betterREDthandead

Nice win for USA holding serve against Mexico. I can't stand Mexico so it's great to beat them. Wouldn't be sorry at all to see them knocked out of the World Cup entirely. Next match day is March 28 in El Salvador.

"The Enlightened Spartan" disagrees with you.

Where are they putting the billboard for this one?

My fantasy team thanks Pavel for his contributions

They should make the pants stripey too.

If people don't go to Vegas for the sake of watching a hockey game because there's already one at home, what makes that different from basketball?

After so many years with a Tigers team that was a guaranteed bottom-dweller, I'm still just happy that 74-88 is cause to be upset and not simply happy it wasn't 100 losses. That lineup looks a little thin, though. Sheffield is a fossil, Guillen seems like he's on the downslope, Everett and Laird never were known for their hitting. Honestly this team looks like an 85-win team. Hope I'm wrong and they do better, but this doesn't look like a contending season. Anything's possible in this Central Division though. Thank god we're not in the East where basically if you're not NY or Boston you're screwed. (Yes, I realize TB went to the Series last year. Good luck with repeating.)

Friday: Montreal @ Buffalo Columbus @ Pittsburgh New Jersey @ Atlanta Nashville @ Minnesota NY Rangers @ Dallas Saturday: Philadelphia @ Boston Anaheim @ Calgary Edmonton @ Detroit Toronto @ Montreal Buffalo @ Ottawa Los Angeles @ New Jersey Florida @ Washington San Jose @ Columbus NY Islanders @ Tampa Bay Colorado @ St Louis Carolina @ Phoenix Chicago @ Vancouver Sunday: Detroit @ Pittsburgh Edmonton @ Minnesota Philadelphia @ Atlanta Nashville @ Dallas

I think Stewart will do very well. Maybe even make the Chase. You take a driver the caliber of Tony Stewart and you put him in Hendrick Chevys, which is what his team is getting, he's going to get himself around the track. It won't surprise me at all if/when he wins a race or three this year.

It wasn't that long ago that a lot of writers were complaining that the Super Bowl hadn't really produced much drama lately. Now we've had two excellent games in a row. I wish the Cards had pulled it out but I have nothing against the Steelers.

Slap what? You are hereby sentenced to watch the movie again

Seconded. Hell, I can barely remember the other teams he played for. Seconded also. I mean, really, Slava Kozlov? People are forgetting one of the key ingredients to two Cups and a member of one of the most celebrated units of this Wings era?

It's pretty hard to forget any of the Russian Five.

At least in football you know when the game is going to end. Stoppage time in soccer is completely up to the whim of the refs and then after that they add random amounts of stoppage time to the stoppage time and nobody knows when the hell this thing ends. Besides, the game you're talking about was a close game. If Liverpool was already up 2-0, there's no way they'd be attacking to score in the final minute, same way a football team with a lead sits on it.

Wes Walz apparently played a couple of games for the Wings. I did not know this. I also always think it's strange to think of Ulf Samuelsson and Wendel Clark in Wings jerseys, even though I remember it pretty clearly.

Even so, the point remains. Signing someone for an absurd length of time, 20 years longer than he can be expected to play, just for the purpose of reducing the cap hit, isn't going to pass muster with the league.

I swear every team in the league has a guy whose job it is to talk to Eklund and plant nutty rumors. Eklund takes himself way too seriously to be purposely faking it. He's probably talking to someone "inside the organization" whose sole purpose in life is to feed Eklund wacky trade rumors that they have no intention of carrying out.

I'm quite sure the Wings believe they can. I have every confidence in Ozzie in crunch time.

That's not even close to the extent of the OP's argument. And yes, I would argue with anyone who decided to make the argument that "Osgood sucks." He's playing badly. There's a big difference. I would even argue that he ought to be playing just as much as he is now. We have the luxury of being able to let him work through his struggles. If we're 3rd or 2nd seed and not 1st, oh well. There's a good enough chance he'll have those struggles behind him come playoff time, and I'd much rather have two goalies playing well by that time than just one. Osgood's save percentage is not carte blanche for the Osgood-bashers to run rampant and expect no rebuttal to their criticism.

And that's a fair case for starting Conklin more than they have been. Nothing more, nothing less. It's not a reason to kick the most loyal Wing off the team and replace him with a thoroughly untested rookie, nor is it anything even resembling a good reason to suggest that he is the worst goalie in the league and that Johan Hedberg, Patrick Lalime, etc. would somehow be better long-term alternatives.

Leaving aside the fact that Osgood has started more games than Conklin, isn't that basically the description of every backup goaltender in the league? You make it sound like a tremendous condemnation of Ozzie's abilities

I'll take that a step further. Osgood played his first game as a Wing over 15 years ago. He's got more seniority in that locker room than anyone but the captain, Lidstrom. That kind of seniority - and the loyalty Osgood showed to this organization by coming back - commands respect among the players. I really doubt that guys who've got a decade of history with Osgood somehow lack confidence in his abilities. And I really doubt that a whole team of guys who just won a Stanley Cup with Osgood in net somehow forgot about all that. The idea that the players slack off and play worse when Ozzie is in net is ludicrous. This means that his struggles are at least as much his fault as the team's, but they're not out there suddenly losing confidence in his abilities after all he's done for the team. Unlike many of the fans.

So anyone should be able to say anything bad they like about Osgood without fear of being called on it? Nonsense.

No, here we see the notion that criticism that's way the hell off base is irrational. It's one thing to say that Ozzie hasn't played at all well this year. Clearly he has not. It's another to draw the conclusion that therefore every single goalie in the league is better. Just because he's criticizing Osgood doesn't make him automatically right. You can't honestly think, for example, that it would be a good idea to trade Osgood straight up for Lalime or Hedberg, do you? That's what the OP is claiming.

No, you're not making sense. Conklin is not particularly proven - he's a career backup. You want to dump the guy that won us our Cup last year and go into the playoffs with a career backup and a guy who's played exactly zero NHL games in his life. This is terrible management. The Wings are where they are partly because it's well known they treat their players right, and with loyalty. A hair-trigger reaction to one stat line in the middle of the season is quite possibly the dick-est thing you can do to one of your players, even by Brian Burke's standards. And then, this: I didn't realize personnel decisions should be made solely on the basis of half a season, throwing out everything every other player has done in the past. By your logic we should go get Legace back, despite the fact that we know he doesn't hold up in the playoffs. Or Johan Hedberg, despite his career-long suckitude. Lastly, there are more than 44 goalies that have played this season. The list only shows those on pace to play a certain number of games. Guys who aren't, don't show up. But hey! Save percentage is all that matters. Patrick Lalime's is .886. Better goalie than Osgood, absolutely, yup, never mind that he's been washed up for five years now and the whole world knows it. We could get him for the league minimum, too. GREAT IDEA. Straight up? This is just irrational Osgood-hate sugarcoated with statistics and a pretense at logic. You've probably hated Osgood for a while now and are taking the opportunity to kick him while he's down. I certainly hope that's the case, because the alternative is a total lack of perspective, with no ability to evaluate goalies beyond a laser-focus on one number in the stat line and a Memento-style lack of memory beyond the first game of the present season.