Dabura

Same. I'm also liking Jamie Drysdale.

LOOKS LIKE LORD STANLEY IS BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS

*yore

Jonathan Toews has been flanked by Patrick Kane for his entire NHL career. Despite this, Toews has cracked 70 points only two times and he's cracked 80 points only once. "Well yeah but his two-game makes him elite, elite, elite." Meh. IMO, Toews is a good-not-spectacular 1C. You can win a Cup with a good-not-spectacular 1C, you just need top talent at other positions.

A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. Like I said, I'd like to see Larkin kick ass and take names like he did last season. I think Wings fans should be disappointed by what he's shown so far this season. I think it's fair to say he shares some of the blame for the team sucking so bad this season. I think the "You can't have it both ways" point rings somewhat true. At the same time, though, I *do* think we can have it both ways, if by "have it both ways" we mean "believe Larkin is more than a 20-goal, 50-point player and that the makeup of this team isn't doing him any favors." I get the argument that the lack of high-end talent on this team means Larkin is getting ice time that he otherwise might not get and that this in turn means he has no excuse for not scoring like he did last season if he is in fact the player we saw last season. That's fair enough. But we should also acknowledge that this team is a disaster (pretty much by design) and that Larkin is the least of our problems. We should acknowledge that Larkin has absolutely nowhere to hide on this team. That he's the only top-six centerman on this roster. That opposing teams can put 90% of their focus and energy into jamming him. That the line of Bertuzzi-Larkin-Mantha is pretty electric and Mantha's injuries have taken it off the table and forced us to make do with Bertuzzi-Larkin-Fabbri. That, given all of this, scoring at a 53-point pace is maybe what you would expect from a good-not-spectacular 1C.

HYPE! LGRW!

(Belated?) Happy Birthday, my dude!

Nielsen > Zadina > Kotkaniemi > Gretzky

True. https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/peter-laviolette-selling-longboat-key-beach-house/ hmmmmmmm...

Oh, definitely. Being an all-star doesn't mean anything anymore and I'm fine with Larkin wanting time off. Truth be told, I don't even really mind him saying it to reporters. But in terms of politics and optics and all that stuff that may or may not actually matter, he probably should've just given the canned "Sure, it'd be a big honor" response.

LMAO why are we even pretending Laviolette would willingly join the Wings right now???

shaddup, commie

That's fair. Honestly tho, I'm really not sure that any of our prospects would make this team any better this season. Svechnikov has entered the Jurco Bust Danger Zone. Cholowski's been a d-zone disaster at the NHL level. Rasmussen probably won't see much/any NHL action this season. I'm kind of on the fence about whether Yzerman should let Seider anywhere near this mess. Additionally, as @AtlantaHotWings pointed out, we're 13 points behind the 30th place Devils. We've nearly doubled their negative goal differential (-73 versus -38). Unless Rasmussen can give us .925 goaltending for 12-15 games, we've probably already got that 31st finish all wrapped up -- regardless of what moves Yzerman makes between now and the end of the season. tfw you get tricked into giving props to WiiM

I'm confused because on the one hand you're saying no one could get this team to overachieve and on the other hand you're saying we need to make sure we don't do anything to f*** up this tank.

You are officially more helpful than the official Twitter accounts of Helene, the Griffins, and the Wings. Bless you.

It's starting to feel like he's going to miss the entire rest of the season with whatever injury he's dealing with, so I dunno that I'd pencil him into the starting lineup just yet. Would be nice if someone in the organization could at least confirm that he's still alive. Alas...

I'm getting mixed signals here.

I like Burke. Even when I don't agree with him, I can still appeciate his spicy outspokenness. (For the record, I pretty much agree with his take on Larkin's comments.)

TBH, I can kinda see it. As Blashill puts it, he's a "baller."

Welp, as I was saying a couple months back: Of the realistic targets, Laviolette is my top preference. Stats nerds will tell you he kills the offense of any team he coaches. And maybe there's some truth to that. But, to echo kliq and Neo, he does seem to have a knack for getting pretty unsexy teams to overachieve.

Prob'ly. I'm just going for the low hanging fruit hot take. The Pronger era Ducks were a team that prided itself on s***heelery and I'm tempted to say the fact that Fedorov didn't fit into Burke's vision of the team should earn Feds some karma points.

I was always more of an Ana Ivanovic guy.

Good thing he did that, otherwise they might've turned into colossal jackwagons.