betterREDthandead

na na na na na na na na hey hey-eeyyyyyyyyy GOODBYE!!!!!!!!!

I think you missed Datsyuk on the 5 on 3. His PKing was stellar. And Zetterberg didn't need to put the puck in the net. He made the play on Cleary's GWG. I'm chalking this up to the Ducks having the defense and the personnel perfectly suited to shutting down a top line like ours, but not the depth to handle our checkers. Marchant, Niedermayer, Pronger, these guys know what they're doing. Chicago doesn't have that. Z and Datsyuk will be back with a vengeance next series.

How brutal, exactly?

Man, I don't even get involved with the complaining about the refereeing cause usually I think it's overblown, but holy s*** man, that was rough. When the Versus announcers are openly wondering why Pronger hasn't been called for anything yet, you know it's bad. Two goals that shouldn't have been. Two. Unbelievable.

Biased for the Wings on a Red Wings site? Really, no ******* s***?

Ahhh...you might have missed Franzen's little delayed drop on Getzlaf's slash. He didn't jake it and pretend he was hurt...but damn if that wasn't a little bit of Broadway stuff.

f***in' A right. Anyone who still thinks Datsyuk's a choker because he's not scoring goals is hereby sentenced to watch that penalty-kill on continuous loop for 24 hours straight. That was f***in' beautiful.

Oh, and gas costs a buck extra over what it costs everywhere else, and everything in California is taxed twice, and the traffic is hellacious.

The desert's terrible. It's dry and too damn hot. Fires burn down everyone's house every year and what doesn't burn drops in an earthquake.

If you can't tell the difference between the two it's not even worth the time and electrons explaining to you.

This seems like as good a time as any to remind everyone what it says in the forum rules: So yes, anyone harassing non-troll members who root for the other guys (which hail2ducks has been, more or less) runs the risk of suspension, and that goes whether it's PMs or on the board itself. We had a big problem with that a couple years ago, people instantly assuming a non-Wings fan was a troll and giving them a hard time when really those were the people who were being bigger dicks. This clause stamped that out. Let's not have any of it.

I'm frankly shocked to realize our last Game 7 was '02 against the Avs and before that, '96 against the Blues. That's pretty unbelievable.

It's my fault. Every time I turned on the game, the Tigers had a lead and then blew it as I watched. That's OK - any game in which Jimmy Leyland explodes at an ump is a plus in my book. One of baseball's greatest treats is watching a crotchety gray-haired old manager scream at the top of his lungs at a 270-pound umpire who is screaming back. Textbook ejection tantrum. Loved it, not least because Leyland sticks up for his players. Only thing it was missing was the old Earl Weaver dust-kicking.

lollerskates buttman ha so funy What the hell does the marketing of Sidney Crosby have to do with the Pens in the ECF? The league markets Ovechkin just as hard and he didn't make it. The Pens are there because they won eight playoff games. Period. Not because of Gary Bettman.

That's what's happening here in New England only in reverse.

Someone already said it but it bears repeating: if someone does something that bad, they're not out on the ice anyway. And if it's like Clod, where they stay on the ice anyway, there are plenty of things you can say in the handshake line, out of the way of the cameras, to convey your feelings. In any case I want our players to take the high road at all times.

What stops a player from shooting it in the bench? Potential unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and/or punch in the face for shooting at the other team, and possibility of Icy Hot in the jockstrap or your suit being replaced with a housedress if you shoot it at your own. Joking aside, there's still a fair amount of self-policing by the players and no player would want to set a precedent of purposely putting the puck in the bench and risking somebody getting hurt, because you're fairly defenseless there with no room to move and the next target could be you, purposely or not. Sure, they could try and flip it harmlessly high but then they risk putting it over the glass, right? There's your deterrent. Then just don't flip it up in the air. Keep it on the ice. If it's too hard to clear the zone that way, then that's probably good, since I think a team that's able to keep the pressure on in the offensive zone should be rewarded. It's a subtle way to encourage scoring, and that's exactly what the NHL should be trying to do (as opposed to something drastic like biggering the nets.) Plus, and I'll probably restate this ad nauseum, there's no good reason to incentivize the players intentionally sending the puck at the spectators. I imagine the rule is just as much to protect the spectators (think: netting and Brittanie Cecil) as it is about avoiding icing. I like the rule, I think it does quite a bit more good than harm (admittedly it can be frustrating to go down 5-on-3 for this reason) but the only way to keep the benefits and further mitigate the harm, that I see, is to ask the refs to determine the intent of the player and not whistle it when they think it's accidental. They already screw up enough judgment calls - the more black-and-white rules in the book, the better.

You, sir, are rude as hell. I'd go through the handshake line. You're the one that looks petty and disrespectful if you don't.

Also most of the time a high-stick isn't intentional, but you wouldn't want that taken away as a penalty, would you? The penalty absolutely needs to stay. The players shouldn't be purposely flinging pucks at people in the crowd in the first place.

The puck is a lot more likely to go into the benches because there's no glass. The glass is behind the bench. You have to actively try to get the puck up into the air to get it over the glass. Doesn't get there by accident.

Further clarification: It was merged into the Game Discussion Thread, because it was a discussion about the game that wasn't noteworthy enough for its own thread. You didn't break any rules, if you had you'd be suspended. Moving/merging/deleting threads is not a punishment, nor should it be seen as such because the threads do not "belong" to the thread starter. There is no need to be protective of "your" thread because it's not yours.

Hometown team. No other reason necessary. I mean, when you're seven years old, it's kind of inconceivable that you'd do anything other than root for the hometown team.

Bettman is employed by the owners. As long as he's doing a good job at things like negotiating decent TV deals, keeping the revenue stream going, and taking the lead on collective bargaining issues and coming up with a CBA that the owners like, he'll be employed. The only people he answers to are the 30 owners, and right now they like what he's doing. Don't get your hopes up.

Positives: Finally getting to play a team that's older than I am. Negatives: Blackhawks trolls are 75% more active than the usual ones.