daniel1

Chill. Jesus loves you, and we ALL love the Red Wings. None of us really knows what will/could/might/maybe/possibly/perchance happen. Injuries before the season may even solve the problem without anyone having to be traded/waived for quite some time. Numerous things could happen depending on what offers Kenny gets in the pre-season. We all like to speculate and debate and that's because we can't wait for this season to start (it's taking FOREVER) and we're passionate about how we feel the Wings should manage their players. We all have opinions and suggestions, but just because someone doesn't like or agree with them doesn't mean that theirs is right and yours is wrong or vice versa. Let's just respect other's opinions while gently, politely explaining our own. Thanks everyone and have a great night Seattle! I'm here all week lol .

"I'm yur huckleberry"... gotta love Doc

... and a 2nd rounder.

Obviously you didn't read my post; or you did and just didn't understand it. Aaron Downey's salary (listed or not on NHLnumbers) will not be counting against the cap once the season starts due to the fact that he will be in Grand Rapids. Hence the nature of a TWO-WAY contract that Holland insisted that Downey sign which pays him at two different scales depending upon where he's playing is a clear indicator Holland expects him to be in GR unless there are injuries or unforeseen events which allow them to bring him up. Unless by some hockey God given miracle you believe Downey is going to outplay Kopecky or Helm he'll be in GR come opening night. The difference between what NHLnumbers.com and this site have listed for Hossa's salary is only 50k! That doesn't change anything in the figures that I quoted before. Moving Meech or Quincey before the season starts will still leave us around 500,000$ under the cap with Lilja, Lebda and Cheli on the roster. Ericcson's .9mil will also not count against the cap as he will be in GR to start the season as well. Bank on it.

I'm not sure where everyone else is getting their data from but according to NHLnumbers.com the Wings are at 56.09mil so far out of the maximum allowed of 56.7mil leaving .610 of cap room left. This figure includes Ericcson's .9 and since he can be sent down this year without passing through waivers the odds of him starting the year in Detroit are pretty much zero unless someone gets injured. So if you subtract his .9 that means we are actually under the cap by 1.51mil. This does NOT include Cheli, Meech or Quincey's salary however. These three will average about .5 each (Meech is currently signed at .48mil so his is a certainty). Cheli already has said it's not about the money so i'm sure he'll take somewhere around 5.5 or so, Quincey will sign for around .5 too probably. So WITH these three signed and Ericcson, Downey and McCarty starting the year in the minors we will probably be close to or right at 56.7mil. If one of Meech or Quincey is traded or waived then we will be around 500,000$ under the cap to start the season. This still leaves us with very good depth on D with Ericcson and either Meech or Quincey down in GR for injury replacements and Lilja/Lebda as our 3rd pair and Cheli as the 8th defensman. I think Meech and Quincey will be battling it out at training camp to see which one of them gets a spot at GR and which one of them is traded/waived. Why rush Ericsson? He'll play 20min a night at GR compared to maybe 6 or 7 with the Wings unless there's an injury to two of the top 4. The 20min in GR will be much better for his development than the 6 or 7 he'd get with the Wings.

It's a tough choice based on a limited impression of Meech/Quincey. It may depend more on the readiness of guys like Ericcson and Kindl... if management figures Ericcson could replace one of our D if an injury hits then maybe Quincey goes as he's the least skilled of the bunch, but the most physical. If the prospects are a ways away then maybe Meech goes and Holland keeps Quincey as insurance if any of the regulars goes out. I'm not gonna lose sleep if either one of them goes as I think our top 4, Lilja/Lebda and the prospects plus the occasional Chelios shift can more than make up for either of Meech/Quincey leaving us... Really and truly neither one was gonna get a regular shift or break into the top 4 anytime soon so it's a minor issue at best.

Taken from www.nhlscap.com: TRADES When two teams trade players, the cap figures of each player immediately become the responsibility of the other team. The new CBA prevents teams from picking up any part of a player's salary for another team in the future, or including cash in any transaction between teams. Any such agreements in the past are still valid, with the new team only counting the portion of the player's salary they are responsible for paying against the team cap. An example of this is Jaromir Jagr of the New York Rangers, who is paid $8.36 million in '07-08 but only counts $4.94 million (the portion the Rangers pay) against the Rangers team cap; the difference is paid by Washington but does not count against their team cap. To answer an often-asked question: when a player is traded from one team to another, his cap number DOES NOT change. Thus, if Bryan McCabe is traded from Toronto to the Islanders in the 2008-09 offseason, his cap number with the Islanders remains $5,750,000 - it does not recalculate based on the remaining years of the contract. Well I'll be damned! There goes my hope of picking up Vinny in the last year of his deal and adding him for our attempt at an octopeat, lol. This still leaves me with the question of why his deal (and a few others) is so front loaded though. Perhaps it allows him to bank interest on the money sooner and for a longer period of time. Can anyone tell me why else teams would want to front load contracts?

Honestly, I thought they did do it that way in certain cases to make a player more tradeable in the later stages of the contract. If you look at Vinny Lecavalier's new contract for example, it starts out as 10mil/yr for the first 7 years, then steadily declines over the next 4 down to 1mil/yr. Is this not structured so he is moveable in the last 4 years? Otherwise what's the point of doing it that way? The cap hit for Tampa will still be 7.7mil/yr even in those last years when he's making 1.5 and 1mil per season. So you're telling me that if Tampa trades Vinny in Sept. of the last year of his deal that the team acquiring him will be paying him 1mil for that season but taking on a 7.7mil cap hit? Bulls***. Mike Richards, Scott Gomez and Chris Drury all have similar "declining value" contracts so there must be some advantage to doing it this way over the long term that allows for more movement otherwise why would teams do it? Why not just sign for an amount and divide it equally over the length of the contract in every case if there's no advantage. I guess I need to either read it in the CBA or hear it from a GM before I'm going to be convinced that if the Wings acquire Vinny in the last year of his deal that it would inflate our cap number by 7mil while we are actually only paying him 1mil.

Ya, I am willing to bet the farm that Lid's latest contract extension was the only (and probably last ever) time in the history of the NHL that a player won the Norris Trophy and then took a pay cut the next year. If we can keep him and his 7.45 salary around for another 2-3 years we could probably get every Wings contract signed in that time frame to be less per year than his because no one wants to start the negotiations with "I think I'm worth more than Lidstrom".

To me this doesn't make any sense. Suppose a player signs a 5 year deal which pays him 7mil in the first 4 years of the deal and 1mil in the last year of the deal. If he's traded during that last year it's ridiculous for the team that acquires him to take a cap hit of 5.8mil for that player even though they would actually only be paying him 1mil or less depending on when he's traded in that last year of his contract. Can anyone else verify that the team acquiring the player assumes the cap hit of the full length of the contract rather than what is owed on the remainder of the contract at the time he is acquired? It does not seem feasible that a team could pay a player 1mil/yr yet be "charged" 5mil/yr against their cap limit.

Doug Weight. So overated it's not even funny and he could finish his career there without any team ever picking him up again and hoping he produces. Gary Roberts. Cause then I would never have to hear the words "The Gritty Gary Roberts..." from another hockey announcer/analyst/Don Cherry ever again. Mats Sundin. Then everyone could quit speculating on where he'll be playing next year. Kirk Maltby. So we can give his roster spot to one of the cheaper/faster/better kids with loads more offensive upside and potential that are coming up. Chris Chelios. ^see above^ (jk, i "heart" Cheli but the time has come for him to coach the D, not play D)

I have two questions for someone who knows more about the Cap and Bryan McCabe than me. 1. Why would anyone want him? I've watched lots of Toronto games over the past couple years and honestly never thought once that if I were a GM I would want him on my team. What is his upside? It's sure not defensively and other than one year he's never been a huge point producer so what gives? 2. If Florida did acquire him what would his Cap hit for their team be? If he stays in Toronto he counts against the cap for 5.7mil for the next three seasons due to the fact they paid him 7 mil for the past couple of seasons and it's the average of all the years over the life of the contract. (amount for each year added up and divided by number of years for Cap hit). However; Florida would be inheriting him for only the last 3 years of his contract and would not have paid him the 7mil for the last two seasons so would their Cap hit for McCabe be based on the total amount for the last 3 years divided by 3? Or would they be stuck with a cap hit of 5.7 even though they will only be paying him 6.15, 4,15, 4,15 over the next three years (which would be an average of 4.81 rather than the average of 5.7 which is based on ALL the years in his contract)? It would make quite a difference as I don't think he's worth nearly 6mil in cap space at all but if he only counts as 4.8 against the cap for whichever team picks him up then it's a little more reasonable/believable that someone would trade for him. Cap experts feel free to enlighten me! Thanx

start.the.season.now

I think Meech will be gone. Lilja is too nice of an insurance policy to let go of. Downey and McCarty will be sent down as the chances of anyone picking them up off waivers is pretty slim. I'm really not to sure what they're going to with Quincey; if they can sign him to a two-way deal maybe they do that and risk losing him through waivers if they can't trade him. As much as it pains me to say it maybe it's time for Maltby to be the one sent down/traded. He's given this organization a lot over the years but I think other younger players have more potential and would cost less than him. (He's on the books @ almost a million bucks for this year and next too which would roughly equal the cost of BOTH Helm and Quincey or Meech or Abdelkader or Leino or... you get the point. Is Maltby really worth more than two of the younger guys' in salary and/or roster spot? I don't think so. Especially when we have so many defensively capable forwards who can also PK: Draper/Cleary/Franzen/Filppula/Sammy/Zetts/Dats/Hossa/Helm) (my "guess" for 08/09) Homer-Dats-Hossa Franzen-Zetterberg-Sammy Cleary-Filpulla-Hudler Helm-Draper-Kopecky Lids-Rafi Stuart-Kronwall Lilja-Lebda Chelios or Quincey Who knows though, the Wings could ice 5 quality lines and 4 or 5 good sets of D with what they have available to them right now. There's definitely a log jam at this stage of the game so I guess we just trust coaches/management to sort it out at training camp and let the players who perform the best make the roster. I have faith that they will make the right decisions and not sacrifice any budding young stars for the sake of getting under the salary cap. I don't think subtracting any of Quincey/Meech/Lebda/Maltby/Kopecky would really hurt this team in the short or long term given what we have now and what is waiting to come up in the form of Ericcson/Kindl/Smith/Pyett and Helm/Abdelkader/Mursak/Emmerton. I think we'll be just fine but it's just too bad we can't carry a few extra players and their salaries without being over the cap or possibly losing them through the waiver if they're sent down.

Holy Crap! Who dug this thread out of the cellar from Mrch 07? It's like watching Classic Games on ESPN; Avery with the Rangers, Drury with the Sabres, Penguins "could" become a good team, lol. My second favorite team is anyone who is playing the Leafs and beats them. I love watching the Leafs lose just to hear the "blame everyone else" stance that the Toronto/Canadian media take after the game. It's never that the Leafs players just plain suck (which they do), it's always about the reffing, or the incredibly lucky bounces the other team received, or the illegal goalie equipment the other team used. Harry Neale was the worst one for this kind of homeristic bulls***. If I had to pick another team that I would like to see do well other than the Wings I guess it would be Calgary cause I like the city and I think Iginla is awesome and wish he would be traded to the Wings someday. Phaneuf plays a great game but by all accounts around Calgary he's a dick so it makes it a little tougher to like him. That and the fact that he's dating my soon-to-be-fiance (even if she doesn't know it yet, lol) kinda makes me wish he'd get traded to the Leafs so it would be that much easier to hate him.

No. Cause he's a *****.

I think Datsyuk is the best stickhander and deker - of all time - and I'll tell you why. When Bossy, Gretzky and Bure were in their prime most goalies just plain sucked. They hadn't uniformly adopted the butterfly style yet and hard low shots to the glove side almost always went in if the player was in close to the hash marks and hit that corner with a decent shot. Today, the goalies are huge, skilled, fast, butterfly types with massive equipment and padding that put the older generation of goalies to shame and Datsyuk still makes them look foolish. In traffic, Datsyuk also has the stickhandling edge of all time as he is playing against better defensemen as well. Players in the NHL train like madmen now (even in the offseason) and combine that with the advances in skates and you've got way faster d-men for the stars of today's NHL to have to try and deke around; yet Datsyuk's moves and escapes with the puck are still even better than those of Bure, Jagr or Lemieux. This would be enough to convince me but there's one more thing that tells me Dats has the title and that is one single move I saw him make a couple years back. Dats was skating down the right wing in the neutral zone towars the offensive end and wanted to pass to a teammate who was skating past him on his right (along the boards) but the passing lane was blocked to Dat's forehand so (while skating full speed) he put the puck on his backhand and pulled it completely around his body and fed his teammate from behind his back with a tape to tape backhand pass ahead of his own body while not even losing a step. It was the best pass I have ever seen and the most difficult as well. I have tried to duplicate it a thousand times and even while standing still it is nearly impossible; never mind at full speed. I have told many current fancy stickhandlers, current NHL'ers, ex-NHL'ers, and ex-junior players about "the pass" in the summer leagues up here in Canada and not one of them could even come close to doing it. I've also never seen anyone on TV in the NHL ever do anything that could top it.

If Stuart was on another team he would be a top 2 D-man. Please name a 4th Defensman in the league that would be an "upgrade" over Stuart. Don't throw out guys that are in the top 2 on their team but find someone that is #4 on another team's depth chart who would be better than Stuart. The only team/player that even comes close is Anaheim and Francois Beauchemin. He plays behind Pronger/Niederwhiner/Schneider and from the rumours it looks like Anaheim might be shopping Schneids anyways so that comparison might be invalid by the time the season starts. I really believe that either of Lilja/Lebda could also crack about 1/2 of the teams top 4 too which gives us great depth without even mentioning Meech or Ericssson. Stuart will make his share of mistakes but every team would love to say he's their 4th D'man.

Really. Unless he's living in your basement or you've got him on your msn contacts who knows what he would have done if someone offered him 5yrs of job security. Personally I think given his point production (see above posts) that he would take a 5yr/15mil deal, but the only one who actually KNOWS what he would have done is Antoine.

Actually Gomez' salary is only 7.35 against the cap. It's the average amount over the length of the contract that counts against the cap so looking at 1st line centers (like Gomez is supposed to be), 7.35 is not that out of line. I'm not a Gomez fan even when he was a Devil so there's no way in hell I would ever have given him that kind of money but at least he's been healthy and relatively productive, not 7mil productive, but does put up some points for the Rags. If by "huge steal" you are referring to the .5 that Ottawa is saving over the next 2 years then compare that to the 4-5mil that Ottawa is going to have to pay Vermette when his contract is up if he comes anywhere near the 30 goal plateau this year or next. The other part of equation that gets overlooked here is that we are guaranteed (barring trade) to have Flip for 5yrs while Ottawa isn't guaranteed to re-sign Vermette at the end of the 2yr contract. In fact, if Ottawa continues to slip and take it's soap opera dressing room down the standings then that increases the chance that Vermette signs elsewhere for better working and living conditions ( Ottawa is COLD and WET all winter... which lasts about 9 months). After 8+ years in the Wings organization and the city I'm betting it will feel like home to Flip and he'll continue to bond with his teamates over the next 5 years and want to stay even longer when this deal is up. When Vermette signs for 4.5mil for 3 years in Tampa or Phoenix after his current 2yr deal in Ottawa is done you can be sure the Sens will be wishing they had done a 5 for 3mil deal too.

Hey cool! I'll send you mine if you'll send me yours? PM me if you wanna exchange player predicitions... or we could just make a thread for it and get everyone in on the fun... maybe a prize for who gets the most right/closest? Can we send beer over the internet?? hmmm....

I don't think you can even begin to evaluate ANY contract until at least the mid-way point. Let's revisit this argument 2 1/2 years from now and see if Holland's cheese slipped off his cracker or not when he signed Flip for 5 @ 3mil per. Personally, I think Flip is going to mature into a 30 goal scorer that plays excellent defense. He's got all the tools and a fantastic supporting/mentoring staff around him so I think his upside is huge. As salaries and the cap go up I don't think we will view Flip's deal as "overpayment" at all... even now if you look at what Finger, Bernier, Nolan, Demitra or Naslund got; I would take Flip and his current production (never mind his potential) over any one of those aforementioned clowns any day, and Flip's salary is very close (less for some) to that group of 2008 UFA signings. Before anyone screams that Naslund is twice the player Flip is remember that Naslund only put up 25 goals last season, compared to Flip's 19, while logging more ice time and seeing lots of time on the 1st PP unit for the Cannots. Which is more likely, Flip improving as he matures or Nazzy getting worse as he hits the end of his career? Next year Nazzy will make one million more than Flip and we can compare the two contracts then and I'll bet we'll be kissing Hollands ass as usual again when we do.

Honestly I think it's more a case of "how to handle the unlimited bank account", which leads to MANY opportunities for partying and clubbing, which leads to many opportunities for alcohol/drugs/sex, which leads to many photo ops and embarrassing magazine covers. If the publics perception is that you're a drunken tard who spends all the money on drugs and alcohol and that your career is heading for the toilet it's tough to change that perception which then becomes the reality as your career opportunities and fans dry up. I don't think it's necessarily the success that ruins the individual; it's the lifestyle choices.

I would be sick of it if I was forecasting for the Islanders, Leafs or Preds cause the players on their rosters just plain suck. I like forecasting the Wings roster cause there are so many deadly combinations when we have the amount of talent on the roster that we do. I always make a little "nostrodamus" spreadsheet at the start of each year where I try to predict EVERY Wings players stats at the end of the year and then just before playoffs start I go back and get a chuckle out of how wrong or right I was with certain players.

Good deal for Flip and the 5yrs is good for the Wings. I wouldn't worry too much about cap space for this year; that's why teams have GM's and GM's have capologists so that fans like us don't have to worry about it. We'll be under the cap by opening day and if we have to lose a 7th or 8th defenceman to do it then so be it. As for next year i'm quite sure that once the deals for Z and Mule get done and Hossa sees how much will/won't be available to him he'll try even harder to win it all this season cause he knows he'll be moving in order to get his 10mil paycheck elsewhere. I'm happy to have him for this season though but I would much have Z, Mule and Flip locked up for 5 or 7 years each than have Hossa anyways. I liken him to a "hired gun" that we're bringing aboard for one season to help us repeat and fill in the "secondary scoring" until Mule, Flip and Huds are all consistant 25+ goal scorers two seasons from now and are backed up by Abdelkader, Mursak, Emmerton, Leino and Helm. By then hopefully our vets like Malts, Sammy, McCarty and Cheli are enjoying a cold one while watching the next generation compete for cups.