norrisnick

A guy like Kovalchuk would minimize the impact of losing a defenseman because Ilya is a transition game all on his own. My priority is D - F - G. I realize being by your being a goalie that yours is likely G - D - F, but I there are many ways to create nude cats. Don't forget Jimmy and Daniel or the Conklin of '10. Get a cheap solid goalie and stack the ever living crap out of the 18 skaters in front of them. Idle speculation is great. And a team with Kovalchuk on it will be a hell of a lot more fun to watch than one with Luongo.

And part of that "horses in the stable" comes from the mentality of building from the net out. Which is backwards IMO. Goalies have the least amount of impact on a game. They can be hung out to dry. They can be sheltered. They can have all the rebounds swept away. They can have guys in their kitchen making their lives miserable. But they can't impact any of that. They're at the mercy of the 18 skaters in front of them. And the better those 18 skaters are the less important the goalie becomes. If you have any hopes of winning anything you have to have steady goaltending. Great goaltending can't win a game without support, but shoddy goaltending can certainly lose a game (or series). It's more important not to have bad goaltending than it is to have elite goaltending. There comes a point where all you are paying for is a slightly better GAA. If we had Luongo playing all of Osgood's games how many more wins do we have? 2? And that's with Osgood by all accounts (including his own) not being anywhere NEAR as good as he's capable of playing. If Osgood is playing to his abilities how many more wins do we have? 2? What's the point? And this whole discussion is also dependent on Lidstrom going away. I don't think he will. He's playing too well to walk away. He's not going back to Sweden because his kids are in school here. He's healthy *knockonwood*. The Wings are still good. He might not be making $7M+ but I think he sticks around for a couple more seasons at least.

One point to consider regarding Ilya. His shot. With the passers we have, he'd have no troubles scoring an obscene amount of goals. Can you imagine Kovalchuk on the PP point opposite Lidstrom? Or on a line with Datsyuk or Hudler putting the puck on a silver platter for him? He would make our pass-happy forwards exponentially more dangerous. Hossa has fit in quite well, but Ilya's game would be even better suited to join us. If only Duncan Keith weren't resticted next summer....

I'd rather use the money to sign Kovalchuk. I've yet to see a team with a marquee goalie play anything but an insomnia curing style of hockey. If guys like Brodeur, Luongo, Lundqvist, Kiprusoff, etc... are so good why do the coaches do anything and everything in their power to play an ultra conservative game? None play run and gun. They all play a style that could have a goalie at a fraction of the cost get similar results. What's the point of having a $6-7-8M/yr goalie?

The bolded section is the only part I agree with. And the thing that Sammy brings to the 2nd unit that's completely different from the 1st unit is that he's a TRAINWRECK with the puck. You can almost guarantee that something stupid is about to happen. He makes bad decisions. Has a ridiculously hard time getting his shot through (shinpad assassin). His d to d passes are infuriating. He's the only guy on the team that will pass across the ice at an angle that would put the puck into the neutral zone if it isn't handled cleanly. Every 10-15 games or so he manages to unleash a nice one-timer, but that's about it. If Jiri had Sammy's physical attributes he'd be Jagr. If Sammy had Jiri's physical attributes he wouldn't have made it out of the Swedish equivalent of TimBits hockey.

“They always talk about Bobby Orr as being the greatest defenseman who ever played, and I wouldn’t take anything away from him. He changed hockey. He became the mobile defenseman, tremendous player. But Harvey was still a better hockey player. When you look at Harvey, he had (Jean Beliveau), (Rocket) Richard, (Henri) Richard, Bert Olmstead, Boom Geoffrion, and yet when (Montreal) got on the power play, he was the maestro. He controlled every one of those guys." -Ted Lindsay

Buzzer beater?

Helm replaced Hartigan. McCarty replaced Kopecky. Chelios isn't remotely close to being better than Kopecky at this point.

Was it classy for Kopecky who had played every game so far? He got robbed of playing in the playoffs last season by injury and now of playing in the Classic in favor of sentimentality for a guy that doesn't know when to quit.

Points/goal scoring is not the only measure of importance for a player. The matinee game at the WJC was a beauty, eh?

You've not heard his special term of endearment of that particular piece of paraphernalia? You've seen games called by Doc, right?

I hope you come back before you go digging, Blue. Regular season record vs the Wings 12-35-10 (OTLs in L column). 129GF 194GA for a 2.26GFA and a 3.40GAA Postseason record vs the Red Wings 5-16. 45GF and 71GA for a 2.14GFA and a 3.40GAA Combined record vs the Wings. 17-51-10. 174GF and 265GA for a 2.23GFA and a 3.40GAA. Q's lone regular season shutout vs the Wings was a 0-0 tie in '00. His regular season teams have been shut out 7 times by the Wings. Playoffs is another matter as it's 2 whitewashes both ways. The Blues skunked us twice in '97 and we skunked them twice in '02. Q's teams scored 4+ 15 times in the 78 meetings. The Wings dumped 4+ on Q 40 times, so just over half the games. Q's worst years are '03 and '08. '03 he went 0-5 getting outscored 10-26 and in '08 going 0-8 getting outscored 11-32. It's amazing how even the GF/GA numbers are between regular season games and playoff games. Situation matters not. Q is our *****!

Best site to use is hockey-reference as it gives you a nice game by game listing for every season as well as how many games were coached by who so you can figure out that so-and-so took over at the 53 game mark or whatever.

Waffleboarded is not a verb. Hughson is good. Strader is good. Cuthbert is good. Daniels has a "wherever native" "pair of #s" "countryman" fetish that I can't stand.

You fail to mention that Zetterberg was playing in Timra at 24 because there was a lockout. He led the SEL in scoring that year btw. He'd already put up a pair of 40+ point seasons in the NHL at the height of the clutch and grab era.

Doubt it. Sure he's not seeing 1:30 of PP TOI he saw last year, but even if we lose Hossa, Fil shouldn't be the first option to step in. Cleary is getting next to no PP time as well, and IMO he's ahead of Fil on the offensive ability depth chart. So Fil will remain 7th at best unless we lose an extra forward, but I forsee us being able to hang on to Z, Franzen, and Hudler. With Pavel, Homer, and Cleary already locked up, that's our 6 PP forwards. He might get mop up duty now and then or fill in minutes for injuries or blowouts, but anything far beyond 1:00 of PP time is just wishful thinking. As for everything else, Fil IS getting 2nd line minutes. With the exception of PP time he's getting almost the same sort of minutes Pavel and Hossa are getting.

Hossa came first. Given how stacked the roster was going to be, Holland should have gone with his other option of a shorter/smaller cap hit contract given that the players ahead of Fil would have blocked him out of production and thus kept his cost down. I highly doubt Fil would have gotten himself beyond $3M/yr level play within 2 years. And a 2 year deal would have been in the Paille, Eriksson, Steen range of solidly below $2M/yr. And every little bit helps. This year and next. It was high risk, low reward to go long term bigger money with Fil.

I really hope you weren't a math major. $25,000 + $25,000 + $75,000 is still $1,075,000 shy of being $1.2M.

I actually just looked this up myself. I came up with a combined (regular season and playoffs) record (W-L-T, OTLs are Ls) record of 17-51-10. There have been 3 partial seasons with him involved and it looks as if the numbers you found don't take into account that there were games played between the Wings/Blues that took place before he showed up or after he left.

You are very close to mixing up two VERY different things. Fans are voting for the All-Star Game Starters for the All-Star game next month. The NHL's First All Star Team (as well as the Second and All Rookie teams) are voted on by the Professional Hockey Writers Association at the end of the regular season. The latter is infinitely more prestigious.

The League doesn't deserve to have Lidstrom in its starting lineup. Hopefully those in charge will realize the absurdity of that.

Kelly and Sawchuk had a lot of success elsewhere after their Red Wing career and LW is a historically weak position so Lindsay being the 2nd best ever isn't quite as impressive as being among the best centers, defensemen, or goalies. Fedorov is every bit as good as Lindsay was. If you rank only Red Wing achievements Fedorov is right there with them. Using the logic of Kelly not being up there, Sawchuk almost shouldn't be either. And with Abel up there guys like Goodfellow should as well. It's almost as if they picked the marquee guys of the 50s dynasty (with the exception of Kelly which is odd) and we'll see if they do the same of the 90s/00s heyday. At the very least Nick and Sergei should join Stevie. The three pillars.

Just because Jonathan is huge doesn't mean he's a defensive defenseman. Kindl has higher offensive skills, but Ericsson also is more of a Kronwall than Lilja. Kindl and Ericsson both have great size but neither one are typically very physical or defensively oriented. They could be, and if they figure it out they'll be awesome, but they are works in progress. Neither one plays like Fischer did.

Ilitch hasn't commented on taking #6 OUT of the rafters. I highly doubt he's said anything with regards to putting #4 in them.

Eh... I wouldn't go that far. Kelly, Lindsay, Fedorov, Delvecchio are about on par when you consider what they did with the Wings and without the Wings. Fats gets a bit of a bump because he was a lifer even though he wasn't as good as the other three at his peak. If Stevie wasn't captain for 20 years his contributions would likely fall in that same category, but he holds the ultimate trump card.