Dabura

Hossa always tries. That counts for a lot in my book, especially given our current squad. If Franzen were off to Hossa's start this season, people here would be calling him The Second Coming. For Hossa, this is basically business as usual. Work hard, commit yourself, good things happen. Float around, pretend you're tough s*** when you're not, decide you're only going to really try every so often (specifically - when there's no pressure and everything's comfy), complain that THERE'S NOT ENUFF JOYYYY!, and...you're Johan Franzen. And then there's that contract.

Holland loves safe, familiar, comfortable, been-there-done-that. This, in turn, filters through, informs and - ultimately - floods the big unsinkable boat. This is a GM issue more than anything else. Ken Holland has to change his ways.

A lot of people here seem to believe that Minnesota's winning pitch sealed the deal for Suter and Parise. Meaning: anything that, say, Mike Illitch could have offered in response (to Minnesota's offer) could not have dissuaded Suter and/or Parise from joining the Wild. My impression is, we threw in the towel at that point and said No to even trying to match. (And, if that was indeed the call, maybe it was the right call, maybe it wasn't, I dunno.)

To put too fine a point on it... The idea is Holland traded a 1st round pick for a guy who seems hell-bent on getting bounced off the roster by Jakub Kindl. Bottom line: Quincey has done nothing good for us since coming back aboard. And that hurts. Now, could Kenny have known Quincey would (under)perform this way? No, I don't think anyone could've seen this coming. So it's not like ZOMG HOLLAND IZ TEH STOOPID (even though he really kinda is, at times, in certain respects). But, I think what really gets a lot of people re: Quincey is the fact that this is his second stint with the Wings. We had him, we got him gone, then we traded a 1st round pick to get him back, and, thus far, that buy-back has looked very facepalm indeed.

He could start by not trading a 1st round pick for Kyle Quincey. I mean, if we're time-traveling and all.

Ah, good timing. I had just come to ask: 17-2 after the first period? Really?

Hossa is so much better than Franzen it's not even funny.

I think it's more that Ken Holland really likes old guys.

http://kuklaskorner.com/tmr/comments/its-an-new-day-tomorrow Or a fan.

Just to be clear, I'm alluding more to injuries than anything else. Especially Helm. Of course, if we want to get into the actual make-up of the thing - I'm not big on the whole Old guy / Helm / Old guy thing. Also, I've determined the perfect response to the OP is: YOU CHILL OUT!!!

Y'know what'd really help? A real third line.

Ken Holland? Offer sheet? WARNING! Reconciliation impossible. Catastrophic system error. 10101010. Commence self-implosion process now. Beep-bop-boop. BOOM.

You're overcomplicating things with alternate universe mumbo-jumbo. Holland traded a 1st round pick for Quincey. For this, he ought to go to jail, or be punched really hard in the arm. "Yeah, but if he hadn't--" but he did. Which is why this thread exists. "Yeah, but if this thread hadn't been made..."

Is he really? Could've sworn he was 34. Oh well. Just that much meh-er.

And Larry Murphy.

We kicked the tires, but, ultimately, we didn't feel the price was right.

I miss the lockout.

Pink!

Hey! You there! Stop being realistic!

You're my favorite LGWer, Sir Snepsts. I think we're coming up on an identity crisis. I've beaten this horse to its bones. Now I'm gonna pick and grind those bones: Skill. We've been blessed with oceans of it. This has allowed us to be a kill-with-skill (and only skill) team of frail little Euro-ninja assassin specialists. Beyond skill, we suck. At everything. Always have. So what happens when you take that skill away? Even Homer - he was the "ugliest" player ever, but damn if his one big asset made him uniquely valuable and effective in that one area of the game. Now? The skill is watered-down, worn-down. In a big-picture sense, the skill level that we've come to expect is altogether gone; it's just not there anymore. It's Datsyuk Zetterberg, maybe Kronwall. Maybe Brunner. Franzen has golden hands, but his heart is a cheeseburger and his brain is a coconut. So we've padded things with some garbage grinder types who don't actually do a whole lot of garbage grinding, and who certainly don't score a whole hell of a lot. And we're caling this...? I mean, we can keep doing the whole puck-possession dealy. There's no law against it. But to be really effective at it, and successful with it, (never mind challenging for the Cup), (never mind winning the Cup), you need a requisite skill level. And we don't have it anymore. And we're certainly not getting it back, unless we make, like, two huge trades and two major UFA signings. Because, think about it: how many other teams do the kill-with-skill puck-possession thing? How many teams have done it really effectively? How many teams have won the Cup with it? The answer is, None. It was our thing. And now it's pretty much dead. And so, the brain trust really has to be asking the $60 million question. I actually have a bit of a hard time giving the players crap for this problem. You could say Babs could be smarter about the lines or whatever. Ultimately, though, I think if this develops into a full-blown Thing, it's on Holland to try to turn it around. Which reminds me: "We may not make the playoffs this year" = "We're really not very good at all."

Spit in their water bottles? Ah, that's terrible. I don't wish mono on anyone.

We're in a hole re: trading. The way I see it, it's two-fold. First, we don't have many (if any) sexy assets that we can really, truly afford to part with. Part two: Who's gonna trade with us? Say you're up top @, oh, say, Duckland. Do you really want to be be the guy who potentially gets the Wings out of a major, major jam? Do you want to be the one who gives them a ladder out of hell? Me, personally, (assuming I'm very much not a Wings fan), I would much prefer to spit in this franchise's collective face, even if they do have a somewhat attractive asset or two. (Every team has attractive assets.)

Add Kronwall to that list. A trade (or two, or three, or several thousand) is/are definitely in order, though.

I have this pet theory that - to greatly oversimplify things - the hemlock maybe possibly kinda sorta didn't kill Socrates. It's convoluted, but, I think, right there in Plato's Phaedo. Point being? I dunno. I'm just blabbering. 0-6. Ugh. Well, to be fair, we did kinda lose in the first round. To the Predators. In five games. Even with Lidstrom. And Stuart.

Boom. The million-dollar question, right here.