gcom007

Glenny was bleeding at the end of the play. Hopefully it's just a simple patching up because of all those blood rules.

Wow. 2 incredible saves. These guys owe Petr some goals after those. Unreal.

I have no idea how that didn't go in. Amazing save. PK GO!

Womp womp womp

Since the circumstances are really that simple. Mrazek isn't just any rookie goalie and Howard clearly had complications related to coming back from his injury. Before that, he was playing great and made the all star team. He's no joke, and he's absolutely an asset still. Is he a monster asset? No. But on a team that's had basically no tradable assets for years, he's a big asset. I'm not a Howard-basher, never have been, and I'm not even convinced Mrazek will have an easy adjustment to the full-time starting role. What I do know is that given Howard's age and contract, the longer we hang onto him, the less he's going to be worth. He's still at a point where he can be a quality goaltender and a difference maker. He has value. So why would I want to trade that away? Again, only to improve the D. If that's not possible, yes, hang onto him because as said, Mrazek will likely still face struggles. But either way it's a gamble, and I think the long term value of adding a quality defenseman outweighs the benefits of having two starters when you have someone coming up who's as good as Mrazek. He looks like he could be better than Howard, maybe a lot better, but at worst, I don't think he could be much worse than Howard. Trading Howard would absolutely be worth the gamble for a defenseman.

We need to improve the defense more than we need to have two starters in my opinion. If we can't improve the defense in a trade involving Howard, it's a non-starter to me though, to be clear. Then you definitely still want two good goalies for a minute, because as I've said, I don't expect Mrazek to have miraculously cleaned up all his consistency issues over the course of the lull-filled regular season. Bug again, getting a decent d-man for Howard would help more long term than keeping Howard in the short term.

I hope Holland at least entertains the idea of trading Howard to upgrade the D. There's a part of me that definitely thinks it'd be good to have both next year as I still expect Mrazek to go through some growing pains now and again. But Howard is the best asset we've had since Flip that we can now likely afford to give up, and we really, really need to upgrade our D. In my mind, he's got to at least try. And hell, at this point, I wouldn't be shocked if Howard requested a trade. He's not going to want to be the backup on a team at this point in his career. He's 31; he doesn't have that many years left of his prime.

He's been nothing short of incredibly impressive. Imagine those stats if he had a team in front of him that didn't hand Tampa so many opportunities, and if the team hadn't collapsed last night? He really has looked solid even in the losses. But for him to come in here at this point in his career and do this in the playoffs, it's just unreal. I really didn't think it'd go down like this so quickly, but I think it's pretty clear at this point that we have a new starter. He'll still have struggles, and I expect next year will have it's ups and downs, but he's proving right now that he knows how to elevate his game when it matters most. That's exactly what you want in a starter and a playoff goalie.

Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge win. Can't say it enough. Especially the way this one started coming off the last game. That was just an absolutely outstanding effort top to bottom. Z came up huge. Mrazek playing like a stud. Big opportunity to close it out at home on Monday. Gotta keep pushing harder and harder. Every game's going to get tougher.

PAVEL ******* DATSYUK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY HEART IS FILLED WITH ALL OF THE JOY! ALLLLL OF THE JOYYYYYY!!!

I keep seeing these posts and my feed is behind and I'm just wincing and waiting. That one was brutal. Kinda like that awful smoking eye commercial on the NBC feed. Good God, Lemon...I don't smoke, stop making me suffer!!!

Showing why he's the captain tonight. He's finding that extra gear in a huge game and coming up big, and you know it's harder for him right now than it's ever been in his career. Heart and soul.

Sad and pathetic.

Because we are behind all the others. We started a day late and got that extra day off.

His best game of the series. He's been big tonight.

I really want to see that 3rd goal tonight.

Which is really what this team needs if we're going to continue making any noise. We're seemingly not a deep team, but when those guys find a way to raise their game like they have, we become a much tougher team to play against and we've got a chance to win every night.

I've always liked Glenny, but man oh man, who would've thought he'd become this important of a player to this team? You've got to love it.

Big, big goal right there. No way around it.

Now would be a phenomenally great time to capitalize on a power play.

Watching Ericsson play literally hurts my soul so much of the time.

I normally don't get super stressed and agitated until the 3rd period. I've already got the itch tonight...

I wouldn't be so sure that money isn't a problem. Those lower-level players don't make near as much as others, and much of that money goes to agents and taxes. If you really break it down and consider how many years they actually end up playing, there's not near as much money as it may appear to us when we see just the raw contract numbers. On top of that, their earning potential once they're outside the game decreases immensely. If you're smart, you can set yourself up pretty well, but unfortunately, a lot of these guys aren't so smart when it comes to matters of money.

Eh, I'm betting something got a lot more aggravated in game 3. While I don't expect much from Z at this point given the nature of his issues, Datsyuk is still definitely capable of being much, much better than he looked last night.

There's absolutely no way in hell that Datsyuk is even close to 100% right now.