Dabura

It was a very, very sloppy first 20 mins. I'm mostly talking about the d-zone, of course. We were ok in the o-zone, but didn't generate much in the way of scoring chances.

Possibly the sloppiest period we've ever played.

STOP BEING CUTE

ALFIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sarcasm.

We are absolutely dominating them.

I hope they use Kenny and Mike. I guess Renney would have to man the bench.

We gon die. Prolly.

The Pens have had a fantastic season. It pisses me off.

Man, I smile every time I see this thread title. I have this image in my head of Colin Campbell the Elder coming out of retirement to be our newest UFA disaster. Yup, true.

He's got everything, skating wise. Quickness, agility, acceleration, and straight-up speed. As much as I want to see us get bigger and meaner, speed and skill is increasingly where it's at, and Nyquist is a really good example. Just a joy to watch.

Sorry, I'm getting snippy. This is one issue that does genuinely bother me, in real life. When I watch our D, I get this sicky feeling that we're watching a team that was set up to fail. Sort of like, I dunno, a puppy trying to claw its way through a brick wall. I love the Red Wings, and I love good defensive hockey. So it makes me sad.

I can kind of understand going into the season with what we had last season, on the back end I mean. Last season was a half season and we overachieved in some areas. So, before making a big change, give the group at least 20 games to see where we're really at. Thing is, it's been pretty clear for most of the season that our D corps - even when fully healthy - is not where it needs to be and is in fact a pretty serious weakness.

Right, because I said I don't want young players to be given a chance. That is exactly what I was getting at. No kids on the blue line. Ever. I think we've got some really promising kids in Grand Rapids. And I think it's going to be several years before any one of them is a key piece on our blue line. There seems to be this general impression around here that Sproul and Ouellet and maybe Marchenko are just about ready to be really good NHL defenseman, so we just have to wait a season or two and BAM! Incredible Blue Line. And that this is such a sure thing that signing a legitimate top-four NHL defenseman for more than one season may somehow wreck everything, because...THE KIDS!!!!!!!!!! I wouldn't mind seeing Marchenko on the roster next season. But I'm not expecting elite NHL defensemen to come popping out of Grand Rapids in a year or two. Which is an issue, because we need to add an elite NHL defenseman ASAP. (And, for the record, I wasn't happy with the D corps before this season started.)

Any depth is good depth. But we have kind of a lot of options for our bottom six.

Thanks, frank. +1

On a more positive note, Malik is such a quality guy. By which I mean he's a quality guy who I tend to agree with on a pretty consistent basis. Point is, I agree with what he says there in the comments section. An elite pickup for one or two years (e.g. Boyle, Timonen) is a no-brainer in that it'd appeal to the OMG WE NEED TO MAKE SURE WE HAVE ROOM FOR ALL NINE OF OUR FUTURE HALL OF FAME DEFENSEMEN crowd as well as the EFFING HELL OUR BLUE LINE SUCKS SO FIX IT NOW AARRRGHHH crowd. A middle ground. A compromise of sorts. Good leaders do stuff like that. Abe Lincoln would've been an awesome NHL GM. I also agree with Malik about Edler. If Gillis isn't going to come down on the asking price for him, he's absolutely not worth the risk. I'd been thinking Edler might turn it around here in the second half of the season, but no. He's simply been bad this season, and while I tend to give good players the benefit of the doubt in this kind of situation (and I guess I do in this case), his asking price is too much for a guy who'd be far from a sure thing in terms of fixing our top four. I have to admit, I'm wary of Quincey Part 2, and that'd be one excuse for inaction that I might actually accept from Holland. (Because Holland's job security hinges solely on my little whims.) Basically, sign Boyle and get someone else, and make that someone else as good as possible, within reason. The fact that pretty much all of LGW seems to agree that we need at least one major addition to our blue line is pretty incredible, as we never "pretty much agree" on anything, ever. So, clearly something must be done about the D in the offseason. And, personally, I'm not convinced that adding Ryan Sproul on the third pairing is that thing which must be done. Sproul's not as close as people think. I could see him becoming our new whipping boy next season. (Watch Sproul get called up today and score five goals against the Pens.)

Holland said some stuff: http://kuklaskorner.com/tmr/comments/a-pair-of-interesting-late-night-red-wings-listens-from-the-fan-590 I didn't listen, because every time he gives an interview I come away miffed and disappointed. I will say this: if he's not going to address our blue line's issues because we've got some kids coming up soon (which would likely just be a euphemism for "It's really hard to get a good defenseman. I'd rather not doing anything and just wait, because it's easier and because I get paid the same salary either way"), he needs to be punched in the face repeatedly.

Him being awesome is great, but I'm extremely wary of the therefore-we-don't-need-to-worry-about-adding-a-big-name-scorer reasoning. If there's one thing this season has taught us, it's that things don't go as planned, and you can never have too much depth. (OK, that's two things. But they're related.) I remember people thinking our blue line was fine because we overachieved last season (a shortened season).

It would, except we've been this way all season long. We've blown two-goal leads with much healthier lineups.

I don't know if it's all on bad coaching or all on the players or somewhere in between or something else entirely...but we are absolutely horrific at dealing with teams when they hit another gear and ratchet up the compete and press, press, press. It's like we get scared and confused and panicky and we just collapse because OMG WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING I FORGOT WHO I'M SUPPOSED TO BE COVERING I'D BETTER JUST STAND IN FRONT OF JIMMY.

I called it. That at least one of our top three would go down for most of the rest of the regular season. So now our top four is Kronwall, DeKeyser, Quincey (who cost us another goal tonight with another stupid penalty), and Smith or Kindl. I've asked it before and I'll ask it again: How does Holland, as a self-respecting GM, go into the season with our blue line, especially knowing full well that there will be key injuries at the worst times? And how does he not trade for a single defenseman when it's made clear on a nightly basis that our blue line sucks?

Honestly, the masochist in me in kinda starting to like this whole we-don't-actually-have-any-NHL-players-left-but-we're-still-winning-games things. And Ericsson really hasn't been all that great lately. Maybe Ouellet gets a look?

Imagine if we'd had Nyquist for the whole season. He'd be closing in on 30 goals, and we'd be solidly in the playoff picture.

Also, I think it's sort of the same thing with an enforcer. Sometimes carrying a tough guy takes the pressure off the rest of the team to play tough and take care of business.