahead of Crosby. Not to mention that Osgood would have to be in the #2 spot on the team if it were playoffs-based. Even if you argue in favor of Ovechkin or Crosby because the league is more offensive-oriented...Lidstrom belongs in the top three in the league without a doubt. THN got it wrong. They probably left Osgood completely off the list despite the fact he was a Vezina contender and the best goalie in the playoffs, too, but likely included Miikka Kiprusoff and his stellar 2.69 GAA, .906 save percentage, and stats that have declined every year with Calgary; just as they did every year with San Jose. So yeah...look for Kipper to be traded within the next two seasons, everyone!

My thoughts? Pre-existing thread on subject can be found here

THN ranked Lidstrom as the third best Wing. That says all I need to know about what they know about Detroit; which is nothing. A best players ranking should rank the players, basically, in order of the overall positive contribution they make minus the overall negative contribution they make. ANYONE who ranks Lidstrom as the third best Detroit player on such a list hasn't watched the Wings play in ten years or more, regardless of other rankings. Which makes any further rankings of Detroit players suspect.

For your example, please review my comments on 'positional weakness in a season' and then consider that currently, that is not what is occuring. For example...Mikael Samuelsson is a second-line caliber forward offensively based on total points and points per game, but he's also a defensive forward who gained several Selke votes and would play on most teams' PK units. But when comparing Samuelsson to defensemen...would you say there are 60 who are better players? how about 90? 120? The group of defensemen currently playing in the league is at least as strong as the group of forwards if not stronger, and Lidstrom still stands head and shoulders above them. The league's average talent level is higher than it has been since 1967, and yet Lidstrom still dominates at his position like no other can.

So what you're saying is... 1) Anyone who picked Lidstrom for the top spot is clearly a homer. or 2) Lidstrom is a valid choice for the top spot, I simply personally don't think so. Well which is it? If it's the second one, you might want to stay away from sounding like the first one as you did in your initial post. If it's the first one...you're simply wrong. And here's why: The best player could be validly claimed as any of the top forward, goaltender, or defenseman if the positions are equally skilled in a season and there is no player who is clearly so dominant at his own position ahead of his peers that he must be considered the best. Lidstrom is the only player who is universally considered the best in those three categories; hell, he's the only one who's consistently been considered the best at his position in this THREAD. Crosby is obviously a common pick ahead of Ovechkin, and you have the Brodeur/Luongo arguments as well. So if we picked the 'best' player by how clearly he was the best at his own position, it would be Lidstrom.

The problem with your list, and these types of lists in general, is that they generally give too much credit to offense while giving too little credit to defense. A top 50 list with 35-40 forwards on it is pretty standard...but are you going to tell me that a guy who is an All-Star caliber defenseman and gets Norris votes (a top-10 defenseman) is not as good a player as a forward who, if all players were equally distributed, would not be the top forward on his team no matter which team that was? Sorry, that argument fails. While some eras, like the 1980s, have seen low relative quality at one position or another (goalies, in the case of the 80s) typically the 'elite' players are still there; a 'Top 50' list or a list of any other quantity involving multiple positions (F/D/G) should reflect this and be divided up accordingly. Breaking it down even further, you should generally see the majority of the top-line forwards (top 90 F) first-pairing defensemen (top 60 D), starting goaltenders (top 30) ranked before you see the next group of forwards, defensemen, or goalies. Obviously there may be some overlap, but you shouldn't see twenty second-line forwards ranked ahead of starting goaltenders or first-pair defensemen. But getting to my point...There are six players on the ice; so we'll do a top-twelve list. Breaking it down by position, we would have six forwards, four defensemen, and two goaltenders if we assume it breaks evenly. How many lists would fill out four defensemen in the top 12 players? Not many. Is it that defensemen just aren't as good as forwards right now? Or is it that the 80s reminded people how enthralled they are with forwards and offense. If we jumped right from 1978 to 1995, Lidstrom would have three or four Hart trophies to go with his Norrises. But we'll do it this way. In hockey, basically, you have Offense, Defense, Physical Play, and Intangibles (leadership, experience, etc.) Given that we are comparing across positions, we'll compare as NN stated and match primary focus vs primary focus. Ovechkin's offense vs Lidstrom's defense: Even. Ovechkin's defense vs Lidstrom's offense: Edge, Lidstrom. Physical play: Edge, Ovechkin. Intangibles: Edge, Lidstrom. Lidstrom wins 2 categories, Ovechkin wins 1. They tie in another. If it had gone like skill vs like skill, each player wins two categories and they're still tied. Hardly displays Ovechkin being 'clearly superior' unless you think defense is less important than offense. Most other players in this discussion would lose at least three categories to Lidstrom.

You'd better stop repeating the same argument to Doggy just because he didn't understand it the first time, NN. He'll start calling you a bandwidth-waster in every thread you post in.

*sigh* The Wings currently have 22 players signed. The Wings are currently about $400k under the cap. Of the 22 players signed, the Wings have 13 forwards, 7 defensemen, and 2 goalies. They intend to carry 13-8-2. So they intend to have at least one more defenseman than currently signed. We know that Chris Chelios will be on the roster for somewhere between $475k and $850k. Kyle Quincey will also be signed for a two year deal, likely a league minimum deal with a cap hit of $483k just like Meech. So the Wings will be adding a cap hit between $958k and $1.333m to the current figure, pushing them over the cap by between $558k and 933k. This 'overage' would be for a 24 player roster with 9 defensemen, so they would have to remove one player to reach the maximum 23-man roster limit and one defenseman to reach the desired 8 defensemen. Lilja and possibly Lebda are the only defensemen currently making enough to clear the cap space who are not top-four defensemen on the Wings. If Chelios signs for $567k or higher, Lilja is the only defenseman who can be moved to clear the cap space without an additional player being moved. And NN...Chelios was on the first PK unit last season, Lilja was on the second with Kronwall. Quincey, Stuart, and Rafalski are also very capable penalty killers. Lilja's importance to the PK diminished greatly with the acquisition of Stuart; a top-four defenseman with puck skills who is defensively quite capable. Had the Wings not retained Stuart, the Lilja moving discussion would not exist...but the Wings would also not have any cap trouble. The Wings have cap trouble because they kept Lilja as insurance in case Stuart left; not because he himself was particularly valuable with Stuart in town. Having Lilja is like Bob Essensa in the 1995 season. He's capable, nice to have around if you need him, and can do the job if he has to...but you already have a bunch of much better options in front of him. Lilja is a solid 3rd pairing defenseman, and that's all he'll ever be. Which is fine, but his salary and age plus the cap crunch and defensive logjam mean he is probably the one being shipped out of town. He is competing for a roster spot with a bunch of guys who have realistic top four potential. The only other guy competing for a spot who doesn't have realistic top-four potential is Lebda; and Lebda's much younger and cheaper, and more likely to be a top-four type guy at some point in his career. Lilja will never be a top-four level defenseman.

1) Nicklas Lidstrom 2-5) Alexander Ovechkin, Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, Sidney Crosby (In some order.) 6-50) Doesn't matter. Includes Malkin, Brodeur, Hossa, Osgood, Chara, Iginla, and others above #20.

Lilja is not dirt cheap. He's competing for a job with guys who cost less than half his salary. Sammy is dirt cheap; he's a second-line caliber forward who is paid like a third liner. So if you want to keep Lilja, you have to give up someone cheaper than Lilja who is close to his level of play AND Sammy. Not worth it.

Declining value allows teams to trade players later on more easily because the actual salary is less. Case in point: 7 year deal worth $49M from 2008-09 on. Deal 1 is even all years, Deal 2 is worth $10m in year 1, $7.5m in year 2, and declines by $500k each year after that until $5.5m in year 6, after which it drops to $3.5m for year 7. Which player do you think would be more tradable? They both have the same cap hit. Unless you are trading the player within the first two years of the deal, the player with Deal 2 has a lower actual yearly salary from years 3-7. If actual cost is a concern, and the two players are of equal ability, then he's clearly the more attractive player from a trading standpoint.

Without our #1 defenseman from the previous year.

The Ducks failed to repeat last year because of a few reasons, including the fact that they were lucky to advance past the Wings in the first place in their Cup season, they gave up Andy McDonald for Doug Weight, Scott Niedermayer sat out half the season and took a while to round into form. The Ducks were in much worse shape in terms of their roster because of mismanagement, and their GM failed to get anything of value for one major asset they did have that teams would have given something good for; Ilya Bryzgalov. The Bryzgalov trade actually caused the team to have less available cap space because of Hillier's bonuses, so it's not like Burke had to rush and drop Bryz off the roster to open some space to get Niedermayer back; if he had kept Bryz longer, maybe he doesn't have to trade Andy McDonald for Dead Weight? Worst. GM. Evar.

Kopecky was exempt from waivers during the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons, and yet he played 26 games in the NHL and was on the roster the entire season. He earned his spot.

I haven't gone overboard. I've had to deal with this guy calling my posts stupid and a waste of bandwidth in like 6 threads for the past week. I would call it justified and not overboard. Especially when 99% of the time I refrain from using profanity and I typically will refrain from posting in duplicate threads other than to note that they are duplicates if mods do not appear to have noticed them and they have been around for a while. I do not come on these boards to receive personal attacks in every thread I post in over the fact that I posted something that another poster felt was erroneous because I posted it in another thread with the same topic. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go "spam" the 86 other topics dealing with what defenseman might be traded away with my opinion that Lilja is by far the most likely answer due to his age, salary, and performance.

The thing about the first line you mentioned; Flip would be the center, not Hudler, as Flip is bigger, better defensively and much better on draws. So the playmaker would be the LW. Realistically, it shouldn't cause a significant difference as all three are talented two-way players, just pointing out that tidbit. DZF was used for the last stretch of the regular season...remember the start of Franzen's hot streak? Getting put on that line is what started it....he just never stopped scoring when Holmstrom came back. I still want to see how a second line with Cleary, Franzen, or even Kopecky lining up opposite Hossa with Hudler in the middle would do. I think a line like that would be a GREAT second line to use behind ZDH.

Correction; fourth time ever. Toronto's Frank McCool did it in 1945, and New Jersey's Martin Brodeur did it in 2003. It's still an amazing feat, and the fact that people are doubting Osgood is ridiculous. I could understand people doubting Osgood in 1997; But Osgood has been at his best technically for the last few years, is mentally one of the toughest goalies in the league, and has proven that he is capable of staying sharp without seeing a high level of shots, or if he goes long stretches inactive, but can play well if he does face a lot of shots and sees flurries as well. Osgood is one of the five best goalies in the league when you take into account overall skill, mental toughness, and clutch performance. The fact that he is a perfect fit for the Wings' style of play and he makes less than $2m are just bonuses.

If people would abide by the board rules, or the mods would do their job and merge threads with like topics (Hey, let's talk about the Wings' roster IN ANOTHER ******* THREAD!) then I wouldn't post it in every thread on the topic. But if you want to get technical, I am only posting the 'Lilja will be traded/waived' argument in threads dealing with the topic of the defensive logjam. Which furthers the point of EVERY ******* THREAD DEALS WITH THE SAME GOD DAMNED TOPIC.

The Wings currently have 22 players signed who cannot be sent down without clearing waivers. This does not include contracts for McCarty, Chelios, or Quincey. The Wings, with only these 22 contracts included, are only $400k under the cap. The Wings intend to carry 23 players, the roster limit. The NHL minimum salary is $475k. Please explain to me how the Wings will be getting out of this situation if not by clearing cap space, which CANNOT BE DONE BY REMOVING MINIMUM SALARY DEFENSEMEN such as Meech. Here; I'll detail it for you. We'll assume that Chelios, McCarty and Quincey are signed to league minimum deals since they are unsigned.This pushes the Wings to 25 players; which is 2 over the roster limit and 1.025m over the cap with 14 forwards, 9 defensemen, and 2 goalies. We'll assume that McCarty, the worst forward, is waived and sent down. This puts the Wings with 13-9-2 at about 625k over the cap. Please, oh wise one, tell me who gets sent down to Grand Rapids next that gets the Wings under the cap? Would it be Meech and his 483k cap hit? How about Chelios or Quincey with their 475k hits? Lebda with his 650k cap hit would do it, but would leave the Wings butting right up against the cap. Oh, I know; is there a defenseman who makes more than Lebda, Meech, or Quincey and is competing with them for a position? Why yes, yes there is. Andreas Lilja, and his 1.25m cap hit. Please stop wasting bandwidth by forcing me to re-explain this to you over and over.

Just to remind those of you who are spouting all the Helm-love and Kopecky-hate...Kopecky earned his spot on this team. Helm had a shot to earn himself a spot on the team in training camp; he didn't. So to sit there and argue about how Helm is so much better than Kopecky is a bit ridiculous when the sample size is so small, and the two players didn't even play in the same games so we can't be sure whether their teammates were playing at the same level either. It's like making the argument that because former Wing Stacy Roest outscored Joe Thornton and Rick Nash (who were linemates) in the Swiss League during the lockout, that an NHL team should have grabbed him up and put him on their first line because he was clearly the better player, even though you don't get an indication of many other factors at play. The reason people were so impressed with Helm was, primarily, because he was fast and had good puck skills. Beyond that, people simply didn't know what to expect from him, so anything good was impressive. Helm also played with Hudler, who is significantly better offensively than anyone Kopecky was typically put with. That will continue this season, as Kopecky (if healthy) will be playing at the start with Draper and Maltby, who might not combine for double-digits in goals this season. Slightly off-topic...Helm/Hudler/Kopecky would be an interesting line...

Quincey is a top 5-6 NHL defenseman on 25 or more teams in the NHL, as are Lilja, Meech, and Lebda. The decision of who goes may be as simple as who plays the worst, but more than likely it will be based on the criteria I have been laying out; that it will involve contract and age as well as performance. And that means Quincey and Meech are basically untradable in this aspect, if only because trading them clears no cap space as Quincey is currently unsigned and Meech makes the league minimum over the next two seasons (his cap hit is just above it due to the raising minimum next year) and the Wings must clear at least $75k above the league minimum just to make the cap. The Wings will almost certainly be trading or waiving Lilja...the other option is to trade/waive a cheaper defenseman AND a forward who makes more than a million; that does much more harm to the team than just dropping Lilja, as the forward, likely Samuelsson, is more important to the team and would be replaced by someone who is a significant downgrade, while Lebda/Meech/Quincey would at worst be a minor downgrade.

You're a bit off. Fischer was a top-three defenseman on a team that was more stacked defensively than our current lineup is. He was better in ALL respects when he was forced to quit than Kronwall is now. What people forget about Jiri Fischer? He had the hardest shot on the team, was among the fastest skaters on the team; he had better top-end speed than any other defenseman on the team when he was here, including Mathieu Dandenault and Brett Lebda, he was among the biggest hitters on the team, was one of the go-to PK defenseman, and was just starting to get looks on the power play as well; the only reason he hadn't until that point was the number of experienced defensemen the team had who had played a lot of time on the PP in their careers, regardless of actual offensive performance, which resulted in guys like Chelios and Hatcher seeing PP time before Fischer did. The Wings probably don't have Stuart right now if Fischer is still on the team. But the Wings don't NEED to make that trade, and the Wings have more cap space if Fischer is still around because he would have cost less at this point than Stuart ended up costing. And for the record, Stuart is not as good as Fischer was or would have become. Fischer also had yet to have a true 'breakthrough' season...yet he was already quite good. People liked to bash him because he was the unfortunate kid who ended up with a benching during the Calgary series; but often forgotten is that this is due to the fact that Dave Lewis didn't have the balls to bench a veteran, and that Fischer had been one of the better defensemen during the run but was the only 'benchable' defenseman because Lewis was a *****. Anyone who thinks Derian Hatcher outplayed Jiri Fischer at either end of the ice more often than not during the time they were both Red Wings? I don't expect to see many hands raised, because Hatcher was pretty awful in Detroit and Fischer played some of his best hockey during Hatcher's stay as a Wing. Certainly there are former Fischer-bashers who have reversed tone since his de facto retirement...but to say that he was basically a stronger Lilja is to do the opposite, given that he was already a much better player in all respects than Lilja has ever been or ever will be, and he had not yet reached his prime. Fischer was well on his way to being a STAR defenseman in the NHL...Lilja will never be more than a third pairing defenseman. Remember...Lilja was born 5 years after Fischer, yet they made their NHL debuts the same season. Fischer played 55 games that season; Lilja played 2. Fischer was the #3 defenseman on the Cup champions before Lilja had earned a regular NHL job. If you go based on age-point, Fischer did it 6 years earlier.

Dustin Byfuglien is my favorite Hawks player in a while...you know why? Because he plays for a division rival that looks to be respectable again...and his name, even if mispronounced, includes FUGLY. That's more gold than Michael Phelps.