betterREDthandead

I agree. Nobody will ever wear #7 for the Wings again. Never. Ever. eva, as usual a scientific approach to the problem, but this is not one that needs a scientific approach. It's simple. To raise a number to the rafters, it must be plainly obvious when the player retires that the number will soon follow. There was never any question about Stevie and there is no question now about Lidstrom. In other words, any debate, and the answer is NO. If you have to "make the case", the answer is NO. Nobody should ever look at the rafters and wonder if every number there truly belongs. Ozzie is the perfect example. I love Ozzie. A very, very strong case can be made for HoF induction and I think he'll get it. He's as loyal to the Wings as anyone ever was, including Stevie. He's endured a lot of criticism but he's arrived as a beloved Hockeytown figure. As a huge Ozzie fan I would love to watch his number go up. But it doesn't belong.

Kiss that $50 goodbye. 68 wins is absurd. Not gonna happen.

Not like, Dice-K money. But you notice that most of the teams offering him were offering the max....that means the bidding would certainly have gone higher if allowed.

As I've said.....whoever gets traded, hopefully it's the one that'll bring the highest draft pick in return. (Hopefully we keep Ericsson though. Personal favorite.)

Rules are rules after all.....otherwise think of the bidding war that would have erupted over Brunnstrom. It's probably smart. Look at the outrageous cash being paid for Japanese stars to play MLB. NHL doesn't want to go down that road.

However weird the name, it's an improvement over Iowa Stars. I hate when a minor league team takes the identity of its major league affiliate: name, colors, uniform, and all.

Ugh. It's been at least 8 weeks since I posted. I should be pushing 180 by now. Instead I still weigh in at 190 on a good day.....192 or 193 on a bad one. It's pissing me off that I worked out for 8 weeks and not a single pound to show for it. I don't think the interval training did anything for me, so I'm cutting that out. I took a rest week last week and just rode the bike for a little bit instead of hitting the treadmill and the weights. (My shins are thanking me.) Going to change it up a bit. Longer runs at a little bit slower speed, and simplifying the weightlifting I do, and including some conditioning stuff rather than just strength stuff. Also going to try and cut way back on the pop. I did that last summer and it worked out well for me.

Team in Puerto Rico.....maybe. Team in other countries, especially overseas....no. Too much travel. Too many teams, too much money involved flying back and forth, too long of a season to deal with all the travel. And way too much hassle involved. Every spring you see teams with a player not in camp because of "visa trouble" coming from the DR or Venezuela or some place. Now let's set up travel for the whole league. Uh-uh. However, I'd like to see a stronger affiliation agreement with Japanese baseball. Not exactly a major league-minor league setup, but maybe a better way to connect the two free-agent systems. And MLB definitely needs to include international players in the draft.

Yeah, I wonder why....couldn't have anything to do with the fact that a guy shares a neat story that happened to him and you gotta try and hog the spotlight with your little "jokes." So congratulations....you've officially derailed the thread and made it about you instead of the original topic. Hope you like the attention. And shame on me for contributing to it, but it had to be said.

No, this year it's only a second rounder. It changes with the cap.

Exactly. So McCollum is five, six years away from making an impact. He's not in the mix. And I'm with NN, by the way. Last night I was sort of willing to believe it because when I read it, the thread was only two hours old and news isn't always that fast. Overnight it would have made the headlines somewhere. It hasn't. So I think Howard is perfectly safe.

I don't know why people think McCollum matters. It'll be years before he even turns pro let alone joins the team. Howard was drafted five years ago.

That's not hard

Nice shirt! Especially for wearing in Ohio. Hope they didn't try to throw a burning couch at you or anything.

They don't get to win either, obviously. And regardless of criteria for the Super Bowl, Boston has never hosted one. It's not really unfair. It's more unfair, if you're going to name a Titletown, to just give them a pass on it. We built a domed stadium, Boston didn't. Should we also give Chapel Hill a pass on never hosting a Super Bowl, just because they don't have a pro team? As for this..... Sorry, this is different. Nobody in Detroit has a Wings jersey that says Avs Suck on the back instead of a name; I saw two different Red Sox jerseys with Yankees Suck on the back during just one train ride in Boston. There are Yankees Suck patches, bumper stickers, window stickers, and t-shirts. There is a yankeessuck.com, yanks-suck.com, theyankeessuck.com, and yankeessuck.net. Many teams' fans chant "Yankees Suck" when the Yankees are in town; Red Sox fans will chant "Yankees Suck" any time, any place, including during the World Series celebrations. Do a Google image search for Yankees Suck and see what you find; page after page of Yankees Suck paraphernelia. Do one for "Avs Suck" and you know what you find? "Red Wings Suck" stuff. There is passion for your team. There's hatred for other teams. Both are natural. And then there's putting that hatred above your own team. That's where Red Sox fans are.

Aw shucks.

I'm with the rest of you. Heineken is s***.

Boston can go f**k themselves. Any fanbase that considers it more important to hate another team than to root for their own....pathetic. Boston does have the more recent championships and the absurd numbers of the Celtics, but consider this: - Only three cities have hosted the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Stanley Cup Finals, and the NBA Finals. - Only a handful of cities have won championships in the NFL, NHL, NBA, and MLB. - Only one city is a member of both groups. Detroit. To the best of my knowledge they have never hosted a Final Four in Boston - Detroit will. And I know Ann Arbor is a separate contender, but if Boston gets to include the Patriots, then Detroit should get to include U-M and its baseball, basketball, football, and hockey championships. Foxboro is closer to RI than Boston, and about the same distance as Detroit-AA. So I call BS on that, too. Boston will probably win it because there's an epidemic of Boston-loving going on and it's nauseating. But they shouldn't. Any city that's known for a century-long curse of NOT winning a title forfeits their claim.

Honestly.....who cares? So we win because of defense. Most teams lose because of their defense, so we should consider ourselves lucky.

I think they're guaranteed a return trip too. Not this year, maybe, but Crosby will win a Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh before all's said and done. And I don't see how this article is "lunacy."

Woooooooo top 10 for Robby Fun to actually watch him race and have the announcers actually acknowledge he exists. P.S. where's Montoya when you need him? Last week he straight punted Shrub and it was sweet. Too bad Carl Edwards couldn't quiiiiiiiite pull off the win this week. G.D. Toyotas.

Tell it like it is, Lowe. On a related note, think there will be any Ducks-Oilers trades any time soon?

I know this stuff. I didn't say the Rockies came from the WHA. I was talking about the Jets.

They were generally a bad team; that does not make them a bad franchise. The Rockies were a terrible organization and a bad team. And they were not even especially bad - they had the misfortune of being in the same division as the Oilers and the Flames, which between them won every Cup save one between '84 and '90. The way the playoffs were structured until the early '90s meant they always had to go through the Oilers and/or Flames to go anywhere. They were easily one of the strongest WHA organizations (which is why they were absorbed into the NHL).

No, of course not. I didn't say it was a good idea; I just said it's better than Winnipeg. Just because it's not a good idea doesn't mean Winnipeg is. Winnipeg is a proven failure. Albany is a piss-poor idea too, but I listed it because it's better than Winnipeg. And not like Denver, where the league's first effort there was a joke; the Rockies sucked and were widely considered to be a clown show. The Jets were a respectably well-run organization with good people in charge that made an honest effort. They still failed in Winnipeg. As EUZ repeatedly points out, the attendance there was worse than in Nashville; and they had no corporate support. Bulls***. Raw population is why the Jets failed. Period. It's why the Nordiques left. It's why the Whalers left. It's not the only definition of a good hockey market but it is an absolute requirement. 100% of the people in a certain town could be raving lunatic hockey fans but if that town has only 5 people in it, you wouldn't move a team there, would you? Ergo, population is key. Given the number of people who think cold weather is the only requirement and any little hamlet north of the Mason-Dixon is a better idea for a team than a massive metropolis that happens to be in the south.....are you honestly surprised?