betterREDthandead

I don't even know who this Delman guy is. I wonder who we'll take next year with the #1 overall pick. Edit - or Delmas. Whatever.

Probably a goddamn kicker at this rate.

Rant part 2. Tight end is the least important position on the team. The least. I'd rather have a Pro Bowl punter than a Pro Bowl tight end. Seriously. It's a god damn luxury. What do you give the team that has everything? A TE. What do you give the team that has the worst run defense, the worst pass defense, the worst defensive line, the worst linebackers, and the worst secondary in the entire ******* league? How about a ******* linebacker or something? I don't want to hear this s*** about how Stafford now has another weapon to throw to. Guess what, we gave Harrington weapons too. We gave him Roy Williams and we gave him BMW. You know what we didn't give him? Any damn protection or a defense that could get him the ball back or preserve a lead. This works out great. f***. The Lions are officially useless for another three years, minimum. Schwartz is f***ed. He'll run up a 10-38 record and never coach in this league again.

Pettigrew?!?! Jesus H. ******* Christ. Does anyone remember last year's s***ty ******* defense? At all? The defense is dead ******* last in every ******* category imaginable and they've got two first round picks and they spend them on offense? What the f***?? f***. f*** f*** f***. Mayhew is a ******* slack-jawed idiot. Millen must be still making these picks, and the Eagles traded up to get Maclin cause they know it. Damn it. God damn it.

Haha....I'm glad we only root for the second-dumbest team in the league. Heyward-Bey looks to me like a decent second receiver in this league. Crabtree looks like a Pro Bowler. Who ever gets Crabtree is gonna be loving life. Also very glad Eugene Monroe didn't go to the Packers. I'm not as happy about the booing for Stafford (although it might just be because Jets fans wanted him.) I'm as down on the idea as it's possible to be and I don't think Stafford is going to be any good. But I hope I'm wrong, and the proper response from Lions fans at the draft who like me didn't want Stafford is polite golf clapping or something. Don't boo the guy on his day. Tops on my wish list now is Maualuga. But I don't want to trade up for him.

Hatcher was injured when he played here and missed everything from October to March and when he did come back, his conditioning wasn't there and nobody could have expected it to be. Lebda's decision making isn't really all that either. Lilja's the superior penalty-killer - he and Lids are the team's top two PKers. Lebda's not a PKer at all. And Lilja's skills aren't redundant with Ericsson's - Ericsson is much more offensive-minded than Lilja is. Ericsson can move the puck. They'd be a great complement actually, Lilja brings some skills like shot-blocking that Ericsson doesn't, while Lebda does basically nothing that Ericsson can't do just as well, if not better. Finally, I'd sure like to hear what stupid penalties Lilja takes that Lebda doesn't. Lebda had 23 minors this year - Lilja, 18. Lilja only has more PIM because he has fighting majors - which is a plus, not a minus. Lebda has none.

This makes no sense. If Crosby were a Wing you'd be loving the "unfair" attention. Let me put this in perspective, because you're in desperate need of some. If Crosby plays 15 seasons at the point-scoring pace he's currently on, he'll surpass Howe, Messier, and everyone else that's ever played in the league but Gretzky. You'd pass that up because you think he whines to the refs and because you're jealous of his attention?

To me the only thing controversial is whether the Jackets ("Jackets" here meaning Hitchcock, their announcers, plus any of their fans who think this way) should simply shut up, or shut the hell up. It's a fact that they had six skaters on the ice, it's a fact that that's illegal, and to the best of my knowledge and yours the referees never, ever let that go, unless they flat don't see it. They're just asking for special treatment is all. Just because somebody whines about it doesn't make it controversial. Would an icing call be controversial if the Jackets complained about it? It's black and white. Couldn't be any less controversial if you ask me.

Like what, exactly? Lilja's bigger, hits more, fights more, blocks way more shots. Defensively he's a tremendous upgrade. Lebda's faster, that's about it, but he's not exactly blazing. The only reason to ever have Lebda in the lineup over Lilja is Lebda is a touch better offensively - but Lebda is the only defenseman we have that has no points in these playoffs. Getting Lilja back in place of Lebda would be a huge, huge upgrade. Especially if he's "Derian Hatcher-esque", as Hatcher was a pretty damn solid defenseman in his day.

You don't try to get a great player because they put up points for points sake. He wouldn't suddenly be a worse player if he "only" got 85 points as opposed to 100. You get great players because they're more likely to score when they're on the ice. Second, Crosby got one point per 16:24 of ice time this year. Datsyuk got one point per 16:44. Hossa got one point per 18:33. Zetterberg got one point per 20:58. There are lots of other factors but Crosby was clearly the most efficient scorer among all of them. How the hell do you accuse someone with 70 assists of not making their teammates better? Kirk Maltby is one of the most hated players in the league for the way he plays, which is to purposely piss people off and not fight them. He's been doing it for years. We love him for it because he's a Wing. Darren McCarty used to sometimes jump people at the faceoff and it was awesome. Kronwall leaves his feet. We don't have a dirty team by anyone's standards but we're not exactly angels either. People are just butthurt that Crosby gets the marketing attention and focus on all his shortcomings in order to have excuses not to want him. Bulls***. People are telling me a guy that averages almost a point and a half a game over his career (and is only 21) is someone we wouldn't want? Take the cap out of the equation and I'd bring him onboard in a damn heartbeat.

Because you don't use the first pick on a QB that "can" be a star. You use it on a QB that is a star and played like one in college. Simply being the best quarterback in the draft is not the same as being a good quarterback - sometimes it just means there aren't any good quarterbacks. Stafford was the 15th-rated QB in college this year. Fifteenth! His completion percentage: 42nd! You know where some of the quarterbacks play that beat him in completion percentage? San Jose State. Eastern Michigan. Louisiana-Lafayette. Duke. North Texas. It infuriates me that it doesn't throw up any red flags that Joe Ganz of Nebraska outperformed Stafford in every way. Or that 41 other quarterbacks managed to have more success completing passes than Stafford did. But no. He's got "Prototypical NFL Size." He's got a Rocket Arm. Scouts go slobber slobber slobber over NFL Size, despite the fact that every quarterback in the league, including the suck-ass s***ty ones, have NFL Size. Do we care that in the biggest game of Georgia's season against Florida, he threw no touchdowns, three picks, and barely completed half his passes? No dude. Rocket. *******. Arm. Do we care that in UGA's other big SEC game against Alabama, he didn't throw a TD pass til UGA was down 41-17 with 3 minutes to play? Dude. Rocket Arm! Do his 10 INT's bother anyone? Well no, because they were really beautiful Rocket Arm spirals. It's cool.

Is there a goalie anywhere in the league where you would say "You shouldn't crash the net against this guy"?

If your system is such that you can't fit a 21-year-old guaranteed 100-point player, your system is retarded. In an ideal world where I could just glom Sidney onto the roster without consequences (i.e. no salary cap), then it'd be the stupidest thing ever to say I wouldn't want him around. I mean seriously. Dumb. And blinded by irrational hatred. In the real world, no way I'd want to do the kind of roster shuffling necessary to fit him on. You basically have to blow up the whole thing, which only makes sense if you already suck, sorta like the Kings in 1988. Taking the actual question - Wings signing him instead of Hossa - YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES, if it's for the same salary. Anyone who would say otherwise is irrational. If it's not the same salary, then it depends on what the salary is and how much roster shuffling takes place.

Matt Stafford had damn well better be the best quarterback in history if he's going to be paid like it. I don't really expect him even to be better than Kyle Boller. He's walking into the worst possible situation: terrible offensive line that isn't getting better, terrible defense that isn't getting better, a dysfunctional franchise that can't develope a quarterback, an entire fanbase that doesn't want him, and to top it off, a record deal that everyone will hold against him. In other words, the Lions f***ed up big. Again. For like the eighth time this decade.

I've basically written off Lilja. I don't think he'll be back - if he does, bonus. I'm just expecting the current six to be the pairings for the entire playoff run, barring injury. Draper's another matter. It'd be nice to have him out there to win faceoffs. It'd be a big help for our defensive efforts. I think Kopecky's played well, though, and other than faceoffs I don't think there'd be a major upgrade.

Not to be the sematics police, but the disputation does not concern a matter of opinion. It's pure fact that Columbus had six skaters on the ice and pure fact that that's against the rules. If it's my opinion, as well as the opinion of several others, that the sky is green, that doesn't turn the color of the sky controversial. There's no dispute about opinion here - they just have an opinion blind to the facts.

How is it petty? How on earth do you not make the call? It's clear as day. It's not even a judgment call. It's one thing to make judgment calls about what's a hook and what isn't. It's another to just blow off one of the very basic rules in ANY sport. The rule book couldn't be clearer: THOU SHALT NOT have more than six players on the ice and play the puck. Anyone bitching and moaning about it is totally out of line, including Hitchcock. There isn't a separate rule book for close playoff games.

I have no idea how you can get called for holding when basically you have no feet on the ice and the only reason you're not sitting on it is because the other player is literally pinning you to the boards. Naturally the CLS broadcasters did not elaborate on the point.

Yeah, Sweden looks awful thin actually. Very few NHLers and most of those are off of Dallas and not particularly exciting. I like the draw for USA. I notice our old pal Stefan Liv is on the Swedish roster. I wonder how much of him we'll see.

Apparently Ken Hitchcock posts on HFboards too. I didn't know this. But check it out: Seriously....what?

If you're gonna call them "dumb f***s" in a thread calling them the "dumbest in sports", cutting your English errors down to five or six per post would go a long way toward helping your cause.

Definitely looking forward to a solid 10 or 12 years of Ericsson manning the blue line. The kid's got what it takes for sure.

Muchas gracias. Congrats to the Jackets as well, the team's first playoffs is a piece of history even if it didn't turn out so well.

I never joined and I stopped even reading. You could tell they had a problem when they went to that system where you had to get recommended by someone. A nice idea but the problem is, everyone there was already stupid, so they just recommend other stupid people. Like shutting the gate after the sheep all escape.