gcom007

Is it sad that I've started to forget that Helm is on this team? Not trying to minimize the guy at all, as anyone who's seen the guy, especially in the playoffs, knows he's huge. But these long term injuries are just brutal. I can't even imagine how hard it must be for him.

If anyone doesn't think Babcock is a great coach at this point, they're out of their mind. This team should not be doing as well as they are, let's be real. Players don't just manifest the kind of success we're having right now. Great coaching plays a HUGE factor in a team's playoff success. I've always thought he was a great coach, and the best choice for the Wings right now. He's not the best at managing the goalies in my opinion, but no one's perfect.

Given what was expected of him and his lack of a regular season for all intents and purposes, he's been really solid and certainly important to our playoff success thus far. He seems to have a good attitude and he seems excited to be out there playing. That can go a long way this time of year.

Oh, I definitely think it was a goal, but I definitely think it was close and after them blowing the Franzen play before that lead to a goal, I think it was a kneejerk makeup call. I'll take it, because the goal before shouldn't have happened.

Despite how the 1st game ended, I started believing when we came back and tied that game early on right away. We didn't have the gas to finish, but we tied it early and kept it tight until we had nothing left. I had a real good feeling heading into game 2 after seeing that team in the 1st game. And I had a real good feeling this morning and all day. I couldn't wait for the game, and if I think we're going to lose, I'm not excited like that. There will be no shame if we end up losing this series as Chicago is a great team, but there's no reason we can't win this series, now more than ever.

Sometimes the young players don't know any better than to stay on a roll once they're on one. Our stars and our youth and our goalie are winning these games.

So, Howard was absolutely huge tonight. A lot of guys had big moments, but Howard was HUGE. We were in this game because of Howard through the 1st and he locked down the win. Phenomenally great game from him.

It's really amazing that Datsyuk got that shot off as well as he did. That was not exactly a great pass. Brilliant, brilliant timing. I will never tire of watching Datsyuk work his magic.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Anyone who ever thought it was a good idea to keep Franzen over Hossa was and always will be out of their minds. Even at his best, Franzen is a one-dimensional player. Hossa brought you all the offensive upside and more that Franzen at his best brings (let's hope "brings" is still the proper word, but "brought" is probably more appropriate at this point...), and on top of that he's great in the defensive zone and one of the hardest workers on the ice every night, which is a great example for the younger players. It was absolutely insane that Holland prioritized Franzen over Hossa. Holland should've done all that was necessary to keep both Franzen and Hossa, and don't give me the "not enough cap room" crap, he absolutely could've done more to clear space. But he was afraid to for the same reasons that lead to him prioritizing Franzen in the first place; he's too sentimental (or something...) on guys that have been with the team longer. Sure, it would've hurt our depth a bit, but we ended up losing some of the guys we prioritized over Hossa anyways, and the new depth guys we signed would've been able to be signed even after signing Hossa. Now more than ever, when you have a chance to lock up a guy like Hossa, a guy who could be a legitimate franchise player on most teams in this league, you do it. And to think, we were trying to sign Parise at what, $9 million last summer when we could've had Hossa for around $5 million. It still just makes me sick and is one of the many reasons I still question Holland's ability to manage this team well in the cap era.

I just want to complain about Holland not signing Hossa up for life, again. That's all. Super glad we tied it so fast. That goal alone gave me hope for this series, and to be honest, I haven't had much. Chicago is a very, very, very good team.

"It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist." -Tina Fey

The thing that scares me about Chicago isn't just their record or talent, it's that they work their asses off. Every game I saw them in this year, I was just impressed, plain and simple. It was no surprise at all that they kept winning games because they had talent and they worked hard. It's one thing to have a ton of talent and coast on it in the regular season, but if you have the work ethic to match it, that's scary. Maybe I just saw some flukey games, but like I said, every game I saw was just purely impressive. They are a very, very good hockey team right now. There will be no shame if we were to lose the series to them in my mind.

Happy for this team, proud of this team. I like that we've got so many young guys as I think it's our wildcard that could come up big, and thus far, they've been real solid. This was a real fun series to watch, though at times painful and agonizing, but in the end, a lot of fun. I wasn't sure we'd win the series at the start, but I had a feeling we'd take game 7 once we got to it, because these guys are just really working hard out there. I'm scared of Blackhawks...but at least Datsyuk will have descent ice to work with. And hey, remember when we beat the Avs 7-0 near the end of the regular season and then they beat us in the playoffs? Maybe we'll reverse it! I'm scared of the Blackhawks. But you never know...

I think we'll know a lot about this game in the first five minutes.

It must've been a real bummer to have made that user name after Manny started a playoff series. And then, you know, 2008...

Agree, definitely didn't like the play and he's not perfect, but he's been solid most of the time.

There's no real defensive leader. Kronwall is not the guy. Not to mention the fact that he's incredibly irresponsible when it comes to taking penalty minutes. I'm not saying offense isn't a problem, but I do think not having that go-to leader and stabilizer hurts this team. Leaders make the guys around them better; they light the fires under people. We don't have that guy on defense. But really, that has nothing to do with that goal, which was just a sloppy play in the offensive zone. But in general, this team doesn't seem to know how to get on the same page and protect a lead and shut a team down. That last five minute stretch was rough, but remember game 2?!?

Absolutely terrible goal to give up.

I don't think it was a terrible hit, but in this day and age, if you leave your feet and the head even looks like it's involved, you're in trouble. Probably for the best, but still hard to stomach. Gotta play smarter as time goes on.

People forget that Osgood was an All Star goalie in 2008. What has Monster done this year? Even if you want to say that Howard hasn't been at his best, we have no other reasonable options, so this is really a silly discussion.

Looks like he did have a NTC. Interesting, though McGuire didn't mention it. But putting it all back into a broader context again, didn't Holland say that it boiled down to not wanting to give up a 1st round pick? If that's what Calgary prioritized, and we refused to give one up and St. Louis was willing, then Detroit didn't have a "way better offer." That's the bottom line. McGuire's comments are officially irrelevant in my mind.

Perhaps McGuire simply has a different perspective than Calgary on what the team needs. If I'm stacked at forward and need a goalie and you offer me a crew of solid forwards and someone else offers me a respectable goalie, I'll go with the goalie. Hard to put much stock in this. I don't think Calgary or anyone is in the business of hurting their team for the sake of hurting their team, so obviously they had different thoughts on the matter than McGuire's if there's even any truth to what McGuire is suggesting.

Six of one, half dozen of the other, really. And as has already been said, who cares about being embarrassed? What about what's best for the team moving forward? There's really nothing embarrassing about missing the playoffs this year anyways. That we're still in it at all is an accomplishment given the injuries, the personnel losses, and the inability of Holland to do much of anything that's actually had an effect on this team in the last couple years, especially this year considering that over half the guys he signed have spent the vast majority of the season on IR. It doesn't get sillier than that, so why are we talking about embarrassment? The bottom line is that the best thing that could come of this year is getting a higher draft pick at this point. This is not a Cup-ready team. Not even close.

Is it really though? We're running on fumes this year. Do you think this team is anywhere close to a playoff team if you take Datsyuk or Zetterberg away? I don't, at all. And neither of those guys are getting any younger; we don't even have to touch on the Datsyuk rumors given that fact. We also got a lot of strong efforts from the kids that are here mostly due to injuries. But can they do that consistently at this point? We haven't seen many examples of it. I think it's one thing for a guy to come up and fill in for an injured player and play above average for where he's at in development, and an entirely different thing for the same guy to get the full time promotion to the big team. There's a lot more pressure and it's a much tougher grind. We've seen plenty of examples in the last 5-6 years of kids coming up and dazzling on call-ups for a few games at a time and then when forced to answer the bell full time, they all but disappeared. Sometimes they get their acts together after some of the nerves wear off, they adjust to the NHL game and get more experience in general. But as strong as our youth has been, I think it's naive to expect them to be able to play this well in a full time role right off the bat in the coming years. And another problem having to do with decline is the fact that we have struggled to attract high-end talent lately. That's not getting any better anytime soon, playoffs or not, until Holland either makes some splashes or we start drafting guys that can really make a splash a few years down the line. For that to happen, basically, we have to suck for awhile. Holland seems incapable at this point of building a true contender via trade or free agency, so perhaps the best option for the long-run success is to focus on the draft and trade what assets we have to stock up the farm. I want to win as badly as anyone and I've been pissed off about Holland's lack of upkeep with this team the last few years when we still had Lidstrom in the fold. That is when we needed to continue to go for it even if it meant trading on our future. If you maintain a top team, you're going to attract the kind of talent that will keep you a top team. You have leverage, and you build your team off of that. Now we're an overachieving, middle of the road team at best, competitive mostly because we still have Dats and Z in the fold every night. That's all good and well, but it's not sustainable, and again, if Holland can't bring in talent through trade or free agency and we keep drafting in the back of the middle, we're going to be in a lot more trouble as Dats and Z age and we have no premier talent to build around. It's just going to keep getting worse, and that's certainly not going to help us bring in talent. So again, at this point, especially this season, I think we're better off doing all we can to draft as high as we can and as often as we can. I hate losing too, but you've got to be realistic about the situation that we're in if you care about being even a semi-competitive team 4-5 years from now. If nothing changes and we continue down this middle ground, grinding down Dats and Z until they just can't carry us anymore, we're going to be a terrible, terrible team in a few years. You think it was brutal losing Rafalski and Lidstrom in a year? We still had two superstars to carry the load. Now imagine losing those two superstars that are in many ways the forward equivalent of what Lidstrom and Rafalski were to this team's defense, but the top guy you've got to carry the load and lead is an above-average, frequently-injured Kronwall, who can't seem to figure out how to stay out of the box. Oh yeah, and he's aging too. That's reality if we don't bring in new talent through trade or free agency or draft much better talent than we have, and again, there's only one way to do that.