gcom007

I actually kinda feel bad for the guy at this point but it’s like pulling a goalie on a season the way things are going. His fault or not, it’s getting to be about time.

My feed froze at the time out and I thought it was NHL app going to a silent commercial break. A minute later I got a notification on my watch that it was 4-1 and realized the feed was just frozen on Apple TV. I couldn’t ******* believe it. And now 5-1. Redmond rails on the refs. What else can we do this year? How is Ottawa behind us?

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard or seen our announcers sound so completely apathetic. Ken Daniels sounded like he wanted to kill himself in the last two minutes.

Wow, a win! It feels so good! And AA is just trying to make sure we don't have to give him a big contract. Wow guy.

I really wonder. The way this team looks so sloppy on the fundamentals is mind-blowing. They can’t seem to make a clean pass half the time and they clearly don’t have the same complete level as other teams night after night. It’s one thing to lose because you have a bad team, but there’s so many things even a bad team should do better than the Wings appear to be doing lately. That’s where I look at Blash and wonder what in the actual f*** they’re doing at practice. There’s no reason this team should look as bad as they do right now and that’s plain and simply a very poor reflection on Blashill.

It’s unbearable. AA agrees I guess. Crying on the bench or what?

Because this game has been so fun to watch...

Cholowski is absolutely killing me in this game.

******* embarrassing!!! I need a trash can to kick.

Getting f***ed up on a Tuesday!

Not worth going round and round, we have different thoughts, but I will say my Tune has been very consistent on Mrazek and I didn’t like the trade when it happened. I suspected he’d continue to improve and play well and that’s what’s happened. Carolina merely validated what I said all along.

I certainly don’t think it was completely because of Howard but I don’t think it helped, that’s all. Mrazek absolutely sucked for awhile. He was also great at times too, and stepped up in the playoffs. And he did all this at an age when Howard was still blowing every chance he had to make the team even as a backup. Jimmy has had plenty of stretches where he sucked too. That’s a huge reason Mrazek was able to break in and even get a real look at the starting job so early. Plenty of s*** is conjecture, but game logs don’t lie and Howard has had more than a few terrible stretches, but for some reason they’re more accepted than those of a 23 year old goalie still learning the pro-game in the pros at an age when Howard was still a fat AHL goalie. The way he hung in and turned it around towards the end along with his age make it pretty simple to me. Should’ve hung onto him for cheap and skipped Bernier or shipped out Howard. Carolina has made that point more clear.

Someone said Prince sucked? The actual f***?

post-game interviews aren’t easy to come by from years back. And 90% of this forum is unsubstantiated rambling. Ultimately, we traded Mrazek at the age Howard broke into the NHL. That’s enough for me.

Pretty big game tonight to me. I think we either get back to how we started the season with some momentum and energy or that whole new identity thing completely evaporates and we set sail on a sinking tank.

I’m not saying he didn’t make his bed in many ways, but Howard and Mrazek definitely had animosity and Howard didn’t exactly help make anything a smooth transition; it was clear he was butthurt and not team-first in plenty of interviews. Great example for Mrazek in his young career and exactly what he needs to be dealing with especially in an overly veteran-friendly organization. And the point was Rittich is clearly the starter and Talbot the backup. No confusion. No ******* with confidence. I think it’s all a little ridiculous too, but you hear that s*** all the time from hockey people and goalies in particular, and watching enough butthurt Howard interviews back in the day it was pretty obvious that locker room was in a weird place. Mrazek did s*** the bed (Howard has been plenty good at s***ting the bed for extended periods too lest we forget and again, has done jack s*** in the playoffs) for awhile and ultimately he takes the brunt of the grief because he got the big deal and fans love to turn on young players that aren’t perfect/Lindstrom, but our ******* vet goalie cried to the media and bemoaned that he was clearly and consistently outplayed instead of accepting his fate as a backup and being a good example. Two guys being selfish. Both pulled out of their funks at different times, so good on that, but Howard’s not a gamer and is old. Mrazek returned to form before we traded him, and then we let him go for basically nothing. When we’ve got nothing to lose and we can likely keep him cheap, we should’ve kept him as opposed to trading him. Let Howard finally move on; he has no place in our future at this point whereas Mrazek had potential to be our next-gen goalie and a good if not great one at that. It was a dumb hockey move for the team. Even if he hadn’t returned to form like he has, it’s still worth the gamble given where the whole team is at and his potential upside. And we have Howard and Bernier and are generally terrible on any given night while Hurricanes made a deep run and are off to a great start; not sure how that played out as better for us.

The Mrazek trade was and is still the one I don’t like. Like you said, the age and the ceiling played in his favor. He certainly had his ups and downs, but f***, they didn’t exactly make it easy on him. I still think the situation was mismanaged between him and Howard and that played into some of the mental and attitude problems. I was actually reminded of it last night when I think Osgood and co. we’re talking about Calgary’s situation and the importance of not having a veteran goalie hanging around and screwing with the confidence of the young guy. Howard has never been a playoff goalie and you can’t build a winner around that. Mrazek has proven consistently that he has another gear in the playoffs and he’s still really young. I’d feel a lot better about our team right now in the next few years as we improve across the board if we had Mrazek coming into his prime in net. We’re going to be expecting a lot out of a young Larsson once he’s up while many of our other important players have been around for awhile. Mrazek should’ve been a part of that group preparing for the next legit push. Howard is fine, but he wasn’t worth hanging onto when it ultimately compromised the future.

That I could totally see. His delusions about Babcock’s obsession with him strike me as pure self-aggrandizement. We’ve seen plenty of his over the top personality at this point; perhaps that had something to do with it. I do suspect he was liked by the players for his personality, but I could totally see how a coach wouldn’t be a fan. If it’s true that he said all that stuff to Holland about Babcock not liking him and then made a big scene of it with Babs on the call, that’s certainly not a great setup either. That puts you on the radar. Perhaps it was a call that ended with Babs thinking “you know, I didn’t think much about you at all before, but now I might” sort of thing. Most everyone in hockey management respects the hell out of Babcock. Players don’t necessarily like him. Wasn’t it rumored Shanahan wasn’t a huge fan in the year he played under him? Well, he also helped bring him into Toronto. I think that summarizes a lot about Babcock in general.

I posted in the wrong thread. f*** a duck. That was beyond ugly. Helm lost his s*** like the rest of us. Maybe it really is for the best that a lot of our better prospects are still down in GR. This is ******* embarrassing. I reconciled Seider not being here tonight. I don’t want him to smell the stank of this s***.

Pretty much exactly what I’ve thought about it all along. Anyone who talks as much as he does in the way he does is clearly self-serving, which immediately raises red flags with me about the legitimacy about what’s being said.

That was a pretty s***ty and uncharacteristic move by Helm. This game is also pretty s***ty though unfortunately starting to feel characteristic of this team. f*** a duck.

It’s very hard for me to buy that Babs simply wanted to end this guy’s career. It doesn’t really add up. I can’t see anyone at that level caring enough to go out of their way to do that. I’m sure he was hard on him and busted his chops and obviously didn’t play him much, but the suggestion that he explicitly wanted to end his career seems like a major reach. Definitely some interesting tidbits mixed in, particularly the Modano bit. Remember how hard he made it for Osgood to hit 400 wins? I always thought that seemed really odd and personal.