eva unit zero

Among players who played 25 games or more, Hudler was 165th in goals per game last season. That makes him a second line sniper, even though he played minimal time. Most of the guys in Hudler's same scoring range make closer to 2m than 1m. If Hudler scores the same goals per game this year as last year, he's a bargain at that salary. Holland expected him, reasonably, to at the very least stay constant, and hopefully improve given his stellar performance in the few games last season he did get real ice time. Hudler's contract was FAR from premature, or potential based.

He was called up to prove whether or not he can earn a spot. I wonder though, how the Nov. 1st clause works. Is it 'must be on the roster by Nov 1st' or is it' cannot be in the AHL after Nov 1st'...because if it's the former, Detroit can send him back to GR later in the season if necessary.

Three Wings players have zero points. Filppula, Downey, and Franzen. Flipper plays almost as much in a single game as the other two have played all season. Every other Red Wing has at least one point; even guys like Drake, Osgood, Hasek, Lilja, and Chelios. And BTW...Filppula is also a -1 to Hudler's 0 and Kopecky's +4. Plus-minus is not the be-all end-all of defensive ability, but you can't really claim a guy is playing better than another when the 'other' guy is beating him in EVERY stat, and doing it in half the ice time. The fact that Filppula doesn't get criticized for his lack of offensive performance while Hudler and Kopecky do is ridiculous.

If all members of the BoG liked the schedule idea, Bettman couldn't veto it even if he wanted to. But Bettman has always done what hi bosses, the BoG, wanted..so why would he try to prevent something that the BoG unanimously wanted? He defended the existing schedule not because of its merit, but because the board had decided to use it, and enough board members voted to keep it for the final year and THEN change it.

Filppula shouldn't be mentioned in this thread's title, because people are already more than willing to give hi mall the itme he needs to come around while slamming Hudler for not producing. And Hudler is not getting second line ice time; he's 8th in even strength ice time among forwards, while Filppula is fourth behind Zetterberg, Datsyuk, and Samuelsson. That said, we need to have more patience will ALL our young players; Kopecky, Hudler, Filppula, Lebda, Kronwall, Grigorenko, and everyone else. Just because a guy has potential, doesn't mean he'll have a major impact right away. And just because a guy hasn't performed as expected to start the season, doesn't mean he will continue underperforming for the rest of the year.

Kronwall was named to the All-Tournament team for the 2005 World Championships. The major hockey countries all sent rosters that were predominantly current or future NHL stars, including such players as Chris Phillips, Wade Redden, Sheldon Souray, Ed Jovanovski, Scott Hannan, Jordan Leopold, John-Michael Liles, Paul Martin, Ryan Suter, Lubomir Visnovsky, Andrei Markov, Tomas Kaberle, Dan Boyle, and Kimmo Timonen. I'll give you one guess as to how many guys off that list outplayed Kronwall in the tournament. Lebda was considered a longshot to ever make the NHL and he hadn't outplayed guys like Derek Meech or Bryan Helmer, and had been the #4 defenseman on the Griffins behind three other guys who were trying to make the Wings. And his last year BEFORE MAKING THE WINGS was 12 points in 80 games, good for fifth on the Griffins among defensemen behind Kronwall, Helmer, and Meech--all of whom have superior defensive games as well--as well as former Memorial Cup MVP Danny Groulx, who scored 12 in 56 games before being shipped to Manitoba. NHL journeyman stay-at-homer Mark Eaton's 6 in 29 games was a better rate, too. Lebda making the team that season was not even a conceived possibility until it happened because of his mediocre AHL performance and low perceived potential coming out of college; he was undrafted in 2001 despite scoring significantly more during their Notre Dame freshman season of 2000-01 than teammate Neil Komadoski, who was drafted in the third round by Ottawa. Komadoski now plays for the Alaska Aces of the ECHL. How one gets 'Alaska' in the 'East Coast' league is a topic for a different thread. By becoming an NHL regular, Lebda has already exceeded what his perceived potential was even as recently as 2006. Nor did Grigorenko.

Grigorenko was expected to earn a spot in training camp. Moreso than Datsyuk was when he came over. He could reasonably have demanded the same kind of clause if that was his mindset.

It will never happen. Goaltenders are the most vulnerable players on the ice to injury from contact; that is why there are all kinds of rules regarding making contact with the goalie. The league will never do something that increases the risk of injury unneccessarily.

What about Filppula? Why does he get a free pass even though he has no points to Hudler and Kopecky each having 2?

Wings 3-1. DET: Zetterberg, Hudler, and Holmstrom VAN: Naslund

Brett Lebda never once in his entire career in Grand Rapids looked like he should ever be an NHL player. Now he's in the NHL, and many of you think he's a better defenseman than a guy who has been recognized as one of the best defensemen in the world in international tournaments. Give Grigs a chance.

Savard hands down, unless PIM is a big factor and Getzlaf's PIM remain uncharacteristically high as they have been so far this season. Savard is a much more prolific scorer, and so far in their NHL careers has gained PIM at a higher rate as well.

The Avs have 11 top 6 forwards?? Based on current points per game numbers, a top six forward should be scoring 0.44 points per game. The Wings have six guys at that mark, and the Avs have 8. Based on last year, the mark was .51 PPG at the end of the season; that knocks Svatos and Cleary (both at 0.44 right now) off the list. The Avs have four forwards with at least 1 PPG, the Wings have three. It's not like the Wings have some horrible lack of scoring while the Avs have three lines of star players. If you think Forsberg could help the Wings some great amount but would be useless to the Avs, you're nuts.

Burke won't trade Bryzgalov to LA for that, though. Burke might trade Bryz for Brown...but I see Bryzgalov going to a team that won't hurt the Ducks in the short term.

Lilja would actually have a surprising amount of value to the Kings. He'd instantly be one of their two best defensive defenseman. Realistically though, it would probably have to be at the very least Filppula or Hudler plus Quincey or Meech for either Frolov or Brown.

The difference being that unlike Grigorenko, Forsberg is a left hand shot.

All Bettman did was shoot down debate. If you would stop to actually read the article... Aren't those the two issues everyone has with the current schedule? If he's already changing that, then doesn't it make sense for him to not want another season-long debate about the schedule that is being removed?

It is possible for the better team to lose a best of seven series. It is not likely and does not happen often, but it definitely happens. A good example of how being the better team guarantees nothing is St.Louis vs Vancouver 2003. Vancouver was the far superior team at forward, and given the Blues' injuries on defense, Vancouver had the superior defense corps as well. Yet St. Louis pushed Vancouver to the brink of elimination before folding due to the lack of their top players and the fact that Vancouver was so significantly better that the series shouldn't have even been a contest. In wins for the Blues, Vancouver averaged 0.67 GF and 22.3 shots per game, compared to 3.75 GF and 29 shots per game in wins for the Canucks. In the first three contests--two Blues wins and one Canuck win--the Canucks averaged 1.0 GF on 19 shots per game, compared with 3.5 GF on 31.5 shots over the final four games. By comparison, in the first three games, the Blues scored 3.33 GF on 26.3 shots, compared with 2.75 GF on 29.25 shots over the final four games. The Blues posted 4.33 GF on 24 shots in wins, and 2 GF on 31.25 shots in losses.

Cleary can reasonably ask for 1m+...but anything over 1.5m is overpayment.

The difference being Tkachuk was the team's star power forward, while Grigs is a prospect. Grigorenko also passed his physical, while Tkachuk failed his.

Kopecky has been just as good a scorer as Williams at comparable levels at the same relative points in their careers. Which means given the same circumstances, Kopecky should be able to score close to 50 points in the NHL in a few years just as Williams did. Not saying it will happen, but the fact that he has similar scoring history to Williams indicates it is far from impossible.

Fixed.

Hall of Fame referee Bruce Hood isn't good enough for you? I mean come on...his jersey number is retired!

People around here have been so jaded by 'greedy Russians' that the fact that he has a clause in his contract about returning to play in Russia if he's not in the NHL means he wants to leave. Here's some info for everybody: Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg both had clauses in their rookie deals that said they either made the team RIGHT AWAY, or they could play in their homeland. Grigorenko is in the AHL right now...if he had the same sort of clause as Dats or Z, HE'D BE IN RUSSIA RIGHT NOW. Does that mean Dats and Z were all about the benjamins? No, it means they didn't want to come over to be minor leaguers. Same can be said for Grigs. And guess what? All this venom being spewed at Grigs about his contract clause? Try aiming it at Dats and Z, and see if you feel the same way. I think people are more pissed off that Grigs isn't an instant star than they are about the chance he could go back to Russia.

The 'C' and 'A' have historically been on the right side of the jersey, for the majority of team history. EDIT: formatting