daniel1

I'm so pumped about the game tonight and after snooping on the s***tsburgh's forums for a bit I can't help but think that their window of opportunity is "closing, closing, closed" after this year. On the other hand the Wings seem poised to continue their winning ways well into the foreseeable future. With the Pengoons list of impending UFA's after this season and their other top players with expiring deals next season I don't see them being able to keep their group together beyond this season. I'm not sure what's waiting for them in the minors but they won't have the luxury of a top pick in the draft this year due to their regular season success (for a change) and last I checked Haakan Andersson wasn't in their organization so good luck at the draft Pens. The Wings on the other hand should only get better next year; we won't be losing any core players and there is a legitimate reason to expect that prospects such as Quincey, Ericcson, Meech and Kindl could make our Defense even better than it is this year. Up front we should expect to see more development in the regular season from Filppula, Hudler, Kopecky, Helm and Franzen. I'm not sure if Z and Dats can GET any better, but I don't expect them to get worse that's for sure. In goal I think Ozzie has shown the world he can be a number 1 and we have him locked up for a great price too. Howard can be allowed to develop as the backup and we can see if there's a chance he can be a true number one in the future. Our prospects look real good to come in and challenge each other for spots and honestly I can't see us losing anyone after this year except Drake, Chelios, Lilja and possibly McCarty if Babs wants to keep Downey instead. Our "key" acquisition this year will probably be to re-sign Stuart who has really solidified the second D pairing with Kronner. I'm hoping for a 3yr/3.25mil deal for him till Ericcson/Kindl/Pyett are ready for full time duty. I'm not counting on big years next season from Abdelkader, Emmerton or Mursak with the big club as I see them labelled for another year of development in the minors but it wouldn't surprise me if one of these three or a guy like Leino comes in and wins a spot either. I'm going to post my "ideal" lineup for next year just for fun and I have high hopes that if we win the Cup tonight that we have a great chance to repeat next season too. Dats-Z-Homer Franzen-Filpulla-Cleary Samuelsson-Draper-Kopecky Maltby-Helm-Hudler Downey or Mac (call-ups: Abdelkader, Leino, Mursak, Axelsson, Emmerton) Lids/Rafi Kronner/Stuart Lebda/Quincey Meech (call-ups: Ericcson, Kindl, Pyett, Smith) Osgood and Howard (gets a look: Daniel Larrson) Honestly, I don't know whether I'm more excited about them winning it all this year or about how good things look for next year, lol. I'm definitely re-upping my Center Ice package this summer for next season to see how good these guys can be with a little infusion of youth and size that should be coming in. Babs has a lot of tools to work with next season and I'm a big believer that he's the perfect guy for the job. I wonder if this year's draft will yield any Zetterbergs or Franzens? With Hakaan and company doing the scouting there is always a very good chance of at least one late round steal for us. What a great time to be a Wings fan....

I didn't really need another reason to hate old "Hanta Yo" but this certainly gives me one. I wonder what the rest of Canada and Toronto fans will think of Ron Willson's on air comments about TSN and Canada always being "negative" and asking him the tough questions? I think Ronnie's a ****** and I hope he and the rest of the Maple Laughs enjoy another 25 years of futility and non-playoff hockey.

The top ten list based on performance in the 2007-2008 NHL regular season and 2007-2008 Stanley Cup Playoffs: 1. Henrik Zetterberg 2. Pavel Datsyuk 3. Nick Lidstrom 4. Sidney Crosby 5. Chris Osgood 6. Nik Kronwall 7. Brendan Morrow 8. Evgeni Malkin 9. Joe Thornton 10. Mike Richards I tried to factor in not only points and TOI but also the net impact each player had on their team's success in both the regular season and the playoffs taking into account several statistical categories such as pp and pk time, plus/minus, GWG/GTG, faceoff % (where applicable), and leadership. I would have rated Malkin higher had he not "disappeared" in the last 5 playoff games. Osgood's presence here will undoubtedly raise eyebrows but this list is based on THIS season and THIS season's playoffs only; not their entire career or who has been the best in the last 5 years. Since playoffs matter the most in the NHL a player's ranking in my list was based on 35% their regular season contributions and 65% their playoff performance.

I would love to see that sequence at the end of the game where Dats is giving it to Roberts during the scrum, if anyone has a link for it or a vid of it I would appreciate it thanx!

I think they did this so that they can fire him half-way through the season when the Avs are struggling. This way they're not really losing anyone important to them yet they can "shake up" their team cause they know they are in for a long season next year. Maybe they think that firing Granato will have more effect than hiring him. I'm sure they don't see him as a long term solution but maybe as more of a sacrificial lamb for next year if things don't go well. I'm surprised that they would recycle him so soon after firing him. I don't see them as a powerhouse anyways next year regardless of who their coach is.

Ya I agree with ya on the matchups; if I was Babs the only thing I would avoid is having our 4th line out against Pitt's top two lines and I wouldn't want Cheli/Lebs out against their top two lines either. Lids/Rafi seem to be a better fit to defend against Crybaby's line while Kronner/Stuart might be better suited to defending Malkin's line. With Mule back on the second line Pitt's better hope their D plays outta their minds cause on paper it looks like they have a top 1 and then some "B" grade defensmen at best. When Hal Gill is in your top 4 you might wanna pray for missed passes and stellar goaltending from bird-beek.

Allow me to "mix up who goes where." Zetterberg-Datsyuk-Ovechkin, . There, I fixed your spelling and grammatical errors for you.

Zetterdawg is the spitting image of Scotty Bowman... right down to the frown and pug nose, lol.

I agree 110%, if it was a back to back or even a one or two days off thing then yes the Stars would have an excuse, but if Glen Healy says it's the "no gas left in the tank" thing one more time I'm going to go outside and listen to the game in my truck on XM Radio. If they are still "tired" from Sunday's game then they should just pack it in now and start waving the white flag. The Wings are simply outplaying them and have more offensive players than Dallas. We beat to them to the puck on nearly every play down low in the first 40 minutes.

So Ron's babies are down 2-0 in the series with Dallas and a TSN commentator asks Ron if "more is needed out of your captain is this series". A fair question as Marleau has gone 4 straight games without a point and hasn't contributed much of anything so far in the Dallas series at all. Instead of giving his captain a vote of confidence with something like "Patty's been super on the defensive side of the puck", or "Patty has been a tremendous leader all year and we know he's working hard and the goals will come", Ron decides to blow up at the poor commentator (who's only asking what every Shark fan is thinking I'm sure) and yell "It's always negative, that's TSN for you, that's Canada for you!!" as he storms off camera and cuts the interview rather short. What made it a little funny is that as he storms off he tries to go back into the dressing room, only to find it locked, lol. So he has to stand there fuming while some security guy fumbles with keys to let the haughty princess back into her castle. I don't care what the score or outcome; I've never seen Babcockles lose his composure with the media. I haven't seen every post gamer he's done, but i've seen plenty. This gives me the indication that Babs can control his emotions and put things in perspective; this is the sign of a good coach as far as I'm concerned. What can Patty be thinking after he sees that clip, "so i'm a "negative" now?". I think Ron's an ass, Patty IS an underachiever so far, and the Goldfish will be out in 6.

It's right after he says "it's always fricken negative", TSN has muted the audio though so you can't hear him say "that's tsn for you, that's Canada for you!". I saw it live so they didn't have a chance to mute the audio at the end. They were showing the whole unedited clip on Sportnet and ESPN later that night too.

What I don't understand is why the Sharks didn't deal him for somebody, anybody, at the deadline. I would have given the "C" to Clowe and let Joe off the hook by letting him keep his "A". I think Clowe would make a better captain than Marleau and you really can't strip Marleau of it without creating bad karma in the room so you trade him and get a decent scorer back and fix your leadership issue at the same time.

He likes the sunshine and the fact that nobody in the state knows who he is or cares how badly he chokes in the playoffs. Boston was a pressure cooker compared to SOCAL and I think he was so glad to get out of there that he would have resigned on the moon if it meant that the local media and fans would just leave him alone and focus on surfers and beach volleyball players instead.

I don't think we can really do this till the playoffs are over and we can assess where we're at; but at the same time it's always fun to play "armchair Kenny Holland" so here goes. At forward I would give Mac another year; he's cheap, can stand up for teamates, the fans love him and he can contribute too. Drake I let go as we need the roster spots and Mac gets in over him. Downey I give another year too for the fans and the grit factor. I make everyone here mad and keep that logo hunting shinguard assassin known as Sammy. He's versatile, can play 2nd or 3rd line duty and has been doing better on the 2nd pp lately. I don't expect too many changes other at forward really, our "search" for a power forward may have ended with finding one who can score (Mule) combined with one who can fight (Mac). I expect Helm, Kopecky, and Abdelkader to fight for time next year and bounce between GR and Detroit. The odds of not having at least one forward out with injuries at any given time is pretty rare so I'm sure we'll see lots of these kids up and down all year. If Brunnstrom is signed however that may spell the end for Downey though as Babs will probably choose Brunnstrom over Downey if it comes to that as the final roster spot, which is too bad cause I really like Downs, but he's replaceable. The defence could be in line for more changes though. Goodbye Cheli, thanx for everything and if you want a job as an assistant coach it's yours, but I've seen you get burned too many times in these playoffs to count on your 48 (next season) year old legs for 82 games + playoffs next year. There's a lot of depth in the organization and the Wings need to see what they got cause we may need to deal some of it for a young goaltender next year if Howard craps the bed. Did anyone notice Pyett was on Team Canada's roster for the Worlds? If he has a good showing it will be hard to keep him down in GR for long. I think our 3rd defence pair is weak; whether it's Lebs or Lils it's still weak. To address this I would let Lilja go, sign Stuart for 3 years, not resign Cheli and start to develop Meech, Ericcson, Kindl, Pyett and Quincey at the NHL level for various callups and see which one or two of these guys has what it takes to be the 6th and 7th defenceman. Lebda because of his skating and team first attitude gets to stay and hopefully develop into a Rafalski/JM Liles type D-man. Personally I think Meech is better than either Lilja or Lebda right now anyways. The goaltending looks pretty simple right now; Ozzie is signed for a couple more years and Howard gets to start the year in Detroit. Hasek retires. At the All-Star break we see how they're doing and if everything's peachy we leave well enough alone. If Howard hasn't shown he can play at the NHL level and Osgood is just "average" then we deal a couple of those D prospects for a proven goalie at the deadline. An intriguing prospect however is Huet or Kolzig. If Huet doesn't resign with Washington then I would offer him a 2 year deal for around 2.5mil. Or if nobody picks up Kolzig then I would offer him a one year 2mil deal with a team option for a 2nd year. Kolzig would be nice to have around for insurance and I think Huet is a bona fide #1 guy too. The wild card here is Brunnstrom; if we win the Cup I don't see how he can turn the Wings down. If he signs here and is as good as advertised that means we could afford to deal someone like Hudler or Samuelsson along with a good D prospect for whatever we need at the deadline or sooner. At some point and time we have to decide who to keep and who to trade as I don't think we can afford big new deals for everyone if they keep developing. Franzen looks like a 3mil or higher guy now and Flip and Hudler probably won't settle for anything less than 3 either. Z is gonna command at least 6-7/year and I think we want to keep Stuart too (another 3.5/year). I hope Kenny can convince Flip and the Mule to take less than market value in exchange for more years (like Dats), but if we have to "lose" people then Sammy and Hudler would be first to go in my book. I'm not saying they're bad players, it's just that I would rank Dats, Z, Franzen, Homer, Flip and Kopecky as bigger priorities to lock up long term. I think we're in a pretty enviable situation at every position except for goal though; a lot of teams can't scrape together a solid 2 lines and 4 D while really we are wondering who will play on our 4th line and who gets the 7th D position. If Howard turns out to be a go-to guy we could be set for years to come. Holland and co. have done a superb job so far and deserve all the credit they're getting.

Theodorestop with another case of the "Franzen Flu", lol Can't wait to hear coach Qless spin it to make Joser look good on this one. DMac was waiting to drop'em with someone, no one would oblige in the Nash series so he figured he's make his presence known, good tilt!

Nice season this 07-08 could turn out to be for our hardworking team: Red Wings - Presidents Trophy Red Wings - Conference Champs Red Wings - Stanley Cup Datsyuk - Con Smythe Lidstrom - Norris Datsyuk - Selke Datsyuk - Lady Byng Chelios - Masterson Trophy

Entertaining game for sure! Dats, Franz, Z and Kronwal looked very good tonight. Lebda looked lost, and Cheli, well Cheli looked 46 tonight, maybe it was an off night but yikes. Getting Stuart back will help I guess cause then Lilja should be down on the 3rd pair with Cheli. Honestly though, if we lose a game I would like to see Meech make an appearance in this series. Sammy has got to get off that point on the 2nd pp too, he'll cost us a game at some point if he plays there all series. Osgood let in one bad one, but came back strong in the 3rd when we needed him so maybe next game we'll play hard for the WHOLE game.

This is why God invented bars... among other reasons, lol. You can probably also find it online, people here have been posting the link to a streaming site that has decent quality video.

A quick down and dirty for why I'm not too worried about the Fagalanche: 1. Our top two forwards are better, healthier and in their prime = Dats/Z > Suckic/Foreskin 2. Our top two D are better and healthier than theirs = Lids/Rafi > Footsie/Hammerhead 3. Our resurgent goalie has more playoff experience (and a Cup!) than their resurgent goalie = Osgod > Theodoorstop Now that I'm all done calling them names and threatening to beat them up at recess I can still remember how intense some of those games in the previous matchups against them were and I'm pumped to have the rivalry back again. The only thing that worries me is their two young guns; Stastny and Wolski. If these two guys wake up and have a great series we better hope our young guns (Flip and Franzen) come to play too. Wings in 6

Phhhttt!! The Beauty of Sammy the "logo-hunter". I'll take 1 shot to the top corner any day over 6 straight into the goalie's chest. Sometimes I wonder with some goalies if we shouldn't maybe hold on for a QUALITY scoring chance rather than boost his confidence and drastically reduce ours by pumping 44 shots at him from long range wiithout traffic (*cough, Sammy,cough*) and then we look up at the score-clock and say, "wow, this goalie must be amazing! we're outshooting them by 40 shots and the score is still 1-1". In some cases a little patience wouldn't hurt our team even though Babcockles mantra is "every shot on net is a good shot". Lidstrom's bounce-shot aside; some of those goalies must finish games against us and go, "wow, I was amazing tonight, I stopped 50 shots, i'm hot! i'm hot!"

Dallas just put out the Ducks and their part-time all-stars. Rumour has it that Niederwhiner put in a call to his agent immediately after the game to see if it was too late to jump onto another team for the rest of the playoffs, lol. Seriously though, I'm glad to see that Burke and his sideways tactics didn't get by the first round. Bertuzzi and Schneider left a bad taste in my mouth whenever I saw them play for the Ducks this year and I don't think guys like Selanne and Needawhiner should be able to sit half the season out and then decide to play.

Yep; 3yrs/3mil sounds about right, with a team option for a fourth at 3.5. He's been as advertised so far even though we know he's not at 100% or able to shoot as well with that broken finger. Him and Kronwall are great together and nobody says the Wings D is soft anymore when those two are laying out bodies left and right all over the ice. Kronwall had 3 or 4 massive open ice hits in the Nashville series that really helped turn the momentum. I hope Stuart likes playing here and takes a little less in return for a longer deal.

The Salary Cap. This has given no-name schmucks like Sammy, Peverly, and Fidler a chance because they're CHEAP! In an era where you could spend some money on your 3rd and 4th line guys like this don't get a sniff of the NHL. Way to go Buttman; you've managed to water down the league and give these bums some ice time.

Ah Sammy.... what can we say?

Whoops, jumped the gun there, lol. Just a penalty... c'mon boys, put it in the damn net!