Dabura

Do you think we should try for James Neal? All signs seem to point to him being aggressively shopped this summer. Spezza's also an intriguing option, though he's no longer in his prime. Hossa's another old guy who almost certainly won't be bought out or shopped, but I'd expect Holland to kick the tires, as there's the mutual history and respect and he's still a pretty elite player. Kesler would probably cost a king's ransom, but I guess he's also a possibility. Broken record, but I believe there are always options on the trade front, whether it's a top-four defenseman or a 30-goal-scorer in his prime. Maybe not so much with top goalies, but I believe Mrazek is going to be a star anyway.

In a way, it's sort of poetic. They rolled over a Bishop-less Bolts team. Their whole thing now is "No one respects us. We deserve everyone's respect. We proved ourselves. We're an elite team." I guess we'll see.

So, who breaks Kreider's legs with a couple ninja slashes? Murray? Prust? Therrien?

I do wonder about Mantha's trade value. Could he be considered a major piece in a trade for an elite player? Would the aforementioned Habs be interested in him? Not that I'm thinking we need to unload him.

There would have to be a catch, though. There's always a catch. Like, the guy in his prime is on a really ugly contract that his GM is all too eager to dump on someone. I'm pro-trading potentials for knowns. I just don't think Bergevin gives us Pacioretty for Nyquist.

The big thing for young forwards these days is value. Point totals are only half of that equation. Maybe Nyquist won't set the world on fire, but if he can produce like a $5M Daniel Alfredsson (in 2013-14) while on a modest early contract, that's a great value, which is hugely important. Elliotte Friedman touched on this: (Side note: Like I've said, I think Neal to SJ looks realistic.) Holland actually had the right idea when he re-signed Bertuzzi, Samuelsson, and Cleary. He thought he'd be getting pretty good value for these guys. Problem with that is, of course, you're counting on a best-case scenario in all three cases. The guys would pretty much have to produce to their ceilings for their deals to look really good, and that's not realistic, for a number of reasons. This is why I'm ok with a youth movement @ forward. You need a nucles of overachievers, guys under the age of 28 who are putting up very good numbers relative to what they're getting paid and what's being expected of them. Like, if Sheahan is ready to be our second-line center (and the case could be made that he is), that's a 2C you don't have to pay $4-6M, and that's money you can give an elite player to fill an important hole on your roster (say, in your top four). The guy I really want to see break out next season is Jurco. Remember how *valuable* Franzen was for us, pre-extension? We've been missing a player and value like that. We've been leaning too heavily on the guys who are "knowns" for us. As for Nyquist, I think he just needs to add some bulk like Z did way back in the day.

Fair enough. Look, Babs won't be a Red Wing forever. He'll probably be moving on within the next few years. I'm fine with that. But these rumors? They're bulls***. Sinister, self-fellating, Wings-hating bulls***.

To be clear: it seems safe to say there's very little, if anything, to these rumors. This is likely just a combination of Babs being a living Canadian legend and poorly run franchises looking for an easy fix-up. If LGW thought for a moment that Drew Doughty might be bought out, we'd be all effing over that s*** with our custom capgeek rosters and homer logic ("Well, we need a #1 on the back end, and Babs coached him at the Olympics. Man, now that I think about it, I bet he's demanding out of LA cuz he wants to be a Red Wing. Yeah, that has to be it!")

What are you basing this on? I'm inclined to believe that, if anything, he likes the challenge set before him: to prove his true coaching might by steering this team through a quick "rebuild," back to true contention, and, ultimately, back to being the class of the league. (Imagine the SCF battles we could have with Chicago.) If he jumps ship to a contender and wins a Cup, then everyone turns around and says, "Oh, that Mike Babcock, so overrated. Clearly he can only win the Cup with a totally stacked roster and he knows it. That's why he left Detroit. He was never the driving force behind their post-Bowman greatness. He doesn't know how to develop young talent and turn them into stars. He lets other people do that for him and then he swoops in and takes all the glory and everyone showers him with praise. This is the guy who wanted a washed up Cleary over Nyquist. What a phony." I think if we're still in the West, we're looking at a genuinely long road back to the top. Not necessarily so in the East. Michel Therrien is not a better coach than Mike Babcock, nor is Alain Vigneault, and their respective teams aren't much better than our current team, and our current team is about as bad as it's going to get for us, I feel.

The Kings have to get healthy on the blue line or it's gonna be a quick (pun) series.

Babcock is lazy and he sucks.

I picked the Rags as my bandwagon team in the first round. On the one hand, I look like a smarty pants. On the other hand, I didn't put any money on them. Booo.

Hockey? In Canada? This might just be crazy enough to work.

Don't worry, Babs is thinking up ways to kill his production so he can finish 437th in Selke voting and be a Realgud everydayer who plays the right way and plays heavy and plays the right way and also plays heavy. Abdelkader - Glendening - Mantha

The really interesting thing is this run, thus far, has been pretty much the opposite of what we saw in 2012 where they just absolutely torched all comers right from the get-go and never looked back. Now they're daring the opposition to take three games against them. I want to feel bad for Boudreau, but I feel like he was asking for trouble/karmic retribution with all that goalie switching. At the very least, a team wants to know who the guy is and just have that be the end of it, unless he bombs badly.

The Kings are ok, I guess. If they add a few key pieces, they might be able to hang with the Wings in a best-of-seven. Also, it is/was Corey Perry's birthday.

No, I agree, just saying.

Glorious.

Straw man. I never said Dan Boyle is Nick Lidstrom. I want at least two puck-moving, offense-driving, point-producing, PP-quarterbacking, possession-savvy vets in our top four. Boyle, while not the player he used to be, and certainly never the player Lidstrom was, possesses these qualities and would therefore be a big addition to our team. I wouldn't want him for more than two seasons, though. Ultimately, he probably signs with the Rags. Richards and St. Louis are there, and if they could turn Stralman into Boyle? That's a ludicrous top four they'd have there.

lol, I stand corrected. He's one of the prospects I haven't had the pleasure of seeing play in a game setting, and it felt like most of what I was hearing and reading about him this season centered on his production and non-pest stuff.

Also, there's a pretty big difference between a Cleary/Samuelsson/Bertuzzi and a Boyle. Boyle would, in theory, be more along the lines of an Alfredsson. And if he doesn't work out the way we'd hoped? Oh noes, we're stuck with Dan Boyle playing limited minutes for a couple seasons! Worst. Blue line. Ever. Most of our D prospects are gonna be traded anyway. We're only gonna have room for one or two, maybe three. That's true whether we sign Boyle or not.

Like I said in the Boyle thread, we can add Boyle/Niskanen and still give a Griffin a spot. Kronwall Smith DeKeyser Boyle Ericsson Sproul I'm really not understanding this "We must live or die by our youth!" mindset. It's not imperative that Ouellet, Sproul, Marchenko, Backman, Jensen, and Almqvist all get as much NHL ice time as humanly possible next season. AHL experience is extremely valuable. And we all know there'll be injuries.

I'd probably prefer Niskanen, but I'd gladly take two years of Dan Boyle. The bottom line is we're missing Lidstrom and Rafalski like no one's business. They weren't young or big or physical or fleet of foot. They were just really good with the puck, really smart without it. We need that on the back end or nothing works. What we saw this season is nothing working. We need to possess the puck and do good things with it and make savvy reads and make the opposition run around and chase the play. We didn't do that, because we lacked experience and elite talent.

Y'know, we've been talking up Mantha as a steal, and for good reason. But I think you could argue that Tyler Bertuzzi has been a pretty pleasant surprise in his own right. I know we were kinda miffed that we picked him as early as we did, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe he wasn't as under-the-radar as we'd assumed. This will sound terrible, but I wonder if his injury troubles might help him in the long run. My impression is they've sort of forced him to dial back the Brad Marchand stuff and just focus on being a productive hockey player, which is good because he's actually quite skilled.

In fairness, Yzerman couldn't lead us to the Cup and we were gonna trade him to Ottawa for Yashin. Not a perfect parallel, but yeah. I think Thornton is a great 1C, but maybe not a great C, if you know what I mean. Thing is, who's the better leader on the team? To me, that feels like the big issue with them. Thornton doesn't have to be traded, but he probably shouldn't be captain, but there's no one better for the role, but there has to be somene better for the role, but there isn't really, so, f***. I dunno, maybe since they're losing a veteran leader in Boyle they should look into acquiring some fresh veteran leader blood. Or they could trade for James Neal or Chris Kunitz. That would be so them.