C-TownWing

Still one of the more amazing things I'm aware of in hockey history. A very productive 52 year old. 7th on the team in scoring and maybe even more impressive than that, he played in every game. Bobby Hull also played his last games with the Whalers that year.

Winner. Our teams needs our best players to step up and be our best players, and so far they haven't done that. Datsyuk, in particular, appears to be pressing in a big way. I'm not going to overreact to one crap game, especially when it follows two where we held two of the most dynamic teams in the league to a combined 4 goals. Kane, Toews, Ovechkin, Semin, Green had a combined one point, an assist, in those games. The theme of the rest of the week is "teams that were supposed to be bad but are playing well," so it should be interesting.

In a way, you're right. The clips above are proof of that. Are any of those as enjoyable if it's happening to David Legwand? Probably not. But I also wish only bad things for him. What to do, what to do...meh, I can't help it, this is awesome. Party on.

Digging the Joey Mac call. Totally forgot about him. Consider Sammy replaced on my list.

Players that could reasonably help us in 2009. No disrespect, Ghost of Terry Sawchuk. Or Jiri Fischer for that matter, that was a good call above. Also a general pass on anyone in their late 30s or 40s. 1. Quincey - Obvious pick that everyone has. Young, high upside. Would be huge for us in a couple years with a bunch of guys getting old. 2. Hossa - Still hoping for the trade when Chicago has to go into fire sale mode eventually lol. 3. Samuelsson - Better player than given credit for. Has looked good with Vancouver so far. I desperately wanted to put a goalie on, Legace, Conklin, possibly even Hasek , but I'm just not feeling it with any of those guys. Besides, I'd rather know what we have with Howard, even if the answer isn't good. At least we'd know.

Crap totally forgot those two...they're contenders on my list as well.

I could probably cop out and do all Hartford Whalers (used to be a fan) or players who played minor league hockey in Cleveland (Kiprusoff, Nabakov, St. Louis to name three), but I'll skip that. I'll also stick to "my" era (90s-present), although I could do a great list of old-timers too. Joe Sakic - Going back to the Nordiques days, always liked him. Ryan Miller - Like Sparty (even though I'm a PSU guy), like Buffalo, what the hell. Cam Neely - Kick his ass, Sea Bass! Doug Weight - Shame he qualifies for this list. Ron Francis - Couldn't help breaking the no-Whaler rule with him. Harder than I thought, a lot of my all-time favorites (Pat Verbeek, Cheli, Keith Primeau) don't qualify. I like all of them independent of their playing for the Wings, for what that's worth.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case, because last year finally stopped the bleeding of their attendance numbers, general interest, etc. Making the playoffs for them was huge on a lot of different levels. But if they can't keep that momentum going, they'll be right back in the toilet.

Great post. I for one don't really understand why everyone assumes Bettman/BoG would resist a southern team moving to Canada. We're 10-15 years out from the southern push, which to me is the point where you really know if a franchise is going to work in the long term. In this era, teams aren't moved after two years, and rightfully so, these were new markets and some work building a fan and corporate base was needed. But now we know, for the most part, that it's just not happening in some places. So it'll be interesting to see what happens from here. Someone's going to have to give me a non-Balsillie example before I buy it. I'll toss out resisting the Penguins moving to KC as exhibit A in "Bettman ultimately wants the teams to be where they can be most profitable, even if not in the south, because that's his job."

After reading that, I agree--we should definitely bench Robert Lang for Jiri Hudler.

I still like Cleary up with the twins, but Bert works too. Considering the offseason and now the Franzen injury, that's actually a pretty solid top 6 that I think can do some nice things for us. Getting production out of the 2nd line is always the big concern when you put Z and Dats together, and I think we'll get that. Certainly more than in the first couple games with the 2nd line anyway.

Oh ok, so now we deal with hypothetical stats, my bad. Didn't know that was part of the number retirement selection process. Can I give Yzerman robot knees? One more thing: arguing stats is pretty pointless with things like this. Norm Ullman had more points as a Wing than Ted Lindsay. Several people have more points as a Wing than Sid Abel and aren't retired. There's more to it than that. Yzerman and Lidstrom have a certain intangible quality to them that Feds doesn't, as great of a player as he was. I vote for #5, #16 and #30. I see a lot of people saying #30 if he wins another Cup...weren't we saying that before 2008? Also, I think it's dumb to differentiate between "retired" and "out of circulation." If you're not giving out the number, it's retired. Hang a banner. #91 will probably get there at some point too, but not because I have a say.

The numbers you posted are pretty comparable, don't act like it's all that cut-and-dried. I won't suggest that Yzerman was the better player, but how about if I suggest that that's a horrible argument instead? Yzerman was putting up sick numbers pre-1989 and was still with the team after 2003, when Feds made his cash grab. Feds was in his prime at the time Yzerman was past his, at least statistically. Hey! Brett Hull was a better player than Yzerman during his tenure with the Wings! Retire #17! Great plan. Someone mentioned Ted Lindsay leaving, which is true, his union activities got him a bus ticket to Siberia (Chicago). But he did later come back for a season and was also GM. And that all happened under Norris ownership anyway.

+2. He doesn't owe it to anyone to retire before he wants to. If he wants to keep playing and someone's willing to pay him to do it, I say you go Cheli! Hopefully they get this finalized. Still remember how when we traded for him, it was widely assumed that he'd play a couple years for us and retire. And here we are over a decade later.

Toledo -- pretty much no room to talk junk about anywhere else Just kidding, I totally get where you're coming from, people here are pretty annoying in general, and in sports specifically. LOTS of Steelers/OSU/Cavs fans, because when you live here, you're allowed to claim anyone within a three-hour drive as local if the local team sucks. The city is one massive inferiority complex, and that extends outside of sports as well. If we're being perfectly honest, most people not on a Wings board would put Wings fans on their list. Canucks fans never struck me as particularly annoying, although I don't deal with them much obviously. Although that was hilarious.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. While Bettman has some influence, his primary job is to protect the business interests of the owners, who hired him. While the Shanahan Summit was good for the game and got its namesake a lot of deserved credit, it has almost nothing to do with the job of commissioner. Cheli could be ombudsman of the NHLPA, something like that is obviously pretty important to him. Did they ever fill that position after Lindros quit?

Actually, I'm kind of surprised your side of things is so thrilled with it. Pretty decent chance we see a replay of this at some point, except with the guy getting his face caved in wearing red:

While that's absolutely true, all three teams won the Cup, so that argument doesn't work to put any of the years ahead of the others. You said you preferred 97 and 98 to 08. I was simply saying that I got more enjoyment, on balance, from 08 because they won more games. Winning's more important to me than having the team built exactly as I'd do it.

1997: 38-26-18, didn't win division 1998: 44-23-15, didn't win division 2008: 54-21-7, won President's Trophy (all three won the Cup obviously) Don't fall into the stereotype most of us have of you guys, that you'd rather beat 'em in an alley than on the ice. I'll take the team that wins more, thank you.

Pretty sure it'll be FSD. With a few exceptions (most of which primarily affect Canadian teams), they use the home feed unless something neutral is available. The problem last Saturday was that CBC did the game, so NHL Net picked that up.

I don't think it's you, that same thing was happening to me. I haven't had to use it since Saturday and my short term memory sucks at the moment, so I'm having trouble with the specifics, but try just going straight to a game you want to watch off the scores at the top of nhl.com instead of clicking on any of the general Gamecenter stuff. I THINK that's how I got around it. Gamecenter's pretty cool and they improved it this year it looks like. Works great for me because I can't get Center Ice. Not like I'd be allowed to have the TV as much as I'd want anyway. My only real complaint is that my connection sucks too much for the HD quality, but that's hardly their fault.

Pretty close to what I'd say. My only tweaks to that would be to maybe move Franzen down to the 2nd line to at least keep some balance in the top 6. Either Leino or Cleary on that other wing. Also, I'd consider Homer for the 3rd line so he's more insultated by people who can skate than he would be with just Draper. Leave him where he is on the PP as you did, because he's still the best at what he does there, but he has no business in the top 6 5-on-5.

Yeah, that one, but especially the "everyone will play tougher" one is what I had in mind. I think these arguments would go a lot better if everyone was more like the first guy I quoted and said "You know what? I like watching someone on my team punch someone from the other team, sue me." Just to get it out there: I'm pro-grit, I'm pro-guys who can throw down if the situation calls for it, but I'm not pro-plug who skates 2 to sit 5 from some staged boxing match with the other team's plug. At the same time, I think we can win with the team we have. I also think we can win with Brad May, but not necessarily because of Brad May.

Much credit to you. I sincerely wish more people would just admit that this is why they want an enforcer instead of inventing ridiculous theories to support it helping the team.

I agree on both points. Homer just doesn't have enough anymore to skate with the top 6. Keep him on the PP, because he's still great at planting himself in front of the crease, but 5-on-5 he doesn't have much, if any, value. Putting Z and D back together and getting Flip on the 2nd line might not be a bad idea. I favor the idea of balancing your lines as much as possible, but there's no denying that they're better together than separately.