Aussie_Wing

I like Maltby but surely his time with the Wings is up? Time for the youngsters to get larger roles, and hopefully Ritola is around and not lost on waivers.

Fair effort reaching the 2nd round with one of the worst teams in a while. Howard is here to stay, bigger roles for Helm and Abdelakder next season, and Ritola and Kindl up full time. This season was never going to be anything overly special, but to reach the playoffs, extend our streak and win a round was good.

Wow, we're being completely dominated.

I'm pretty confident the line-up will stay the same. I guess Eaves is pretty banged up, eh?

I like Bertuzzi, but I had just about written him off as far as returning next season. He was DOMINANT today, and if that's how it's going to be then we need to re-sign him. 1 goal and 4 assists are you kidding me?! Can we fit both Hudler and Bertuzzi? I guess only if Lidstrom takes a huge paycut.

Not much ice-time until the 3rd period, but in the 3rd he looked very responsible, was strong in the corners, drew a penalty due to Murray's idiocy and had a nice takeway right in front of the bench. No more Williams please. If Eaves is back in for Game 5, I'd actually rather Ritola than Draper, but that's just me.

Congrats mate!!

That's what I noticed the most too, he was very strong, tough to move off the puck. Put it this way, he certainly did ho harm to his future prospects on this team.

Ritola looked impressive!

How obvious can it get that the Pens are being favoured?

Draper continues to be awful.

May is done as a Wing, why can't people understand this?

Ritola you ripper!!! Can't wait to see him play, he and Abdelakder are great mates and they were deadly together in Grand Rapids. Lebda looked pretty reasonable in Game 3, hard to believe they took him out and not Small E.

I've said it again and I'll continue to say it, Ritola is a poor man's Filppula. Does everything well, has so much skill but the points don't come. Now whether the points could come if he were to play alongside quality NHL players remains to be seen. He's got plenty of upside and his finish to the season in GR was very encouraging.

People severely underrate Ritola. The guy has good size, tons of skill, and is responsible defensively. I think the fact that they're considering inserting him is a good sign that he'll be a Wing next season.

Ritola is one of 2 places next season: 1. In Detroit 2. On another NHL team It had better be #1.

The Pistons and the Red Wings are nothing alike, and trust me, I used to follow the Pistons VERY closely until I stopped caring about the NBA. 1. Pistons NEVER had any out and out superstars like Lidstrom or Datsyuk or Zetterberg. 2. The Pistons stuffed up so many drafts in a row, mainly because they kept trying to draft players with 'Pistons DNA'. This is code for players who are slightly older, defense first, are very limited offensively with little upside. Rodney 'Suckey' is about the only decent player they've drafted over the past...7 years. 3. They got extremely stubborn and refused to make any significant trades, they kept rolling out the same starting 4 (5 before Ben left for the $$$) hoping they would be a main contender again when everyone was getting slightly worse. 4. Perhaps the biggest one of all, when it was clear they were not going to improve their side, they still tried to hang on for too long. When they finally realised a shake-up was needed, they made some truly moronic trades. Trading away the heart and soul of the team in Billups, then giving up Delfino (who is showing his OBVIOUS talent with Milwaukee), and then Afflalo. Stupid, stupid, stupid. All very nice peices which they gave away for virtually nothing. Wings have nothing to worry about, they're not folding like the Pistons have. Everyone could see the Pistons's current sucking a mile away, too bad Joe obviously couldn't. So overrated.

Those pairings actually scare me.

This is what I was going to say. They perhaps could have been a little quicker in getting off, but it's probably not worthy of a call.

Hopefully this doesn't evolve into "Ericsson sucks", "Trade Ericsson" ect... But my question is how much improvement is there in his game? He was the last pick in his draft, he had size, raw skill and improved so much after arriving in Grand Rapids. The Wings love his upside, they thought he could be a 2nd pairing defenceman. He's 26, so you'd think what we're seeing now is only the beginning, but how much upside is there truly left? For a giant he doesn't play anywhere near physical enough, he doesn't really throw any hits, offensively he could probably max out at roughly 30 points, and defensively I don't think he's ever going to be all that good. So he's not blessed with being a physical defenceman despite his size and offensively he's probably not well-rounded enough to regularly be used on the PP. Where then does he sit? Basically, I don't think his potential will ever be reached, partly because I think the hype was a little too much. He's a 5th defenceman at best. Unfortunately for us, Kindl has a lot of the same flaws. Size, skill, but doesn't hit and the offence might not come around like it was once touted too.

I'm willing to bet that Kindl will be a better player than Ericsson. I don't think Kindl will be as good as I thought he would be about 4 years ago, but I'm still confident his talent will go well in the NHL. He'll be better around better players, his brief stint this year showed me just that, he didn't make any mistakes.

Getting swept would be pretty inexcusable, especially considering we had leads for large potions of Games 2 and 3. There's way too much talent on this team to be swept. Stating the obvioous, but if we had held on today, the whole series would have been different. So the series isn't as one-sides as it currently seems. It all comes down to work ethic, and quite frankly, I think the Sharks want it that little bit mroe and seem to have more energy.

Yes, size is all that matters... Completely ignoring the fact that Hudler has shown he IS a playoffs performer and we've won the Cup and lost in the SCF with him. I can't wait for Hudler to be back in the line-up.

Howard's been okay these playoffs, but really outside of a good Game 5(?) against Phoenix, he hasn't really stolen any games. I know he's a rookie and the defence needs to be better than it has, but it seems every game he gives up an untimely goal that just hands the oppposition the momentum.

Umm, Huds is at $2.875. Hudler's salary >> Cleary's.