betterREDthandead

Granato and Tippett are in the biggest trouble. Also MacTavish and if the Ducks have a poor showing in the playoffs, Carlyle.

Again the contradiction. You can't have it both ways. Either the draft rewards bad teams for their incompetence and gives them success they don't deserve (Pittsburgh) or it wastes the league's best talent on teams where nobody cares (Tampa.) The fact that there are teams that have used their top picks to pull themselves back to contention as well as teams that stay terrible tells me that both theories are crap. I don't think anyone thinks Ovechkin and Crosby are wasting their talents on teams nobody's watching. Nor Patrick Kane.

I would root for that just to see the reaction.

You're contradicting yourself. It can't be much of a reward of Tampa still sucks even with the top pick. If "giving them big fancy picks won't help them" then why are you so up in arms about rewarding incompetence?

Don't you have to have a neck in order to have neck muscles?

We're not going to play them until the WCF, if at all. If we don't have to play them, great, one less really good team in the way, but we'll still have to play someone pretty darn good that's won two playoff series already. If we do play them, I'd venture that means their iffy regular season finish is behind them.

Exactly....what could Celine Dion do to a hockey team that hasn't already been done by someone like, say, Bill Wirtz?

The 8th place team would dearly love to play the Sharks because the alternative is not playing anyone.

Unlikely major leaguers Tigers fans should recognize two of the ten names from way back.

Perry is the other hotshot rookie they brought north. He's supposed to have a pretty nasty fastball, but you must really hate our bullpen if that outing was enough to make him your favorite. I hope that was just majors-debut jitters and not his actual pitching style because Fernando Rodney is as much "wild, sometimes effectively" as I can take.

I don't know about my favorite, there really have been a lot of good guys to choose from over the past couple years, but Inge has always been up there for sure. Dude has stuck with the Tigers through thick and thin. He'll play in his 1,000th game as a Tiger very soon. I always said he needs to play third and not catch and his hitting will be fine.

Boy, it's a good thing we shored up the bullpen by signing all these great relief pitchers. Rincon and Lyon certainly have been masterful.

awwwwww.....the widdle Blackhawks are all grown up and ready for the big boy table..... so cute!

eh, there was actually a lot of fight in last year's team. I kind of wonder how much fight they'd have had in them if they'd gotten a win early on, but actually they never gave up on the season and you have to give them (and Marinelli) credit for that. What they lacked was any semblance of talent.

Looks like you get to go see the right spring game. Credit to Sparty, Izzo never lets that team give up on a game. But UNC has just an absolutely sick starting lineup. Just tons of talent in that starting five.

If Verlander is going to pitch like that all season, might as well wrap it up and call it a year right now.

Stanton never beat us, nor did MSU ever beat Hart.

Probably the U-M spring game Probably. Anyway it's a good bet. Hart's a hell of a lot more offensive to Sparty fans than Stanton is to us.

Opening Day tomorrow!! And here's what I like best: Normally, the Tigers play a game, then the next day there's a day off right away. Ugh. Not this year though. Here's the lineup: CF Curtis Granderson 2B Placido Polanco RF Magglio Ordoñez 1B Miguel Cabrera DH Carlos Guillen C Gerald Laird 3B Brandon Inge SS Adam Everett LF Josh Anderson P Justin Verlander No shockers, although I'm honestly very worried about this lineup. Having to bat Gerald Laird sixth does not inspire my confidence. I'd bump Inge up a spot - there's a clear correlation between his batting average and how much catcher he plays. Now that he's not catching, I think we'll see something much closer to the '04-'06 Inge than last year's version. And I think we'll see Guillen returning to shortstop quite a bit this year to make room for Thames' bat. Even Guillen worries me though - he's quite obviously on the decline.

Nice. I got one too: Patrick Roy 1985-86 regular season: 47 GP, 3.35 GAA, .875 SV% Playoffs: 20 GP, roughly 2.05 GAA (can't find SV% but I bet you it was pretty good)

:rotflmao: cause there's so much of that going on in this thread.

At the moment that's exactly what he is. 21 saves on 23 shots.

Why shouldn't I? Every time a goal goes in whether it's Osgood's fault or not, people want to club him over the knee.

True enough. Somebody said earlier that it's understandable that the defense breaks down every now and again because they can't be perfect all game. So why does Osgood have to be perfect all game?