Dabura

Same. I think I mentioned him awhile back in a different thread, but good on you for bringing him up here. He's what I've been talking about - an offensive defenseman who's good on the point with the man advantage. What's more, he's 27, right-handed, and Swedish. My only concern would be that he hasn't really shown that he's true top-four material, at least not at this stage in his career. Then again, the Rangers have some outstanding pieces on their blue line, so maybe he blossoms into a top-four defenseman on another team. (How many people knew from the start that Jonathan Ericsson would become a serviceable #2 for us?)

OK, my previous post is kind of a trainwreck...and this one might not be any better. It's late, I'm tired, I have a headache, my back hurts. I DON'T think trading for Boyle or Timonen is really an option. I tend to blur this thread and the Next Season's Needs thread together in my mind. So, I'm NOT saying we should target either of them, unless by some miracle it looks like there might be something there to pursue. Visnovsky - it's not like I love that he's old and overpaid and diminutive and an injury concern. That's not what I like about him. What I like is that he's a good offensive defenseman. Good first pass, good at rushing the puck, good on the offensive zone cycle, a real asset on the power play. What - or, perhaps, Who? - are we really missing on the blue line these days? Lidstrom and Rafalski. Visnovsky is not Lidstrom or Rafalski, but he, like the other two, is a veteran offensive defenseman who can be lethal with the man advantage. He sees the ice well. He moves the puck well. He generates offense from the back end. Excellent puck movement with a ton of experience behind it, and the calm and poise and savvy and such that comes with that much experience. We're missing this kind of stuff. I mean, really, I'm not all Visnovsky-or-bust over here. I just think it's worth a good look, provided he could be had for "cheap." (The Islanders have failed this season, so there's a chance that a key piece or two or three may be made available, and - possibly - at what we might consider a good price.) Ultimately, I'm not sure what to do, trade-wise. Taking our chances in free agency this summer (and, failing that, exploring the summer trade market) seems like a more appealing idea. But, of course, that's sort of assuming the better guys on The List even test the waters, never mind seriously consider signing with the Wings. *shrug*

I'd thought about suggesting Wideman, but if I'd said Wideman instead of Visnovsky, some guy would be saying, "Why does it have to be a moron like Wideman? What has he ever done? Why can't we get some veteran savvy on the back end to counterbalance our jumpy, bumbling youth?" I believe Visnovsky only has one season remaning on his contract after this one. That might, in theory, be one advantage of getting an older guy - if it's a disaster, you're not going to be stuck with him for ages. Like I've said: ideally, we get a solid top-four guy and a solid stopgap/bridge player, because Ouellet and Marchenko and Sproul are 2-3 seasons away. [insert old guy] could be that stopgap. There are a few more reasons why you might want an older fellow, but I'm not sure I want to go much deeper, as it'll start to look like I'm demanding we get an old guy, which is not what I'm doing. I guess, if I have to bottom-line it, the bottom line, for me, is: Kronwall and Ericsson are our veteran defensemen. They're the teachers on the back end. They're The Men. And...I dunno how crazy I am about that fact. Maybe I'd sleep better at night if Dan Boyle were the one reading Brendan Smith the bedtime stories at night. Maybe we need another veteran presence on the PP (in addition to Kronwall), a Boyle/Visnovsky/Timonen instead of a DeKeyser. (You'll notice the old guys I've been talking up are generally offensive-minded guys capable of running stellar power plays. I think we need an offensive-minded top-four defenseman who's capable of running a stellar power play, and I guess I'd like for that guy to not be old, if at all possible. However, the young, offensive-minded top-four defenseman who's capable of running a stellar power play is arguably the most coveted type of player in the league.)

Babs is happy to not be coaching the Wings for the next two weeks. OH YES I DID

Wait. Sandis Ozolinch?!

This. Nothing against Marchenko, but I feel like if we're gonna Go For It, we should Go For It. (And isn't DeKeyser getting PP time this season?) If we play our cards a certain way, we could potentially be looking at $12-14M in cap space this summer. (And that's with Alfie returning.) That could, in theory, get us two top UFA defensemen. Like I've said, some of the better defensemen in this summer's class (assuming they all test the waters, which is, of course, most definitely not a given) are older guys at or nearing the end of their careers, so they'd probably be looking for relatively short deals, if not one-offs. Which would be good for us, because of the young talent we have in the pipeline. In an awesome world, we get Boyle on a two-year deal at around $6.5M and Girardi on a four-year deal @ around $5M. It's almost certain that at least one of them won't even make it to free agency, but the point is that there's the possibility of significant improvement in our D corps between now and October, without even considering trade options.

I like what Kenny had to say: Link

Y'know, I made the point in the Dark Horse thread that Weiss is probably going to be a major x-factor for us this season. If he can be even 75% of the player he was for the Panthers, that's a huge add. So, might this be a legitimate getting-[x player]-back-from-injury-will-be-like-a big-deadline-acquisition situation?

You mean UFA-wise? Boyle, Timonen, Girardi, Orpik, and Niskanen haven't re-signed yet, so there's still a sliver of hope on that front. (Though I guess the fact that I included Orpik and Niskanen in that list speaks to how shallow the pool really is.) Of course, it doesn't necessarily have to be a Big Name Guy who rounds out and solidifies our top four. Sami Salo looked pretty dang effective against us the other night. On the trade front... You know who I think's a bit underrated? He was quietly excellent against us in the second round. Might make for a good depth add.

An interesting Wings piece by Sam Hitchcock of Intelligent Hockey: Detroit's Dark Horse Potential Thoughts?

RANDOM GUY: Damn, got not bottle opener. ABDELKADER: STOP. RANDOM GUY: ... ABDELKADER: IT'S HAMMER TIME. MILLER: I'm pretty sure it's Miller time. SMITH: I'm pretty sure we didn't even invite you to Mexico with us, Andrew. MILLER: I'm pretty sure I'm our best PKer, Brandon. Plus, my adult-colored hair means you won't get carded. You being a kid and all. ANDERSSON: I WANNA BE. EVERYONE: ... ANDERSSON: YOUR SLUDGE HAMMER. Did I say it right? Sludge hammer? RANDOM GUY, to BARTENDER: Please help me. BARTENDER, aka Nick Lidstrom: Sorry, you're on your own from now on. RANDOM GUY: What? BARTENDER: I like it here in Sweden. RANDOM GUY: This is Mexico! BARTENDER: Exactly.

You will take your classic Ken Holland signing and you will like it!

The Hangover IV.

Casablanca 2: Electric Boogaloo. There's just no pleasing you.

I dunno if that's totally fair. Hitchcock has a reputation for pushing his troops so hard that they inevitably burn out and declare mutiny. He's clashed with players, coaches, general managers, probably even little kids and puppies - so I'd be willing to give Stewart the benefit of the doubt. Stewart's a big, mean, right-handed power forward heading into his prime years. I'm not a huge fan of his, but if he could be had for a reasonable price (and it's worth noting that the only reason he might be available at a decent price is that he doesn't get along with Hitchcock. Point being, we're not going to acquire a premier power forward whose coach adores him. If we're gonna get one of these guys, it's gonna have to be one who's in a less-than-ideal situation. So we'll have to take some possible bad with the good), I think you have to consider it. Sure, he's no Brendan Shanahan, but do we need our big mean crease-crasher to be ultra skilled? If he could score 30 goals for us off his nose, great! We have enough highlight-reel skills. We could use some more Holmstrom in our attack, more garbage goals. A little less pretty, a little more gritty.

Steve Ott, IMHO.

RICK: The thing with Weiss is, he's actually a really, really good player. True, we haven't seen that really, really good player in the Winged Wheel yet, but the reason seems to be mostly that he was playing injured. Like, that seems to be a more or less established fact now, as opposed to baseless speculation/rationalization. Point being, there's still a 90% chance that we have this on the way. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives. ILSA: But what about us? RICK: We'll always have Parise.

Isles' Lubomir Visnovsky officially ruled out of Olympics for Slovakia [CBSSports.com] I want to believe this means "Lubo" is unhappy and will be demanding a trade to the Wings, and that he's going to play like crap until he gets traded in order to lower his trade value, so we'll be able to get him for a second-round pick. Cuz, I mean, that's pretty much what CBS Sports is saying, right? Might as well just title the article "Red Wings close to acquiring Isles' Lubomir Visnovsky, winning Stanley Cup." Start planning the parade route!

Sure, there was hope that they'd progress. But if The Powers That Be were planning on any one of Smith/Kindl/Quincey really stepping up and solidifying our top four...that's not erring on the side of caution. It wasn't even a given that DeKeyser would continue to be a stud, or that Ericsson wouldn't regress. I mean, if it turns out we can't add anyone to our top four, and the line is, "Well, we really thought this was gonna be Smitty's year"...meh. Sorry, Alfie, we really thought this was gonna be Smitty's year. *shrug* I think if anything, we should be overstocking on quality D, even if it's at the expense of our forward corps. Granted, I wasn't saying this in the summer, because I now have the benefit of knowing our defense is unequivocally NOT where it needs to be this season. So I can't necessarily fault Holland for rolling with this blue line. Though now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I wasn't comfortable with Smith/Kindl/Quincey rounding out our top four. I'm not really sure why anyone would be. If we're trying for Cup contention, we need an actual top four, not a sort of elite-by-committee thing where every man is counted on to play lights-out every night just to get us into positive goal differential territory.

The issue with Quincey is that he's playing out of his depth. He's a third-pairing defenseman right now and we need him to be one of our better, more reliable, more clutch defenders. He should not be in the top four. He should not be playing big minutes. Because he's not high-end. Inevitably, he'll make a boneheaded mistake or two or three and it will cost us dearly. Because he's Quincey. Unfortunately, Ericsson's been hitting the bottle, Kronwall hasn't been all there, DeKeyser's a rookie, Smith sucks, and Kindl sucks. So what we have is a controlled mess. I do agree that he's been better lately, but let's not start pretending he's just this terribly misunderstood gentleman who, 200 years from now, scholars will agree was awesome. He has singlehandedly cost us games this season on mistakes that didn't need to be made. I mean, if he can keep getting better to the point where he's ultimately far and away one of our better defensemen, then sure, re-sign him (assuming there isn't a better option). But as things stand right now...I have a hard time saying, "But how are we going to replace Kyle Quincey?!?!?!"

I firmly believe this is the way to go, assuming we can't get a young stud. Boyle, Timonen, Salo - a high-class veteran stopgap who can play in the top four, if not on the top pairing. I'd actually take it a step further and say Girardi + a vet. Load up on D. Two additions, one long-term and one short. (Even when [insert promising Griffins defenseman] is ready, he's going to be a rookie. That's realistically two or three more seasons - on top of his rookie season - until he's the real difference maker we need. See: Brendan Smith.) On a related note - I had a really interesting chat with a Blues fan yesterday. (I have friends in low places.) He had a good, surprisingly well-informed (I'm thinking maybe he's a closet Wings fan) take on why we keep losing these games that we should be winning. He said, if you look at all of the aforementioned losses, e.g. this latest one to the Bolts, what do they mostly come down to? Is it that we just don't have enough firepower up front? Is it that Howard is clearly an AHL goalie? Or is it that our defense isn't up to snuff and is prone to making costly mistakes? Like, the Bolts game - were we overpowered by their monstrous forward corps? Were our forwards clearly clueless, no match for St. Louis, Killorn et al.? Or did the Bolts weather the storms they needed to weather defensively, then capitalize on their opportunities, which they knew our mediocre blue line would be giving them in bunches? I look at the Superbowl game against the Caps - we can score, we can't defend. I look at the most recent loss to the Panthers, 5-4 in the shootout - we can score, we can't defend. I look at the 'hawks game - it should've been done in regulation, but Brendan Smith is Brendan Smith. We can score, but we can't defend. Even without our top goal-scorer (Franzen) and a second-line center, we can score. Yet, even with a fully healthy blue line, we can't defend. I know this isn't really a revelation to anyone here, but I think it's interesting that we're starting to get a better idea of what our team really looks like, and all those scoring woes we thought might be the death of us really aren't much of a concern at this point, at least in relation to our defensive woes. I also think it's interesting that we seem to be going against the grain/conventional wisdom in thinking we can compete for the Cup without a rock-solid defense and/or goalie. Boston's got a rock-solid defense and a world-class goalie. The Blues have got a rock-solid defense and a very good goalie. The Rangers have got a rock-solid defense and a world-class goalie. The Blackhawks have got a rock-solid defense and a very good goalie. One thing I have to wonder is, Why would Alfie burn all of his bridges in Ottawa to win a Cup with us when our blue line isn't where it needs to be (as demonstrated last season)? I guess what I'm wondering is if he might've asked something to the effect of "That defense...will you be looking to bring someone in?" Perhaps he knows something we don't. Perhaps Holland has been planning on adding someone at the trade deadline all along.

So, what's the schedule looking like? Haven't watched a second of the Olympics yet. Fill me in?

I am in love with our forward corps. But our blue line...

Our PP has no teeth. I think the argument could be made that that's hurting us more than anything else. Like I've said many, many times, I'd sure love a QB like Lubomir Visnovsky. It's incredible how much we miss Lidstrom and Rafalski on the point. Smith should probably get a look. Failing that, I'd almost consider trying out Pulkkinen, maybe on the point. We don't have a pure sniper, and it shows. Or we could dress Sproul as a PP enforcer, playing him only when we have the man advantage. His shot is a cannon, and he knows how to run a PP. Or there's a guy like Ryan Smyth, good net front presence. Or we could pay up for a power forward, maybe Chris Stewart. Or we could simply bear down, try harder. Whatever we do, we need to be practicing the power play ad nauseam. Devote entire practices and film sessions to it. Go over it again and again and again and again. We're winning/losing games on the strength/weakness of our play with the man advantage. It's a big deal. Even the smallest improvements could be huge for us.

I'm not sure how this team, even with Franzen and Weiss, is supposed to contend for the Cup.