betterREDthandead

You think 24 points in 38 games is "not doing s***"? Sammy's no playmaker, but he will shine if given a linemate that can set him up *COUGH* LANG *COUGH*. Secondly, I don't even see how you figure Hussey and Langfeld are young guys. Langfeld's 29 and Hussey's 27. Not old, but far too old to be considered a prospect. Langfeld = Mark Mowers. Those guys are in their prime, and if this is their prime, then you can't expect much. I would much rather not have to use those guys in the playoffs. If you found a plain white box, unmarked except for the label HOCKEY PLAYER in black Arial font lettering, you would open it up and find Josh Langfeld inside.

Ah, that's where I disagree big time. Detroit as a sports town in general is building up a nice reputation for athletes to come, wipe the slate clean, and get a second chance. I take some pride that we have fans who will forgive and forget incidents in the past - all we ask is that a guy demonstrate a genuine work ethic and unselfishness, and we'll embrace him. Great place to shed questions about your character. Kenny Rogers and 'Sheed are prime examples. Pudge and Cheli to a lesser extent. I think Bertuzzi, if healthy, would be a terrific fit, and I have to believe that a guy like Bertuzzi would be positively thrilled to come to Hockeytown and leave Hockeypurgatory. Florida is where hockey careers go to die. And finally, I've got a good feeling about getting Bertuzzi. If Anaheim is the other front-runner, and Florida wants Perry out of them? Good lord, I'd trade five Hudlers for Corey Perry. We may or may not lose Rex in a Bertuzzi trade, but you'd have to pry Corey Perry out of Brian Burke's cold dead hands.

Do you think that 7 minutes a night will be enough for him to make a significant impact in the playoffs? Hudler seems exactly the sort of player who would disappear like a snowball in the fire come the postseason. Undersized, iffy skater. The Wings are knocked every minute on this board for not being built for the playoffs, not enough grit, etc. etc. Rex is a prime candidate to fall victim to this.

Assembled in America, not made in America. Camrys are still made with Japanese parts and Japanese material, designed by Japanese designers and engineered by Japanese engineers. And most importantly, paid for with Japanese money. And there are two Camry plants outside the US as well. Camry doesn't actually sell well in Japan, so the Japanese plant is kicking out cars primarily for export. I don't think every Camry driven in the US is assembled in the US.

Biggest threat to the Big Three, of course. It's a very Detroit thing. One thing that warmed my heart greatly happened just recently at the Joe, when a Toyota Tundra was brought out onto the ice for a promotion of some kind and roundly booed. I of course feel the same way about Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, Volkswagen, etc., but with rather less strength than Toyota, since Toyota is the biggest and the baddest. Toyota's also the only one trying to pass themselves off as American. Tying in to NASCAR, there are two races at the MIS this year.....I wonder how the Toyotas will be received.

They warmed up before the Yzerman ceremony and then did another warm-up afterwards. But the game itself still kinda sucked. It was pretty obviously played at a 90% tempo and was pretty ragged.

Somebody will offer him 6 million if the Wings don't. I don't think it's a done deal that Pavel will be gone, but I'm not as optimistic as Crymson either. Datsyuk's agent has played hardball before. I promise you that if he wants to follow the money, somebody will throw it on the table.

My unsolicitied opinion on this stuff: -Whether the league should award three points in the standings for a regulation-time victory; Yes. I want to see the 3-2-1-0 format for awarding points -A re-examination of the instigator penalty; GET RID OF IT. -Pre-game ceremonies and the need to curb how long they run; Interesting. I'm surprised they're taking a look at this. I never thought of this as an issue, but looking back, Stevie's ceremony was scheduled for one hour with the game to start at 7:30, and it started at 8:30. Some of those speeches (Devellano's especially) got a little lengthy. -"Soft penalties," better defining hooking calls without easing up on the officiating standard; I still say it should be a penalty to ever touch an opponent with any part of your stick unless your intent is clearly to play the puck and only the puck. -Discussion on No-touch icing; No thanks. I like the hustle play to nullify the icing, either by touching the puck yourself or forcing the goalie to play it. The rule change to not allow a defensive change after an icing is one of the best brainstorms they ever came up with, no need to play with the icing rule any further. -Goalie interference - NHL netminders are once again getting run; Major penalty for blatantly running the goalie when you could have stopped? -The issues of goalies overfreezing the puck to gain a stoppage in play. Perhaps no freezing the puck unless all skaters on both sides are in the offensive zone?

I'm not convinced Lapointe would be in the NHL right now if he didn't play for such a bad team. Help on the power play? No, he'd play the same role Maltby is now, only not well enough to justify the contract obligation.

Geez, you act like Schneider, Lang, and Datsyuk are some big drag on the team that don't provide anything but take up salary cap space anyway. That's a HUGE chunk of our scoring! Don't you think those contracts will be replaced with something? Lapointe is the worst +/- guy on a very bad +/- team. Just cause he fights occasionally and throws his body around, you'd be willing to drop $2.4 million? He's not a scorer. That's not a reasonable price for a player of Lapointe's caliber.

Basic economics eludes your grasp if you think signing a guy for $2 million equates to losing nothing.

That wouldn't "lend credibility" to the trade deadline. It would grind trading to a screeching halt. What fun is that? And besides, players would be FURIOUS. I'm having a great year, I'm set to become an unrestricted free agent and finally earn my payday, and now I get traded and have to become an RFA and put off the payday for another two, three years? Like you said, it would never fly. For more than a few reasons.

Normally I would defend Williams in this space, since in the past he's been producing. I don't care how the goals happen, they just do. But he sure hasn't been racking up the numbers lately. Blatantly missing an empty net doesn't really help his cause any

I would love for people to actually have ideas. If someone says "I see so-and-so is in a contract year and playing for a crappy team, the Wings ought to make a run at him,", then GREAT. Then we can talk about how that guy would fit in, what it would take to get him, whether or not it's a workable idea, or point out why the original idea is wrong. All around, people learn something and it's a good discussion. Hell, even the space cadet idea of trading Lang and a prospect for Jonathan Toews, though completely out of left field, was something and it gives people a reason to discuss. When people say "we need more grit, get it done Kenny!" that leads to nothing except people going "yah we do!!!11" and another round of Kenny-bashing. And I'm not targeting the thread-starter here, there are so many people guilty of it it's not even funny.

Well, Michigan may have extended their season just a bit by beating Indiana. That alone won't be enough though. Four games left: at Illinois, at Minnesota, vs. MSU, vs. OSU. The first three are probably must-wins. 8-8 in the Big Ten is probably worth an NIT bid. 9-7 might do the trick, but even so they would have to at least not flame out in the first round of the Big Ten tournament. It's gonna be dicey. UVA update: last weekend sucked, getting blown out by Virginia Tech. I think the team just sputtered out after too many close emotional wins and a lot of games tightly packed together. VT is NOT the game I'd have chosen for that to happen though. Fortunately got it back together for a win over Florida State - always a pleasure beating Florida State - and now are tied in first again at 9-3. UNC beat Boston College last night to also go to 9-3, and VT probably will be there by the end of today. Very doable schedule left for the 'Hoos: at Miami, vs. Georgia Tech, vs. Virginia Tech, at Wake Forest. All are winnable and I think the absolute worst-case scenario should see UVA at 11-5, 20-9.

FWIW, Z is also the #1 ranked player in Yahoo fantasy hockey for the past month and #5 overall. Good thing he's on MY team :banana: :banana:

You must have missed the skate to the face he took a week or two ago. It's there to protect the stitches.

I don't think Holland should be out actively shopping anyone, but if maybe an Eastern Conference team like Atlanta or Carolina comes calling interested in a specific player, Holland would be nuts not to listen. It's not likely though.

No. Renovations to the press box and probably some new luxury boxes, which the Big House has none of right now. The official capacity will expand to over 108,000, though I'm not sure how they'll claim that when they also plan to widen the seats and aisles. The outside will get a face lift, with some fakey-looking old-style architecture bits that are intended to make it look all classic and stuff. Me, I don't see the point, other than to rake in more cash from luxury suites. Personally, I wish they'd just go the whole hog, use the already-installed foundations, and expand out to its intended full capacity of something like 160,000. Then build whatever around the outside, and add some echo walls over top or something.

I'm really glad we can put that talk to rest. I was worried myself. Now we'll have Homer locked up til he's 37, a perfect time to re-evaluate. for Kenny.

Because the players' job is to try and win the Cup. They ought to be expected to give it their all for it and at least believe it can happen. We're just along for the ride. I don't think "Cup or bust" is realistic or even a good idea. Mortgage the future for a slightly improved shot at the Cup this year? Three to five years down the road, how do you expect to maintain that level of excellence if you keep taking moon shots?

Has everyone forgotten what this team looked like going into Traverse City this past summer? For those who have, which appears to be most, I'll sum it up. The Red Wings looked a lot like this: ??? We had absolutely NO IDEA we'd be in this position right now, fighting for a spot at the top of the conference, possibly the league. There wasn't a person on this board, in the organization, or in the media, who expected the Wings to be a serious Cup contender at this point in the season. It wasn't a rebuilding year, more of a re-evaluating year. Take a step back, see what these players were capable of and go from there. Remember all the saying we'd just be happy if we made the playoffs and that would be nice because of all the turnover and let's not get our expectations too high this year? So much for that, I guess. That's why Holland didn't bother going after these guys in the offseason. Why mess with something that you already don't have a clue how it'll turn out, and tie up future-wasting money in the process? The answer to Lou's question, Did you not expect this?, is a huge NO!, of course not, not a single one of us expected the Wings to be where they are now. Hindsight is always 20/20.

I really don't think you can judge how a city will support an NHL team by how they support a junior team. Juniors are several steps down from the bigs. In a town like Kelowna or Medicine Hat, the junior team is the biggest thing in town, so it has lots of local support. In a huge metropolis like Seattle, there's so much else going on, why pay attention to the tiny little WHL team? An AHL team might be a better gauge of interest, but there's none in Seattle.

It's not a rivalry without games of silly one-upsmanship