eva unit zero

Yeah, there's no league that has a salary cap that is popular in the US.

Huh? I would think of Phillips, Chara, and Ohlund ahead of half the guys you mentioned as top shutdown d-men.

It wasn't so much that the loss of Schneider negated the PP. It was that without Schneider's shot, Anaheim could key on Lidstrom and leave Samuelsson relatively unguarded. This meant the Ducks could pretty much shut down any offense from the point. Part of the blame for that falls to Babcock; he should have either used a more talented player than Samuelsson, or adapted the system to involve more puck movement down low rather than load up Nick's point shots and keep hammering away.

From the FA market, Florida needs to pick up a solid top-four defenseman (Perhaps one of Numminen, Hannan, Vishnevski, Hamrlik, or Sarich) and two or three top-six wingers (some potential targets might be Smyth, Kozlov, Hartnell, Guerin, Sykora, Nagy, Carter, Tkachuk, York). Auld is a perfectly capable goaltender. They may look to sign a cheaper, younger guy like Aebischer or Sanford to platoon with Auld, or they may go with Anderson or Shantz.

Keenan has always been a success as a coach. One of the best of the past few decades at the very least. It's his record as GM that has been hit (St. Louis) or miss (Vancouver) and unless Sutter is planning on handing over the reains, he's getting Keenan the coach.

Keenan is a good fit for the Flames. He has always preferred the same kind of players as Sutter, the kind of players the Flames have plenty of. Keenan is good at developing young defensemen (Pronger being the most notable), and is good at getting a team of grinders to play above their ability. I fail to see why anyone could think Keenan would be a bad fit for Calgary.

First of all, it wasn't going anywhere NEAR the net until it hit Nick's stick. It was headed towards ANOTHER ANAHEIM PLAYER who was at the bottom of the circle. The process of using your stick to push the puck to a teammate, in hockey, is called a pass. Secondly, it hit the SHAFT of Lidstrom's stick. Lidstrom didn't intentionally get his stick in the way of the actual pass, he had put his stick there to block the passing lane and was using his body to prevent Niedermayer from moving up. Niedermayer was out of options and had to try something. He saw an open teammate and tried to saucer the puck over Lidstrom's stick, but ended up hitting the shaft. This caused the puck to flutter right into the goal. Hasek, being caught off guard by the slow pace of the fluttering deflection, couldn't stop it before it crossed the goal line. It was just one of those situations where what 99 times out of 100 would be a harmless play, instead the puck carrier got lucky and it ended up in the back of the net. It could just as easily have gone off Nick out towards center ice,the bounce just went the Ducks' way. As for it being 'a horrible play by Lidstrom' I don't think so. He had completely stopped Niedermayer's progess, and cut off his passing lanes. It was an excellent play on Nick's part that due to an odd bounce ended up in a goal against.

I thought this was Eklund's source:

Then we have to add Chicago, NY Islanders, St. Louis, LA, and many other teams that have good fan following when the team is good. I would argue that Edmonton gets noticeably better ratings than Ottawa, too. I just find it amusing that suddenly a 20% drop in ratings is the end of the world, when there was a comparable drop just a few years ago and nobody cared.

You are giving too much credit to Niedermayer--Niedermayer was trying to send a saucer pass down low, not shooting. That it hit Lidstrom's stick and then fluttered past Hasek was an unbelievable fluke-personally, I felt Hasek should have been able to stop it, but it's over and done now.

I don't anticipate Schneider costing the Wings more than 4m, or 4.5 at the highest. But to say he's not worth even 4m when guys who are worse than him AT BOTH ENDS are getting paid 5, 6, 7 million is a bit of a stretch. Schneider has been a BARGAIN and if Holland ends up keeping him as it looks like he will, will CONTINUE to be a bargain. Numminen made almost as much as Schneider last season, and wasn't nearly as effective offensively. A little comparison: Numminen played 199 minutes on the PP, and posted 12 PP points. Schneider played 362 minutes, and posted 31 PP points. Numminen's rate would have only had him scoring 22 PP points in Schneider's time. So no, Numminen COULDN'T replace Schneider on the PP. Also, consider one important factor: Schneider is likely to sign with Detroit at a significant discount from what he could get on the open market. Numminen isn't. If Numminen is still good enough that considering him as a replacement for Schneider is a viable option, then he should get at the very least 3.75m on the open market. Schneider is likely to return for less than 4.5m. About 500k difference between the two. There are a handful of defensemen in the NHL, period, capable of filling Schneider's shoes when it comes to the PP...and none of them are cheaper FA options this summer. The Anaheim series highlighted just how key Schneider is to the Wings' PP--without him in the lineup, the Ducks could just key on Nick and the Wings couldn't score on the PP. Numminen doesn't bring anywhere near the same kind of threat that Schneider does. Despite the general feeling, Schneider is not nearly as huge a defensive liability as he's made out to be. He's never going to be considered one of the league's best defensive defensemen, but he can certainly be considered above average in his own end. If possible, I would like to see Holland bring back the entire D unit we had this season--Lidstrom/Markov, Schneider/Kronwall, Lebda/Chelios, and Lilja. Best group in the league, plenty of grit and snarl, good quickness, plenty of offense, and stifling defensive play. The Wings are 15-18 in the postseason with Schneider. Guess what? They're 17-22 in the postseason with Zetterberg. That must mean Zetterberg drags the team down even more in the playoffs than Schneider does! Then why even bring it up? That's like saying 'Lidstrom didn't win the Norris in 00 or 04, and Bush won the election both those years.' The only reason to bring up something in that fashion is to imply that correlation=causation.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I was sitting here thinking 'well, the goal in 2002 was nice, but hardly the best thing Nick has done.' And I just couldn't come up with any specific moment, but rather lots of occurences of amazing play.

Hudler is not Paul Kariya, but he's still much quicker than Lang.

does not exist.

Since you asked...

You do realize that blueliners with similar or less than Schneider's talent level and performance have been going for 5-6 million or more on the open market? A couple names of guys I wouldn't trade Schneider for who make that kind of money: Jovanovski, McCabe, Blake, Gonchar

Hudler was 6th on the team in goals, despite playing minimal time all season on the fourth line. Holmstrom and Zetterberg were the only players to score more goals per minute than Hudler. Hudler's first game with 14 or more minutes played was Feb 27th. From Feb 27th until the end of the regular season, Hudler played 14 or more minutes 12 times in 19 games. In those 12 games, he posted 5-4-9, +9. Adding in the seven games where he played less than 14 minutes, and he was 6-7-13, +9 in 19 games. Adjust those totals to his 76 games played, and you have 24-28-52, +36 for the full season. Certainly not a guarantee, but given his age, price, and what he was capable of doing in limited time, I'd like to see who you are suggesting as a better fit than Hudler. [/font] Made a change for ya

The one with the 90s skate logo in blue and green looks sweet. They should go with some variant of that.

From 2002 to 2003 the ratings on ABC for the Finals were down 20% also. You know what this tells me? In 2002 and 2003 it was Carolina vs Large US Market and then Anaheim vs Large US Market, and in 2006 and 2007 it was Carolina vs Small Canadian Market and then Anaheim vs Small Canadian Market. Conclusion? Given the same conditions, Anaheim will bring in 80% of Carolina's national ratings. Solution? Don't allow Anaheim back in the Cup finals.

Schneider could probably get around 5 pretty easily on the open market. There are several worse defensemen than him who make more than that. He should stay for around 3.5 to 4 though.

Fedorov also played almost exclusively on the blueline for the second half of the season. Until that point, he had more goals and points than Pavel Datsyuk.

You are correct that Lidstrom has yet to win this year's Norris. You are incorrect in saying Chelios is not the first recipient of the season-end Messier award.