Heroes of Hockeytown

Point is they won. Probably with Shanny, but Stevie and Feds wouldn't have done any better. It's a non-issue since it didn't have any effect on anything that followed anyways. The sun rose the next day, Game 7 commenced, and everything that happened in Game 6 was rendered meaningless.

Lilja is/was perfectly capable of defending himself, he just lost a fight. I doubt Wings' management holds the opinion of the nebulous "they" in high regard. The Wings handled themselves fine. Even when things got out of control and ended badly in Game 6 against the Ducks*, all they did was turn around and win the next game and the series. *Aside: Which was bulls*** besides. Niedermayer hiding behind his visor and Getzlaf jumping a much smaller, unaware, non-fighter, just-coming-off-injury Rafalski from behind. EDIT: For moar.

Fourth line jobbers are here.

Which takes us back to here, "please show me in the cap world where he is worth much more than $2,000,000 a year?" Which I have now done for you.

Why are you including his salary info at all, then? He is going to make oodles of money next year when he's RFA. Here are some guys that scored in the 50-60 point range, that are not on Entry Level deals, and the money they're making: Dave Bolland, 47 points, $3.375M cap hit. Nick Antropov, 59 points, $4M cap hit. Nik Zherdev, 58 points, awarded $3.9M by arbiter. Tuomo Ruutu, 54 points, $3.8 cap hit. Michael Ryder, 53 points, $4M cap hit. Kris Versteeg, 53 points, $3.1M cap hit. Martin Erat, 50 points, $4.5M cap hit. Saku Koivu, 50 points, $4.5 cap hit. And then there are guys that are signed to bad contracts that scored in Hudler territory but make significantly more, like Scott Gomez and Chris Drury. The money, in relation to his peers, is fair. It just happens to be that the Wings can't afford it.

Parise is on an Entry Level deal bro.

A pretty fair suggestion. But you could say the same for Yzerman and Fedorov. Doubtful any of them would be champs without each other.

I suspect you know what I meant.

Do you suppose Holland should gameplan for having one of his top pairing defensemen missing? The Wings are good enough to beat the Ducks when healthy and when less-than-healthy, so good on them.

This topic couldn't be more polarizing if it were about *** abortions.

The pillars of the Red Wings dynasty are Yzerman, Lidstrom, and Fedorov, and without any one of them we'd still be counting up the years since the last championship. I never did get to see Steve play at his very peak, when he scored 65 goals and set a mark for points unreached by anyone not named Gretzky or Lemieux, so I don't know if it'd be fair for me to say anything about it one way or another with regards to quality of play. Certainly during my life, as Steve aged and suffered injuries while Nick was going through his prime and was an iron man, the latter would be my pick. For impact though, there's no question it's Steve.

I'm sure there will be plenty of this though.

With all due respect to Steve, he wasn't a tenth the player at that age that Nick will be.

Well, if he was a heart and soul guy that busted his ass every night and still managed to put up 50-70 points a year he wouldn't be in the Wings price range, now would he? Take what you can get!

I can see why you'd make the comparison, then. I have direct visual footage to the contrary:

Lilja made the conscious decision to slam a guy down from behind in the middle of a rout, Malarchuk was just playing hockey. The odds are little higher you're going to get punched in the face in a hockey fight than get your throat slit while standing in your goal crease.

J-Will back on the point on the PP, that would be just... awesome. I'd really like to witness that again. And I needn't remind anyone that Big Willy Stylez has never attempted anything remotely resembling hockey in the playoffs.

I'm dying to see how you feel the two are related, besides being events that happened in the physical universe.

And Hatcher and Uwe Krupp in the interim -- the Wings are seriously cursed when it comes to big defensemen. Lilja's on deck.

Malkin was far more important than Talbot in the Finals. Lest we forget it was his massive reach picking off Stuart's ill-advised clearing attempt that created the first goal, and that he had five points in Pittsburgh's Game 3 and 4 wins.

It is actually a legal maneuver, you can see here: "The spin-o-rama type move where the player completes a 360° turn as he approaches the goal, shall be permitted as this involves continuous motion." EDIT: Beaten to the punch.

They had a ton of guys leave and a ton of salary come off the books, nearly $30M in available cap space to start free agency.

He was hurt, and was never playing at 100% in the playoffs. When he's healthy I think he's still very good, but the problem is the older he gets the more frequently he's hurt. If he could stay healthy this year, that would be wonderful, but don't count it. Fingers crossed.

Centuries ago, two lefties -- Nick and Matt Schneider -- had zero problem running the power play, despite their crippling handicaps. Somehow, in some way, the PP will survive.