gcom007

Fact: Conklin's let in 3+ goals in more games than he's let in 2+. Fact: So if you've made a point at all, it's relevant for both goales. Fact: That's not cool. Advice: You shouldn't make overzealous bandwagon statements.

In some ways I can see this, but I honestly don't feel like either goalie has played bad enough to lose or good enough to win games this year. I think this team has been losing as a team a lot this year and outscoring themselves out of defensive disasters all year long. If you really break it down and look at the games, Conklin hasn't been as impacting a factor as it might appear. "Better" doesn't mean "gamechanger." Thus, the need to pick and choose starters based on who were playing seems kinda pointless to me.

Nice...I love that Tkachuk is just chilling their in front. Did anyone touch him even?

I'd start Osgood far more, at least 2-3 games to 1 for Conklin and he goes in the playoffs no matter what. If Osgood's falling apart after 2-3, peace out, hope Conklin pulls an Ozzie08...

Honestly...

How do you figure? I said Conklin has looked better. Blatantly. Read it again. I said I don't think Conkln's looked great. I think that's fair. He's got more 3+ GA games than he does 2+ and less. Is that great? I don't think so. And furthermore, it's not like I even blamed him. I think he's played pretty well this year. But I think Osgood's played better than his stats suggest especially since coming back from injury. I think and I believe that I am absolutely correct when I say that the problem with this team starts and ends with defense. When it gets going, Osgood and Conklin's stats will soar. Both goalies will look good every night and Osgood will return to form when he finally gets a chance to play in some games worth building upon. And he's looking good thus far this period...if he sucked as bad as y'all suggest, wouldn't they have already scored twice on this power play?

When the defense isplaying as s***ty as ours has this year, it minimizes the concern. Well, maybe it doesn't minimize the concern, but it spreads the focus. I don't think anyone could suggest that Osgood's playing great, but he's looking worse than he should because the D's playing bad too. I'm betting that injury awhile back wasn't helping things before being out and since then, he really hasn't been given much of a chance to get his confidence back and see a steady game. Conklin's stats wouldn't be as hot without the shutouts and 3 were against junk teams and 2 were in games (SJS and Winter Classic) where the whole team came out and played like champs. I'm not saying Conklin hasn't been better. He has. But he's also had his fair share of goals scored against him thanks to our D issues. If the D issues continue, Conklins stats will finish out closer to Osgoods unless he takes more of the bottom of the barrel games. Again, the thing that's far more striking to me if you watch the games and pay attention to the big picture is that neither goalie has looked great with our shaky D this year. Conklin's looked better than Osgood, but really, has that been great? I don't think so. Conklins GA... 5 games with 0 GA (EDM, CHI, CBJ, SJ, LAK) 4 games with 1 GA (one game in relief...) 3 games with 2 GA 6 games with 3 GA 5 games with 4 GA 2 games with 5 GA Is that really stellar? I guess what I'm saying, if Osgood's really as finished as many suggest he is, is Conklin looking like a really great option? I don't think so. Could it be there's something bigger at play? Like crap D? Absolutely.

Bye Manny. Go home to your home on the bench you self-aggrandizing backup. Stay put!

Fabulosity? What the hell?

But he's right and it's ridiculous and ignorant to blame the goalies as much as people generally do on this board. And on that note, the blues score on the power-play once again. Don't know what to say. I imagine Osgood should've had that too? And sure, it'd be nice if he did, and he could, but you know, I just can't beat up on him or Conklin too much with the way the rest of the guys on the ice are playing. Sorry. I watch the whole game and don't default to blaming the goalie when we play s*** defense and then get scored on on the power play.

Another weird goal. That pucks got a mind of its own tonight.

Wow...just wow...I don't know if I should be mad at Lidstrom or Osgood or if that was just weird. It was just weird...

I think Maltby's going to finish strong this year. I'm going to predict that he'll finish with 10-15 goals this year and have a real strong playoffs. He's a better player than we've seen in the Babcock era. He'll do well.

Like I said! Malty getting it going tonight. Look for Maltby to finish with 10-15 goals and have a strong playoffs. I'm calling it now.

Who's PROVEN to have more potential to succeed in their careers? Chris Osgood or Ty Conklin? We all know the obvious answer to that is Osgood. If anyone picks Conklin over a guy with as many wins and 2 Cups that are all his over Conklin's career-backup status and ONE, again, 1, playoff game, and 5 minutes at that, you're absolutely crazy. That said, say all you want about performance this season, in the playoffs, you want to have the best goalie possible playing. Osgood clearly has the potential to be the better goalie and to be outstanding when it counts at that. Again, 2 shutouts in a row to open the Stanley Cup Finals last year and likely #2 on the list in Conn Smythe voting. Osgood playing at his best is absolutely our best option. Just like we did with Hasek last year, we need to ride him a lot down this stretch to get him ready and then see what he does in the playoffs. If he fumbles, you give Conklin a chance and pray for him to live up to half of Osgoods standard last year, which would still be great. But until then, you've gotta give Osgood every opportunity to get this thing going. I was a proponent of Osgood starting last year in many ways as I felt Dom was well into his decline, but I said the same thing as I am now. You've got to give your best guy a chance to get it together. It's simply ludicrous to suggest otherwise.

Except Legace did choke because he's a fan-glorified career backup that can't take the heat when it counts. He proved that two years in a row by not only not winning, but downright playing bad and contributing to the reasons why we lost. He's the only goalie we've had in over 15 years that has played as bad or worse than the team in a losing playoff run. Every other year, maybe the goalies weren't phenominal, but they weren't awful either and we just couldn't score. Meanwhile, Osgood's won 2 Cups on his watch and has won 59 playoff games. Legace's only won 177 regular season games! 4 in the playoffs. Even Babcock was delusional on this one. It's to this day the only major mistake I think he's bad since being here.

Yeah, I think Maltby's actually had a descent season all things considered. I actually wouldn't be shocked to see him open up even a bit more as the season goes on and into the playoffs. I've always felt like he's a better player than we've seen in the Babcock-era and I've seen more hints of it this year. And Draper's Draper, what can you say? But I seriously think if we win the Cup this year, he might retire. Again, I'm not begging for it nor do I think it's a certainty, but I wouldn't be shocked to see it happen at all. He's a team-first guy and he has to know that he's lost a step these last two years and it's to the point where it might actually be relevant to suggest that even in the ever-loyal Detroit system he's taking someone's spot. And he knows how the economics work and that he's not likely playing up to his cap hit at this point all things considered. He signed that deal after a really solid year for him especially considering his age. He's clearly not that same player though.

Yeah, true story. They retire if anything but I'm not betting on it. I love the guys and have supported them being here for awhile, but perhaps more with Draper this year, I'm wondering if it might be getting time to hang 'em up...he's got a fairly beefy cap hit considering he's likely taking the spot of a young guy who could do more on a cheaper salary. He's hardly dead-weight, but he's not even the player who signed that deal in '07 after a strong '06/'07 season and he was about the only guy on the team that I thought had a bad playoffs. I hate saying that though. This is the first time I've felt like it really is time for some of these older guys to move on. McCarty's been a mess this year. Chelios has barely played. I think he might prove valuable to have around in the playoffs and I'm not pissed that anyone's here right now, but I think it's going to be hard to justify having Chelios and McCarty back next year. If we win the Cup this year, I think it'd be reasonable if a few of these guys retired. Chelios could play in the same role for the money and be considered a playing coach of sorts, but maybe he'd like to go out a champ? Maybe McCarty as well ought to just let it go and be grateful he got to finish where he started with 1 or maybe 2 more Cups? Maybe Draper decides he'd like to go out a champ too. I think Maltby would be nice to have around another year as he's still cheap and experience still is valuable. I'm not going to campaign for guys like Draper to leave for the same reason, but if you can pick one of the two, I take Maltby to free up cap space. We've got PK guys and solid faceoff-men. It'll be very strange though not seeing them around once they are done. Those are the original boys who we started this train with. It's weird to think that Osgood could out last them all should Draper hang them up early. I don't know why I think he might, but I don't know. Two more years after this one? I'm sure he knows that he's been on the decline. It'll be interesting to see if anything does come of it.

I'm talking about how you called the Ducks something else...

I was not happy much at all with Osgoods play in the first half and you can look it up. I wasn't afraid to say it. He wasn't playing his game and he was just weak in the play in general. Since returning from injury though, like Outsider said, he's been significantly better. Not perfect, but certainly better. Both goalies have been the victims of some seriously terrible defense all year. In many ways this situation reminds me a lot of Dom last year in the regular season in that he started off rough due to typical Dom weirdness and then battled injuries. But he pulled out of it and he came back and put up solid numbers the rest of the year. But the D was there last year and the Team D game was executed perfectly. That helped him a lot. Thankfully, some of the other Dom-issues plaguing him last year like age and it's effect on Dom's style aren't so relevant with Osgood. He's a lot younger and his style is far less acrobatic and more about being mentally smart and precise on the angles. With that style, he'll be about as good as he's been until he retires; age won't bog him down like Dom, though I'm sure he won't push it like Dom did anyways. But right now, age isn't an issue and his style is different. That bodes well for an Osgood turn-around of Cup-worthy proportions if the D gets it together. I'm still a believer. But the D's gotta get their first...

I did but I noted that first off. It's the same sentiments and I didn't feel like retyping it. And you made a poignant typo when listing other teams? I hope it was an accident because it's a perfect accident.

When they're too ignorant to see the bigger problem here, you can't expect them to be logical.

Here is a cut and paste of a post I made in a thread yesterday. The problem starts and ends with defense. I think it's fairly clear that the root of the problem doesn't exactly lie with the goalies. Both are about as good as the defense, which is to be expected with a sub-million dollar goalie and to some extent with Osgood. While Osgood has plenty of room to improve to live up to his potential, it doesn't change the fact that a much more pressing and concerning issue is just how sloppy the defense is right now. Not just among the defensemen, but team defense. It's nearly non-existent. Conklin's pulled shutouts lately and the defense has looked good mostly against the bottom of the barrel teams but when they've been challenged at all, the defense looks terrible and Osgood or Conklin surrender 3/4/5 goals a game easy. Once again, emphatically, there are only a few "stand on your head" goalies in the world that can and have done it year in year out. Very, very few. They get paid at least $8 million a season to carry teams with junk defense corps. We have one of the best defensive groups in the league on paper and probably the best collection of defensive-minded forwards in the game. We should not need a "stand on your head" goalie. There is no reason for it with the guys we have. And even so, Osgood has won 2 Cups on his own watch and is capable of playing at a far higher level than he's paid to play at. Conklin has come in and played admirably and indeed has outplayed Osgood so far this year. But you can't expect Conklin, a career backup getting paid less than a million, to stop everything. You cannot expect Osgood to stop everything despite how much people love to hate him and how much better he could play. The root issue here is that they shouldn't have to. Before the puck gets to the net, there's 5 guys on the ice that have a job to do too and they've done an awful job of it this year. They've shown little to no improvement over the course of the season. At best they've had flashes of brilliance soon to be followed by a slew of sloppy games. The mental toughness isn't there. The awareness is down. They give the puck away in their zone more times in one game this year than they did last year in ten. It's ridiculous. Everyone would love the goalies to stop more, but someone's gotta give them some help. They're the last stop on the line so they take more heat, but blaming them doesn't make it right let alone logical. That's simply not the case this year. Even in Osgood's weaker games where he absolutely has to shoulder a good deal of blame, he can't shoulder it alone as in every case I can remember, the defense has looked just as bad if not significantly worse. In plenty of other games, both goalies have played a "solid enough game to give a team a chance to win" and the defense has utterly dropped the ball on them. It's not even worth discussing the forwards. We're leading the league with 179 goals. Boston and San Jose are the only teams close with 175 and 165 respectively. The only reason we've won as much as we have this year is because they've been very productive. Our stars are scoring like stars most nights. Datsyuks among the top in the league in points. We've added Hossa. Z can do better but has hardly been bad. Franzen's played well. Hudlers come on. Samuelson's had a good year. You'd expect Cleary to be better but eh, it's a wash considering what other guys are doing. Quite simply, scoring is not our problem. The biggest problem with this team is the same one that's been there since the first game of the season: we're just playing sloppy hockey in our own end. If it tightens up for the rest of the season in the next game, Osgoods stats will improve dramatically and Conklin will be among the top in the league in stats. But until then, we're just going to keep poking along. This is hardly as simple as "just play Conklin" and thankfully most people realize that it's absurd to have to score 6 goals to win. The defense needs to clean their act up. Bottom line. If that happens, it won't matter who's in net. We'll win. They've both capable. Again, the problem starts and ends with defense.

I agree, points and stats aren't everything and it's hardly the basis of my opinion on the matter. But all the more so, unless you're on the 4th line or a singular-superstar, you're going to put up better numbers on a team like Detroit than on most other teams in the league.

I didn't ***** about Datsyuks contract and the fact of the matter is that he proved himself to be a superstar when he got the deal and it was known within the organization that he had nagging injuries in the playoffs that explained his lack of offense. Plus, Datsyuks shown superstar potential since day 1. I had no problem and have no problem with the Datsyuk deal. The only time Datsyuk's name should come up in a matter like this is to compare how much better Datsyuk has always been than Flip at his best. Flip is making half the money, but I don't feel like he's shown the potential to live up to it on the Red Wings. On a team where guys like Holmstrom don't even make $3 million and you've got undisputed superstars with cap hits at $6 and $6.7 million, someone as profoundly average (at best...) as Flip should absolutely not be making $3 million on this team. Maybe on another team with a different philosophy where he would carry more of the load. Not on the Detroit Red Wings. He's a $1-1.5 million guy on the Wings; all the more so this year. I hope he can prove me wrong on this team or any other. He seems like a decent guy and a fairly hard worker. He's a solid NHLer for sure. But as of now, I think he's overpaid, and I call it wishful thinking to suggest that he'll get that much better. His cap hit would be better used on Franzen and/or Hossa in the cap era. And I have no doubt that management knows that and if there's a way to lock Hossa and Franzen up if it means dumping Flip, he's gone. They may like him and it might be hard to reconcile in some ways, but they're not stupid.