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I will gladly accept Osgood playing exactly as he did in 1998.

Or for the player being hit to have attempted and failed to avoid the hit, as happened here. While it was technically a knee-on-knee hit, and yes it was a dirty player delivering it, the knee part was ACCIDENTAL.

Ruutu is a dirty player, but this was not a dirty hit. How you can claim 'He seemed to be going for the body then when Kove moved it looked like he targeted the right knee.' is beyond me, given that there was a fraction of a second between Kovalchuk moving and Ruutu hitting the boards. Another hit this brings to mind is Marchment on Modano..Marchment was a supremely dirty player, but he had a similar experience with Mike Modano where he was coming in clean and Modano sidestepped and left his knee in Marchment's path. Naturally Marchment was suspended because of his reputation....but the hit itself was not dirty.

The failure of the article is that it didn't take into account eligible players not yet in the Hall when proclaiming Leetch as a first ballot HOFer. Guys like Mike Vernon, Andy Moog, Tom Barrasso, Lorne Chabot, Bernie Nicholls, Igor Larionov, Glenn Anderson, Mark Howe, Roger Crozier, Ron Hextall, John Tonelli, Doug Gilmour, Sergei Makarov all are deserving also...

You fail, and here's why: Dominik Hasek finished outside the top five in Smythe voting. Chris Osgood finished second. Dominik Hasek had TWO defensemen finish ahead of him; Nicklas Lidstrom and Chris Chelios, both of whom were also First-Team All-Stars and 1-2 in Norris voting that season. Chris Osgood had ZERO defenseman finish ahead of him in Smythe voting. Osgood also had only one Norris contender, Lidstrom, who finished second in Norris voting and was a first-teamer. You can give all the reasons such as intimidation factor...but 'because he stood out more on his Cup team' is not one of them, as it's factually incorrect.

Selanne coming back doesn't make the Ducks the favorites. Here's why: The Ducks have added Bertuzzi, Weight, and Schneider in place of Penner, McDonald, and Dipenta. Only one of those moves is an upgrade. Bertuzzi has not performed like a top-six forward until he was placed on a line with Getzlaf and Perry. He has yet to perform like a top six POWER forward, and he has not performed any better than Penner did last season in the same role. Weight is a downgrade from McDonald; he doesn't have the speed or the scoring ability of McDonald, and McDonald is probably a better defensive player at this point as well. Not to mention McDonald had sick chemistry with Selanne. No word yet on how well Doug Weight will mesh with Teemu. Schneider is a major upgrade on Dipenta on the surface, except that Schneider is the #3 offensive defenseman on the team. So Schneider's offense has far less impact than it would were he the #1 or #2 offensive guy. Factor in that Beauchemin has not performed nearly as well this season as he did last year, and Schneider's offensive talents become a gap-filler rather than a bonus. Moreover...the Ducks since Niedermayer's return have scored 2.6 goals and given up 2.0 per game. Detroit over the entire season has scored 3.4 per game and given up 2.1. So unless you think Selanne will account for a difference of 0.7 goals per game by himself--which doesn't mean scoring .7 points per game, but creating .7 ADDITIONAL goals on top of what other players already contribute; meaning likely scoring about .5 per game and directly creating the remainder--then the Wings still have the advantage. Selanne gets them closer, but he doesn't make them the favorite.

Nabokov was 1.000...but Legace allowed 3 goals on 9 shots.

Ozzie made a lot of very good saves during the first period. Most of the goals scored against him were due to the failure of the defense to cover the guy on the backdoor. The defense stepped it up in later periods (Ozzie faced 16 of 33 shots the West allowed) but it was too late to help Oz out.

Grigorenko was more willing to play in the minors than Zetterberg or Datsyuk; both Z and D had clauses that said they could go back to their home country if they didn't make the NHL team immediately.

John Davidson is not a 'Blues' guy. He doesn't hate the Red Wings any more than Howson in Columbus. Both guys are not terribly likely to make the same trade with the Wings that they would with the Senators; but that's to be expected from a division opponent. No team wants to trade with a division rival and lose a deal; For example the Jason Williams trade was a win for all sides; Philadelphia dumped Calder's contract and ineffective play, Detroit dumped Williams' contract and ineffective play for the previous few months, and Chicago picked up a young scoring forward who has fit their team well. When you have deals that are even slightly lopsided, they are magnified intensely; think of Oates/Federko or Chelios/Eriksson. The player going to the 'losing' team was still a solid player; it's not like Murphy from Toronto for free. Yet because it's an intra-division trade the differences were magnified by direct competition and an increased number of games head-to-head. I don't see Jackman coming to Detroit because I would expect an Eastern team that is weaker on D to be willing to give up more and to have to pay less. Perhaps Carolina, Ottawa, or Phiadelphia will take a chance on Jackman.

Come on guys. I've been driving the Kopecky wagon since he was in juniors, and I think you guys are all jumping the gun here. I have been pushing to see Kopecky on the wing on the second line, but that's more because I have confidence in his abilities as well as a desire to spread the scoring more evenly than it had been. I also think it would be good for the team for him to develop as more of a banging winger on a scoring line, and therefore I would like to see that development encouraged. As far as his play thus far; he hasn't earned anything higher than third or fourth line; the only reason to give him more time is if you think he'll either be better than the guy who's there, or if he'll develop into the time in a fairly quick manner.

Teams the Wings have made a trade involving 'core' players (top 6F/4D/1G) with, in the past fifteen seasons: Buffalo (Hasek/Kozlov), Carolina/Hartford(Shanahan/Primeau/Coffey, Ward), Chicago (Williams/Calder, Chelios/Eriksson), Florida (Larionov/Golubovsky, Bertuzzi/Matthias), Los Angeles (Schneider/Avery/Kuznetsov), New Jersey (Fetisov), Phoenix/Winnipeg (Cheveldae/Drake/Essensa/Bautin), San Jose (Sheppard/Larionov), Tampa Bay (Clark/Ranford/Hodson), Toronto (Murphy), Washington (Ciccarelli/Miller). If we're going on historical trading partners, the Blues don't show up. However, neither do a lot of other teams the Wings have been rumored to be looking at for a core player; Atlanta, Columbus, and Minnesota combined have completed one roster-player trade with Detroit; which was Yuri Butsayev for Jiri Slegr in 2002. Yet all three teams are rumored to be on Kenny Holland's speed dial for a potential trade.

He couldn't do any worse than JFJ...

Not according to Wikipedia. Ratelle and Bathgate are 3rd and 4th in franchise scoring; Tkaczuk is 6th, Vickers is 8th, and Hadfield is 9th. Graves, naturally, is 10th. The only player above him with a worse PPG is defenseman Ron Greschner, who also makes a case for retirement now. But according to wikipedia none of those guys' numbers have been retired.

The only reason for Detroit to make this deal is if we are turning around and shipping Khabibulin off for a top-four defenseman who can play both ways and preferably play physical. The list of teams that need goaltending and have such a defenseman goes: Edmonton (Pitkanen) Los Angeles (Johnson) Pittsburgh (Whitney) Tampa Bay (Boyle) Boyle would be the only one I would expect to be able to get straight up for Khabibulin, because he's the oldest and most expensive. But Tampa's salary situation makes such a deal unlikely, as most of their roster is UFA at the end of the season and a Khabi/Boyle swap would reduce their available space by 3m. So, even if Detroit COULD get Khabibulin for Chelios....WHY???

With all due respect for Adam.. WTF?? This means that Jean Ratelle, Frank Boucher, Jaromir Jagr, Andy Bathgate, Walt Tkaczuk, Steve Vickers, and Vic Hadfield all are deerving of jersey retirement...as all were better players than Graves was. Some of those guys already deserved it...but Graves was never on that list. Good for Adam, terrible for the Rangers as an organization.

I agree that Kubina would be a much better addition to the team as a player. I just don'know if we can actually fit his salary under the cap the next few years. We'll gain 3m from goaltending changes, and currently have about 4m free not including the bonus cushion. However, Zetterberg will be seeing a raise of about 5-6 million per year. The only way we can fit Kubina is if Lilja is not retained, and if the cap increases enough to cover the additional million left on Kubina's salary plus raises for Cleary, Flip, Hudler, and Franzen AND wiggle room...which means a Cap of at least 54m in two seasons. Which is possible, but not guaranteed.

They hired him for the same reason they drafted Syl Apps Jr and Syl Apps III...his dad was good at what he did, so clearly he will be.

Is the only Future HOF player who played the majority of his career with Anaheim. Doug Wilson, Ray Bourque, Bobby Orr. None of those guys are associated as players for the team they ended their career with; but with the team they spent the entirety of their prime with. Niedermayer will be remembered as a Devil, not a Duck. Gets into the hall about the same time Jim Carey, Sean Burke, Olaf Kolzig, and Bill Ranford do. Which is never. Played a third line role at the end of his career. Think of Luc Robitaille in Detroit or Igor Larionov in New Jersey. Conway is totally not a HOFer anyway-regardless of whether he was actually ever a Mighty Duck. He's the D5 Ducks' version of Draper, only better on breakaways.

I would rather it be for Gill. Kubina is better, but costs more than twice as much per year and for longer. Gill is off the books after next season, which basicallty uses his cap hit to save some space for Z's deal. Gill would be an upgrade over Lilja in every important respect, and would provide good depth for our run this spring.

I win!!

The fact that Fedorov is not scoring like he used to and has had injury troubles the past few years makes him a more attractive pickup to me; his injuries have been far more common but have not been serious, and he still is the versatile defensive monster we remember him to be. He's still capable of playing a supporting role offensively while providing shut-down defense and playing any position, but he's likely much easier to acquire at this point.

Jiri Dopita was only ever 'great' in one situation; centering Jaromir Jagr on the Czech national team. He was the best player on his team in the Czech Extraliga, but one of the other top forwards on his team was NHL washout Josef Beranek...so that's not as impressive. That and Dopita was 33 when he came over...Bruunstrom is 23. Getting better, not worse.

I see it as less important than having Kovalchuk healthy for the rest of the season. If I were the coach, Kovalchuk doesn't play from now until after the ASG.

I think we could make a better team of players NOT going to the game than either of the teams in the game. In fact, let's see which guys I said deserved to go who are not going, and flesh out a team from those guys. G: Brodeur, Luongo, Leclaire D: Rafalski, Zubov, Kronwall, Redden, Spacek, Schneider F: Zetterberg, Stastny, Kane, D.Sedin, Huselius, Crosby, Heatley, Sundin, Jokinen, Whitney, Briere, Morrow