Hank

Don't sell it to us. Babcock, Bowman and Holland all think Zetterberg is better at centre. And he is. We'll do the same thing we did last year. If we're struggling to put up offense, they'll play together again. If not, they'll stay apart. In 05-06, Zetterberg pretty much spent the entire season between Homer and Sammy and it worked great. But Datsyuk has Shanny at the time. This past season Sammy got hurt, Shanny was gone so there was nobody for either of them to work with. So if Hudler, Sammy, Grigs or Filp can find any kind of scoring touch, we'll have two solid lines instead of one. The fact is, Zetterberg is a centerman and plays better at his natural position. Why wouldn't the coaching staff want him to play where he can provide more of his skills? Until the Wings show that they can't score goals without the two of them together, expect Z and Dats to be centering their own lines on opening night.

I think this is a great idea. I believe at one time the All-Star game was played after the season concluded and it was against the Cup winning team and a collection of allstars. I thought I heard that fights almost broke out in some All-star games. That's when players hated anyone not on their team. Ted Lindsay was on the NHL Network last night and he said as much. Now we have a union that makes them all love each other. Isn't that nice. I want to hear stories about teams getting into fights while sharing the same train ride. Just like it used to happen in the 50's.

That's exactly how I pictured him. And has anyone heard him on the radio? He sounds like the computer from "War Games"; "would you like to play a game?"

I agree. 10 less teams and a 65 game schedule will never happen. But I think it would be best for the league. There are days where I think that business group from New Enlgand, that proposed to buy the entire NHL for $3-4B, would have been best for the league. Rumors circulated that they would have cut loose a number of teams and made the schedule more compact for more excitement. But who knows? They might have created some retarded things too.

Great thread: 1. 20 teams. I'm not going to go into the politics of who'd I eliminate but I'm pretty sure everyone knows of the top 10 that could be diced. 2. Top 10 teams make the playoffs with the #1 & 2 seeds getting a bye. 3. 65 game season. Less games means healthier and happier players as well as more onous on regular season games. Also, the season will have wrapped up by at least May 15th. Hockey should finish when it's still slightly cool outside. 4. reduce rosters from 18 skaters to 15. This would force teams to use only 3 lines of forwards. No more 4th line scrubs. Sorry Sean Donovan. 5. research and develop goalie equipment that is the same size as what Ken Dryden wore. The technologys there. We all know it. Now make it happen. 6. No more instigator rule 5. At least 2000 seats in every building have to be sold for $8 or less. Get the families and the kids back in the arenas. 6. Create an "NHL" station that shows 3 games of the week. This channel will be given out free to all cable and satellite subscribers for the first 2 years to get interest out there in the game. No more need to hear "I can't find the games!". 7. Make Lou Lamourello wear a bag over his head. I'm tired of looking at that Muppet-Salamander looking thing he calls a head. 8. Keep a cap but force teams into a revenue sharing program. 9. Players that you have drafted and developed - their salaries only count 50% towards the Cap. This promotes developing your own talent as well as rewarding teams for good drafting. This includes players that weren't drafted by their team, but were traded for before they came to the NHL (eg. Spezza). 10. Create the Wayne Gretzky Award (or Gordie Howe Award) for the best forward. Dmen and goalies have an individual award, so should the forwards. 11. Make Bryan McCabe apologize to fans during intermissions for suffering through his horrible play.

I don't mind the fans chanting 'you suck' and all of that. It helps build rivalries. But I agree that they really do need to get better fan support. They had one of the best teams in the leauge last year and yet they had really poor attendance. At least with teams like Chicago, Boston or Phoenix, you can make the arguement that nobody wants to watch a bad team. But Nashville has been one of the best and most exciting teams to watch the last 2 seasons. And their owner showed a willingness to go out and buy or trade for the best players available. The reason for fans not turning up was lack of interest. That's a bad sign. And I heard on XM last week, from a supposedly reliable source, that the actual seasons ticket total for this season is around 7,000, not 14,000 that some are reporting. But in the end, if the team continues to get little to zero support from local corporations, it won't matter who owns this team. They'll either fold or move away. Business is business. And losing millions each year isn't good business.

Okay this is hilarious. Eklund makes a living off of freedom of speech and his right to spew lies and inuendo. And yet, I started a thread at hockeybuzz promoting Peklund and making fun of Eklund and the mods removed it. What a joke. The guy gets nearly 500,000 so obviously there are idiots out there who love him and the garbage he spews. The only rumours he's ever right about are the ones he rips off from TSN or Spectors. Hahaha! I just got banned from the site. I didn't swear or say anything rude. I simply pointed out the fraud that Eklund was and got removed. No loss on this end.

LOL! I love his rating system:

LOL. Well technically, he had 1 more hit I believe. Hits can be subjective though. A small little bump after the puck is dished counts as much as a run away train hit, so who knows how accurate that stat is. I'm a Donovan fan but I still think Schaefer is a better all around player. But he's worth more $$$ so I can see why Ottawa moved him for upcoming FA's.

I think the Bruins got the much better deal. Schaefer had more hits and way more points than Donovan last season. Donovan works his tail off and he can skate like Neidermayer on crack, but to say he has cement hands is an insult to cement. Scheafer is a great 3rd line winger who can skate, check, kill penalties and finish enough for 40-50 points. This was a salary dump so they can resign upcoming free agents (Heatley, Spezza, Redden in 08 and Emery this year).

OMG! that is way too funny! I love some of his quotes "I can't reveal any of my sources because I'm too respected in the hockey world". Hahahaha. Eklund's so full of crap. He's right .3% of the time and yet so many sheep flock to his site to read the BS that he drums up every day. I don't doubt that he has some connections or 'sources' in the NHL, but none of them are reputable. He might know the stick boy in Edmonton or an accountant with the Coyotes. I'm sure people like that hear things in the hallways but none of them are true. He swore up and down since March that Smyth was going to be a Calgary Flame come July 1st. That was a done deal. Well where did he end up? Colorado. He was also on XM and said that the beginning of the Stanley Cup finals was going to be on X date. This was a guarentee. And yet he was wrong about that too. He's full of garbage. I'll admit that I'll go on the message boards to refute some of his horrendous rumours. The Hejduk for McCabe deal was one of the funniest 'rumours' yet. His reasoning? The Avalanche need a puck moving dman. Gee, I wonder what Leopold or J.M.Liles are for? And last time I checked Hejduk was far more valuable than mistake-prone, super-mouth Bryan "I'll never play in a capped NHL!" McCabe. My dogs ass speaks more truth than Eklund and his poop-filled rumours.

I just find it hilarious how upset the NFL got with the negative stereotypes Playmakers revealed. They get it off the air, but yet every week you read about an NFL player getting arrested for something or other. Right now, I beleive half the Bengals are in jail or waiting for trial. Heck, if you're a big NFL fan and you're desperate to see your favourite NFL stars during the offseason just tune into Court TV.

These are all good points. The only way I think Detroit should even consider signing him is if D-Mac agreed to the league minimum and a 2-way contract. He would be used strictly for depth. But at this point, I'm not sure who he can beat out in our lineup. I'd rather have players like Kopecky or Ellis play in front of him. Actually, if we were even contiplating getting D-Mac back, I'd rather look at players like Chris Simon. There's a lot of other players available out there that can do exactly what Mac does only better and more reliable physically. Heck, I'm sure Roenick would take the league minimum to play on our team. He doesn't drop the gloves but he's way faster than Mac, still likes to hit and can play both centre and RW. My biggest concern with bringing Mac back into the fold is his connection with Grinder. It's been documented what a bunch of losers and drug addicts that band is. From Draper to Holland to Bowman, lots of guys in the Wings organization begged him to quit that band for the sake of his career and health. But he refused and was quickly let go. If he's still heavy into this 'rocker' lifestyle, then I'd pass at any price. But if his focus is 100% on the Wings and he agrees to a league minimum, 2-way contract, I wouldn't mind taking him back.

T.R. Goodman is the famous trainer who trains several NHL, MLB and NBA players in their off-season. He's the guy that's been working with Chelios for the past 12 years. Anyway, he was on XM204 a couple of weeks ago and it was pretty interesting stuff. He went through what he does different than most fitness experts, but the more interesting stuff was of him talking about how he pairs up the proper personalities to avoid conflict. He learned that the hard way when one year he had Chelios and Rick Tocchet as partners. What ensued was an hour each day of these two guys swearing and yelling at one another while they both tried to top each others results. TR said it was all in good, competitive fun, but that both of them were very, very competitive and motivated so they always wanted to win. Other stories included how when he first began to work with Chelios they had initially decided to start at 7:00 am every morning. But then the first morning Chris was there earlier than T.R. So T.R figured that Chris wanted to start a bit earlier so he'd come in at 6:45. But the next morning, Chris would be there at 6:40, and so-on and so-on. Eventually, T.R. asked what the heck was going on? Did he want to start earlier? But Chris replied that he just hated it when T.R. beat him to the gym. So eventually they decided to start at 6:00 AM sharp and who cares who got there earlier. Apparently, T.R. is very strict about his start times. If you're late, you're out. Bryan McCabe threw-up minutes into his first workout. I thought this was ironic justice seeing as how watching McCabe makes me want to vomit. He's worked with Sidney Crosby since he was 14. The first summer he worked with him, he said the kid oozed professionalism and maturity far beyond his years. At 14-years-old, he said Crosby would ask questions, soak up any information he could, and work harder than any kid he'd ever seen. T.R. went on and on about how Crosby is truly a phenom that only comes around once every few generations. He said it was a pleasure working with him and can't wait to see how his career unfolds. At the very end, he heaped praise on NHL players. Having worked with 3 of the 4 major sports he said that NHLers are easily the best to work with. He said they always come to work and never complain, carry any baggage or ego and are always friendly. What was funny is that when he was saying that, he caught himself comparing them to another sport. He said "they don't have any ego like the guys in ML..." but then stopped himself. You could tell he wanted to say MLB. I've heard this said about NHLers from a lot of journalists. One guy from S.I. (I can't remember his name now) was on 1130 WDFN and he said the same thing. He said that NBA and NFL players are so full of themselves it's hard to be around them. He said that the only NHLer that he considered conceded was Pat Roy. But even then, it wasn't even close to the average NBA player. After talking about how humble and genuine the NHL guys were T.R. commented that it's for this reason he wished the NHL were more popular in the US. He said if the average fan could see the hard work, dedication and heart these guys put in, while having no ego involved, they would become instant role models in the US. It was a very cool interview. I thought I'd share it for anyone else that's interested in this sort of thing.

Thanks Scooter! I really wish I could have found a pair of Jofa's in my area. I believe they were bought out by Reebok so none of the local shops carry the classic Jofa pant. The Missions are still nice, but I would have preferred the 'barrel' look.

That's the difference between hockey and other pro sports. In hockey, you're held accountable for your actions. Want to hotdog? You're going to get a mouth full of lumber or knuckles for your trouble. T.O. (Terrel Owens) can act like an idiot because he knows the NFL will suspend anyone that even tries to get physical after a play. Can you imagine what a guy like Brendan Shanahan or Chris Neil would do to T.O. if he started acting cocky after scoring a goal or deking out a defensman? He'd get a bag full of knuckles for his efforts. T.O. wouldn't last 2 shifts in the NHL.

Be careful what you ask for. From the interview, he splits up the summer workout into 3 semesters. The first is to rebuild the muscles that have been worn out during the long NHL season. I can't remember what the 2nd one was, but the last semester is pure torture. It's a 1-hour circuit where you don't stop to rest. You move from one station to the next and T.R. gets on your ass if you dog it or try to cheat. I've seen what Chelios looks like afterwards. You would think he had a 10 gallon bucket of water poured on him and he seems to have aged 1000 years. They workout 6 days a week for only 1 hour a day, but everyone that's worked out with T.R. says that you need a full day to recover from his workouts. T.R. said the simplicity and beauty of his regimen is that he has you using muscles that you don't use during the season. He said this helps heal those muscles while strengthening the ones that work around them and with them. So during the season, you only need to maintain what you've accomplished during the summer. Chelios has said numerous times that he wouldn't be playing today if he hadn't found T.R. Goodman. P.S. Kind of off topic but Alexandre Daigle was supposed to work out with T.R. the summer after he was dealt to the Flyers. If you recall, in the last 20 games of the season he put up 17 points and a lot of people thought that it was a sign of Daigle finally breaking out. So to build on that impressive finish the team asked him to go to LA to work with the legendary trainer. Daigle agreed but upon the advice of fellow NHLers who've done the program they said to head out 2 weeks before the training began to rest up and enjoy some time off before the hell began. So Daigle went out 2 weeks earlier and in that time he bumped into Pamela Anderson. She knew exactly who he was (being Canadian and a hockey fan) and the two "hooked up". Daigle became so smitten with her that he brushed off training and partied with her and her Hollywood friends the entire summer. When Daigle got back for training camp, the Flyers were very disappointed with how out of shape he was. But his teammates weren't that bummed, as Daigle showed them candid photos of Pam in the buff after a night of 'holding each other'. Pam even spoke about this on the Howard Stern show once. Only in her version she grew tired of Daigle and wanted him to leave her alone a lot sooner than he wanted. She made it sound like she was only interested in a one-night-stand but Daigle kept following her around like a puppy dog. Daigle eventually used his new LA contacts and set up business dealing with the movie industry after his first retirement.

LOL! But seriously, those pics are fake. They're from the PC version of NHL07. There's so many mods created for that game that you can literally create any jerseythat comes to your mind. Those were man-made from someone in the NHL PC gaming community.

Totally agree. If Crosby, Thornton and Jagr had personalities like T.O, Kobe and Bonds, the NHL would probably get a lot more publicity. The fact that Crosby took a paycut to help his team and show leadership tells you how different he is from the average NFL egomaniac. The kids not even 20 and he could have demanded the highest sum in league history. That's exactly what T.O. would have done. But Crosby would rather set an example for his teammates and remain in a city he believes he can retire in and win Cups with. Guys like T.O. would sacrifice championships for money, fame and stats. It would take him .02 seconds to answer "money" when asked which he'd rather have.

Here's one of my favorite John Ferguson Sr. stories: He's 15-years-old and he's a stick boy for a farm team. His favorite player is Ace Bailey. Ace was a very skilled player but not their toughest. One night he was destroyed in a fight with Larry Zeidel. Zeidel was a very, very tough, no-nonsense defenseman who spent most of this years in the minors. I believe Don Cherry even played with him at one time and Grapes said the guy was as tough as he was crazy. Anyway, poor Bailey got beaten up pretty badly and to Ferguson's shock nobody on the bench stood up in Ace's defense. Ace was the teams leading scorer and best player and nobody on the bench had the stones to stand up to Zeidel. Ferguson said that if he was a few years older he would have stepped onto the ice to fight him. A few years pass and eventually Fergie's playing in the same league as Zeidel. The first game Fergie has against him he drops the gloves and KO's him with one punch. As he skates away he points at his unconscious body and yells "That's for Ace Bailey!!!". I had the good fortune of meeting Mr.Ferguson one night and I remarked to him about how that was my favorite story about him. Ferguson laughed out loud and said he loved that story too. What I remembered about that short meeting was that he was extremely friendly, easy to talk with and had hands the size of dinner plates. RIP big guy.

Right now Fox has rights to show NFC games, CBS gets the AFC games while ABC/ESPN have rights for Sunday night and Monday night football games (please correct me if I'm wrong). If they wanted to, I suppose the NFL could sell the Sunday and Monday night games to CBS. In the end, I guess it's no different than when the major TV and newspaper outlets rarely ask the President tough questions for fear that they'll never be invited back for future news conferences or interviews. ESPN is a ***** and slave to it's programming contracts.

ESPN had a great show called "Playmakers" which centered around a pro football team and all the issues the players were involved with: - infidelity - drug use - *** player - competition in the locker room I believe when they made this show, they interviewed and worked with some former NFL players to make it authentic. A lot of guys said the show was very, very close to how things were in real life. The NFL detested how their league was shown in a sometimes negative light so they told ESPN to either cancel the show or ABC/ESPN would not get rights to games in the future. Bye-Bye "Playmakers".

I've heard that the Jofa pants are pretty good too. Are they longer than most other brands? I tried every brand of pant you can think of but all of them were too short on my long legs. My wife used to laugh saying they looked like biking shorts. So that's why I went with the Mission pants as I could adjust them to be 1.5" longer. I know that Tacks make a model for taller people but they're so freakin' expensive.

I was listening to Foxsports radio on the the way into work this morning. Steve Czaben (sp?) was reading an article that slammed ESPN pretty good. It read that since ESPN has cozied up to the material that it covers, it can't be taken seriously. And the authors right. How can you take anything ESPN says to heart when it bends over backwards to kiss every athletes ass it covers? The whole concept of the ESPY's only proves this point. They created an award ceremony where their analysts can schmooze with every athlete, manager and owner and give them shiny awards telling them how great they are. For that reason, you'll very rarely see any ESPN sportscaster ask tough questions or call out athletes when they've done something absurd or broken rules. I'm still shocked that there isn't 1 other Sports channel out there to challenge ESPN. Sports is a multi-biillion dollar industry and we only have 1 channel to turn to? There's 4938 food channels out there but only 1 sports? I wish Fox or CNN/SI, or even VS would get in the act. We need variety. In fact, I think Fox or CNN/SI have the potential to be far more subjective in their reporting because they don't have any sports programming themselves. There's no need to kiss the NFL or NBA's ass if you're not broadcasting them. The whole "Playmakers" debacle shows you exactly how much power leagues like the NFL have over what ESPN is allowed to show. It's about time the people got a sports show that asked questions or reported news that real people are interested in.

Classic CCM helmet. The Bauers aren't too bad, but I prefer the old-school CCM model that Stevie wore. Mission pants - very cheap, mobile and you can adjust them to be 1.5" longer which suits my long legs perfectly. CCM Tacks - the only skate I can wear. I've tried switching to Nike/Bauers but I love the Tack boot. All other equipment (gloves, elbow pads, shin guards) I don't care. I'll usually find the cheapest of the lot.