betterREDthandead

Agreed. ANY Wings jersey is OK, no matter what the name on the back. In fact, if I were going to a game in Calgary, a McCarty Wings jersey is the one I'd want most. And since your team is still in, the Isles jersey is out! No wearing of any other teams' colors while your own team is entering the most important stretch of the year. I know it's an extreme longshot, but suppose the Islanders beat the Wings in the Cup Finals, and you've been wearing your Isles jersey......bad luck.

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I don't care that the glory days are over. For me Colorado will always be a team to beat, and one that I thoroughly enjoy when they lose. No Colorado in the playoffs = GREAT.

A-freaking-MEN. If it's not one thing it's another. Oh no, the Flames are really good at home. Oh gosh, the Wings are lousy in Western Canada. Oh crap, back-to-back games. Oh horrors, too old to travel. Chuck all that s**t right out the window when the puck drops. Certain people are hunting in every corner for reasons the Wings will lose. I'd expect that from Calgary fans - when it's fellow Wings fans doing it I really have to question why.

Last I checked, both teams will have to make the flight from Detroit to Calgary for that one.

Because 20 minutes of hockey is about 40 minutes of broadcast time. That would happen quite a lot over the course of a season. The networks won't want to be forever having to choose between pre-empting their programming and leaving the hockey viewers in the dust. (And there aren't as many hockey viewers as, say, NBA viewers, especially on NBC - you think NBC would stick with each and every game to the conclusion, especially if it's so likely to just end up a lousy tie anyway?) The NBA only uses 5 minutes of OT and once, maybe twice a season needs 2OT to decide a game. That's still less time than a 20-minute hockey period would last, even counting breaks. And that's if they ever go to OT at all, which is maybe 10% of the time that the NHL does. The relative ease of scoring a basket in the NBA just about guarantees that a tie game will be easily resolved, so the networks don't worry about it. "The NBA does it, why can't the NHL?" just isn't a valid comparison.

Go back in the past two months or so, find all the threads dealing with Nashville, and tell me it's not a rivalry. If enough fans are calling it a rivalry, then it's a rivalry, and just 'cause you're part of the vocal minority insisting it's not doesn't make it true.

Who cares? The NHL is also the only pro sport of the main four to allow fighting, to play on ice, and to allow every player to carry a potentially deadly weapon and wear two more on their feet. The NHL is also the only one to use points instead of winning percentage to determine playoff seeding, they've done so forever, and nobody had a problem with that. Baseball is the only sport of the main four to allow the field of play to vary from place to place and allow those variances to affect the outcome of the game. Lots of examples like that. That's a pretty weak argument. I changed your post to apply to pre-lockout rules. It's still just as true. In context of this quote, nothing has changed really. The NHL didn't used to allow ties in the playoffs but did in the regular season. I mean, that's how you have to look at it if you really want to get down about complaining that they do it differently between the playoffs and regular season. After all, ties in the playoffs wouldn't affect much - how many series would you see go to 7 games and end up tied? So they'd just play an eighth game. Great for box office revenue. Same principle.

What, Crazy Eddie in a run-in with the law? No!

I think he's going back to the example where a shootout might in the future decide a game that pits two teams fighting for the last spot (like today's Flames-Avs game if the Avs hadn't lost last night). In that case it'd be obvious to everyone who a tie benefits, and thus that team would have no incentive to open up the game at all. In which case a shootout would be just about the most exciting possible result of the game.

Truth. I don't really dig the idea that a below-average team gets a playoff berth, but one advantage of that is that teams that miss the playoffs have absolutely NO just reason to complain about the circumstances.

I think you think it'll be a sweep. Otherwise I bet you'd just come out and say it. Am I right? whoa, take off the tinfoil hat there bud, it was a flip comment. if I were one to ban people and delete posts for espousing views that annoy me I'd have lost the mod powers about two days after I got them.

that'd be AWESOME and here's why. Going into that game everyone would know who would benefit from a tie. So the team that "wins" a tie would play s***ty boring defensive hockey for five minutes and it would be awful. The shootout would force teams to actually play hockey instead of keep-away. And the shootout itself would be INTENSE. Can you imagine the atmosphere in the arena? In a way it'd be BETTER than the playoff OT game. I am NOT advocating shootouts in the playoffs EVER, but in playoff OT, the fans get burned out after a while. Whereas, during the shootout to decide the playoff berth, everybody in the place would be screaming bloody murder on every shot. If the Wings were in that situation, I would much prefer to lose a shootout for the playoffs than lose out because one team "wins" a tie.

Good thing we got home ice then. Sheesh, can we please put a ban on crapping our pants about the Flames' home record? You all know that also means they have a terrible road record, right? They're in fact the only playoff team that has a losing record on the road. And let me repeat, loud and proud, so everyone can hear: WE HAVE HOME ICE ADVANTAGE. So if we're a bit concerned about Calgary's home record, the Flames should be absolutely terrified for the same reason.

What's better? The game ending in a tie because New Jersey played boring defensive hockey for five minutes of OT, or the Islanders getting a chance to work around that tactic thanks to the shootout? I for one call this a shootout success story. Ties, as always, suck. And you know you didn't turn the game off.

Isn't this how we really wanted it? We had to fight and claw to get this #1 seed, so theoretically we got momentum going in, unlike last year when we coasted.....right? Meanwhile the Flames are tumbling in head over heels and if it hadn't been for a narrow Nashville victory over the Avs, Calgary would hoping the golfing weather comes early to southern Alberta.

FIX! no seriously....congrats Aussie. And thanks for putting this on.....the week that I had to take care of this showed me what a lot of work this thing really is, having to continually go back and check to make sure the scores were right.....can't imagine doing it for 27.

I say we give Lilja his props. We bag on him a lot, but then again we bag on the whole team for not being fighters and look who steps up to the plate. Would be nice to have seen him be more aggressive and unleash that right a little more but who's complaining? By the way I did like how he took the time to methodically tie up Sharp so he couldn't do nuthin, then knock Sharp's helmet off (the better to land that blazing right) and then start whaling away.

I think he means revenue sharing. Though it could just as easily mean we lend them the family car and cell phone for the evening. Either way it's clear as mud. Ask the Yankees and Red Sox if there was a rivalry before 2004. Hell, ask ESPN. Regarding Nashville's ability to draft, they have 8 homegrown players on their roster, starting in 1998 when they made their first entry draft picks. (Hamhuis, Suter, Weber, Erat, Hartnell, Legwand, Radulov, Tootoo.) The Wings also have 8 from the same time period. (Liv, Kronwall, Quincey, Filppula, Datsyuk, Franzen, Hudler, Zetterberg.) And that's if you count Liv and Quincey, who right now are nothing more than emergency injury replacements. Nashville's got plenty of those lurking beneath the surface too. I don't think the Preds have drafted better than the Wings - the Wings have gotten those players with less to work with. But to call them poor drafters is misguided.

Oh, so much wrong with this whole theory. Where to begin? First off, nobody drafted past the first round makes the team? Do Shea Weber (2nd) and Jordin Tootoo (4th) ring a bell? How about Martin Erat (7th)? Quite a number of their picks have made the NHL. Just because they're no longer on Nashville's roster doesn't mean they were poor draft picks. Karlis Skrastins was a Pred selection, as was Adam Hall (and neither were first rounders), that play on other teams now. Same for Scottie Upshall. Not to mention that a lot of teams would kill to have the success rate in the first round that the Preds get. Legwand, Hamhuis, Hartnell, Suter, Radulov.....all Preds top picks that are now playing in Nashville. The Wings should be so lucky. Sure, lots of their players were acquired in trades. Where do you think Nashville got the chips to bargain with in the first place? Nashville, an awful drafter? HA! Dead wrong. We're not so lucky. Uh, people have been saying that about the Wings for YEARS. The Wings were supposed to fall apart right about oh say now because of it.

BS. Take off the red-tinted goggles. Forsberg played in 57 games this year and racked up 55 points. I'd say that not only is he in the lineup more often than not, he's still a very high-level contributor.

Was a bit disappointed he wasn't ready when I saw the Flames play in Vancouver last week. His style of play over the last decade or so hasn't exactly lent itself to rapid healing though.

If the Flames sneak into the playoffs carrying the kind of momentum they've got going on right now, I'd love to play them.

I was just coming on to say that....nobody's scored, and it's not like there have even been a lot of chances. For a team that's already blown two chances to clinch a playoff berth and has their best shot tonight, Calgary looks completely uninspired.

Of the ones decided, here's how I rank 'em from most to least interesting: 1 - Sens/Pens 2 - Preds/Sharks 3 - Canucks/Stars 4 - Ducks/Wild 5 - Thrashers/Rangers 6 - Devils/Lightning Sabres/Leafs would jump to the top of the list because of the passions that Sabres fans have about the Leafs. Sabres/Isles would be at the bottom. Wings/Flames would be just underneath Sens/Pens, but Wings/Avs, despite the history, would probably be about 5th or 6th best.