haroldsnepsts

But he has those nice up-ice rushes! You know, the ones where he builds speed and skates through some guys, carries into the offensive zone wide, takes a bad angle shot from along the boards deep in the zone so it's an easy save and now he's taken himself completely out of position.

The decisions were made by the coaching staff and management. Not Quincey. Obviously the Kings (and now Colorado) saw something in him that the Wings didn't.

If I had to guess, it probably is because he doesn't play a second of PK time (if it can be helped) and rarely on the PP either, so the only thing left is even strength.

Honestly I wouldn't say he was lights out. He played a solid game, and the team played very well in front of him. You're right that the Leafs deserve some credit here. The Wings had more than a few chances handed to them. The gift from the refs with the terrible call on Ponikarovsky, then the gift from the Leafs with Too Many Men. But the Wings PP could barely muster a decent chance.

This game took a turn in the first period when the Wings had a tremendous shift, keeping the puck in the Leafs zone with multiple scoring chances. It looked like a power play. Then Ericsson makes a bad pinch, Draper falls down as he trying to cover, leaving only Lebda back, who executes the perfect backwards screen, taking neither the player nor puck. The puck ends up in our net in spite of the total domination just seconds before. How many times have we seen that happen already this season?

it's funny because it's true. Eva, for once, I absolutely, completely agree with you. Now that he's paired with a rookie, Lebda is being revealed as the mess that he is. Even the guys on HNIC kept mentioning all his mistakes.

If you were to survey every player in the league other than the Wings, I would buy you the Coyotes franchise if more than one of them (Hossa) said Kopecky was the Wing's most physical forward last year.

Oh, I didn't realize we were talking about fictional hits based on meaningless extrapolations. but sure, Kopecky led the team in imaginary hits.

conservatively, Zetterberg Datsyuk Hossa Cleary Draper The incorrect assumption you are making is that the most statistical hits = the most physical player. Kopecky having a large number of hits doesn't mean he was the most physical. It only means he was the forward with the most recorded hits, nothing more. Most of his hits were glancing blows at best. And he does fall down a lot of the time. Guys like Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Cleary and Hossa were easily more physical. They may not have thrown as many hits, the but the ones they did throw had greater impact. they also spent a lot more time in the high traffic areas, knocking guys off pucks, battling in corners. As someone else mentioned, not all hits are created equal.

Honestly I don't hate Kopecky the way some here do. I don't think he deserved to be the whipping boy here. But to call him the Wings most physical forward is hee-larious.

Unfortunately, the little bit of Holmstrom he has is the part that falls down a lot.

Apparently the Kings?? They had four goals in the third period to beat the Pens 5-2. Kopitar with 2 goals, Brown with a goal and an assist. Everyone's favorite player had 0 points and was a -1, and 1 sog in over 20 minutes of ice time.

unfortunately, I think the title of this thread says it all. I got excited until I read it was three days and not weeks. It must be great relief to be headache free for three days after having one every day. I can't imagine how awful that must be. But to me it seems like his coming back at all is a longshot at this point, let alone this season, or by the olympics. I would love to be wrong though.

Not really. People hate how much attention Crosby gets, so they create threads about him here and obsess over every time he's mentioned. I was responding to a post by BlueMonk. If you had read my previous post in the thread, you'd see I agree that the overhyping of Crosby is incredibly annoying, but made the distinction that it's not his doing. I'm sick of it, but I don't blame Crosby for it. Irony would be creating a message about how I think it's weird that people feel the need to sign every post they make. harold

My only problem with the Crosby bashing it is it gets old. People complain about how much undeserved attention Crosby gets, yet they post a thread ripping on him for every single things he does, and don't see the irony.

Yes, it is. He is played to pay hockey. He does not work in the marketing department for the NHL. Do you not realize how ridiculous it is to expect him to be responsible for promoting other players in the league? Add Chelios to your list, and he didn't have the excuse of youth or distraction. He just wasn't man enough to come out and shake hands with the Ducks in the conference finals.

I like where Brett Hull talks about Avery needing to tone it down a little "but he's young and he'll learn." umm, no he won't. Avery is a douchebag, but he did nothing wrong here. O'Brien reaches over and starts jabbing him with his stick. Anyone would've grabbed it in that situation.

I'm sure it's part slow start and age catching up with him, but based on how sloppy this team has been up until recently, it wouldn't surprise me if he's been playing much more conservatively in terms of offense.

Your complaint is with the NHL, not Crosby. He didn't force them to make them the headline story. I agree it gets really, really old, and is a disservice to a lot of great players in the league.

This makes no sense. If you're out there for more time, why exactly are you going to rack up more +/- stats? Or more specifically, if you're out there longer, how does that explain away having a greater minus rating? When actually, Ericsson's less ice time means his stat is based on a smaller sample size. It's generally overused and abused stat anyway. You titled the thread 2 games, 1 goal against... with Ericsson out of the lineup. If you weren't trying to imply they were much better defensively (hence the winning trend and one goal against), then why make that correlation? And don't pretend like people somehow jumped to this ridiculous conclusion. You led them there in your original post. what exactly is it you would like to discuss about Ericsson?

You don't seem to want much discussion. Your thread title, original, and subsequent posts clearly single out Ericsson as a major factor in their defensive problems. And you're pulling stats like plus minus to try and justify them. Have you been watching the games? Ericsson is a rookie, and will make rookie mistakes, but he's hardly been the worst defenseman out there. He's been the better half of a brutal pairing. The only thing I'd really like to see when he comes back into the lineup is that he not be paired with Lebda. If you want to look for things that changed defensively the last couple games, Lidstrom played 27 minutes against Boston, and the rest of the top four played a couple minutes extra a piece against Calgary. So our best D men were out on the ice more the last two games. That ice time isn't really sustainable over a season, but it probably had a greater impact defensively than Ericsson's absence.

I think Ericsson Lebda is a terrible pairing, but there were a lot more variables going on here than just Ericsson being out of the lineup.

This is the heart of it for me. Wiz didn't have him lined up right, and he threw a forearm. Did he mean to clip him in the head/throat? Maybe not, but it was a bad decision and deserves punishment. If you don't have him lined up, you don't flare a knee, throw a forearm to make contact. To me that video of hits from the 80s only proves how the hitting today has changed. They're showing highlights of the biggest hitters from that era, and there's no jumping into the hit, no leaving the feet. I saw a couple questionable knee hits, but most of them didn't involve a blow to the head in any way (from the check at least). Today guys are throwing themselves into checks, getting elbows way up, and slamming them with shoulder pads. I absolutely agree that they need to do something about the hard shell football style pads guys are wearing. If players all wore shoulder pads like Shanny, they'd think twice about launching shoulder first into a guy's skull. Man, watching the 80s hitting makes me realize that there's been a slow creep in the game as to what constitutes a charge. These guys all have their skates on the ice at contact and most of the time through it. By that standard, just about every hit Kronner throws is a charge because he explodes (if you're a wings fan) or jumps (if you're not) into them.

Yes, this is the right suspension, it just seems harsh because the NHL has gotten it wrong on so many of those other hits lately. (like Richards). This was a forearm shiver to the neck/throat. Easily preventable and a bad decision by Wiz. As for the Kronwall hit, it's hard to see on a decent replay because it's all the way across the ice, but it looks like he jumped (which he does sometimes) and stuck out his arm to catch Carter. He didn't catch as much of him as Wiz did on Doan, but it's still certainly worth a penalty and possibly a suspension. Given it was the playoffs though, you pretty much have to decapitate a guy to get one game. And back to the OP, I don't know that it's duck specific, but there's definitely inconsistency here in the league. If someone like Ovechkin makes that hit, no penalty, no suspension.

Up until Oct 31st, it was based on last season (which is how the Kings got Jones). The good news is they just reshuffled based on this season's record. So I would think the Wings are 12th in line, unless one of those 11 in front of them has already picked someone off waivers this year (which would move them to the back of the line)? That's kind of a guess on my part, but I think that's how it works.