DSM

All of this debate over O'Reilly is pointless because there is absolutely no chance that he gets traded to Detroit. Why you ask? Two major reasons: 1. They have been stating all along that Colorado would prefer to send him to an Eastern conference team. Pretty cut and dry. I'm sure guys out there that like to trade like Sather and Holmgren have already been on the phone multiple times. 2. What Colorado wants vs. what Holland will normally shell out. Colorado wants a roster player that can make an impact, a 1st or 2nd rounder AND a decent prospect. Forget all of the players that most of you want Detroit to trade like Cleary, Filppula, Quincey, Samuelsson etc etc. Colorado is going to want a roster player that can come in and make an impact and potentially get some years out of them. They are severely lacking offense from the back end, so at the top of their list would be Brendan Smith. If not him, I'm betting the next player they would want would be Darren Helm. For the prospect would want either Nyquist or Tatar. In almost 16 years, Holland has never traded prospects of Tatar and Nyquists ilk, and has only traded a roster player of Smith or Helms calibre once in a deal to bring a player to the team. I doubt he is going to start now. The chances of this deal happening are extremely slim to none.

A "rebuild" is highly doubtful. Holland isn't going to gut the team for the sake of making trades. A "re-tool" is more like it. Tatar, Andersson and Lashoff will all probably get spots on the main roster next season. He'll probably also add a couple of UFA's this summer as well.

For all that are wondering, teams can retain upto 50% of a player being traded's salary. http://cdn.agilitycms.com/nhlpacom/PDF/Summary-of-Terms-1-10-13.pdf I think the biggest red flag for the Red Wings acquiring Bouwmeester would be his salary. For not exactly being a top pair dman, $6.8mil is a huge cap hit. Plus I doubt Holland would want to give up what feaster wants.

I think the reason he is looking for big shutdown type dmen, is because that is probably what is going to become available as we get closer to the deadline. There are a handful of veteran dmen like that are slated to become UFA's this summer. A couple that I know of are Scott Hannan and Robyn Regehr. I doubt Holland is looking for the type of deals that will cost him decent prospects or good roster players.

I notice a lot of people throwing this "4 seasons in the AHL" thing for Tatar. The only reason this has happened, is because he signed up with the big club the season after he got drafted. Most guys don't sign till after they turn 20.

I wouldn't say signing Krupp was a mistake. A 6'6" Dman who could play in both ends of the ice that had won a cup with Colorado. He was supposed to fill the void left by Konstantinov. Bowman loved the guy, having drafted him in Buffalo. I don't think the Red Wings anticipated that he was going to get hurt and then go dog sledding while he was supposed to be healing. However, without that little debacle the Wings would have had no need to trade for Chelios later that season. The mistake was lifting his suspension and letting him play the last year of his contract. He only played a handful of games before shutting it down for the regular season. Bowman decided to put him in the line up in Olausson's place at the start of the playoffs, and we lost thefirst 2 games to Vancouver. Krupp was like a -4 over both games. After that, he was done. Thank god we won that series and eventually the cup...

Hindsight's 20/20 on the first two. If you combine the regular season and playoffs, Franzen and Hossa had the same number of goals that season. Franzen seemed to be on the upswing, and he came cheaper. Retaining Hossa would've meant dumping another player as well. Since the Wings were in a cap crunch, retaining Franzen made sense. The Quincey trade made sense to help alleviate the loss of atleast Stuart. He wasn't that great at the end of last season, but he has been coming around as of late. Can't really dog the re-signing of Samuelsson yet because he's only played two games... And finally, other than Osgood's last couple of years, I can't think of any veteran players that were ever a liability to the team. Did we hang on to Lidstrom too long? I'm going to come way out of left field with mine.... I'm not going to say it was a mistake, but I always thought Holland should have signed Belfour instead of Cujo in the summer of 2002.

I figured the writing was on the wall for Howson last season when he tossed Nash under the bus after the trade deadline. Me wonders if Davidson is clearing the way for Brian Burke....

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=415439 Sean Avery is going to be interviewed by Michael Landsberg tonight. Might be interesting. I don't like Sean Avery as a human being, but I'm going to put my flame suit on and say that I liked him as a hockey player. I'll always wonder how different he might have turned out had the Red Wings organization kept him around longer.

If at some point this season the Red Wings get all of their players back from injury and send Tatar and Lashoff (and now Andersson) back to GR, they will have 26 players on their roster. Obviously, they'd need to get down to 23, which means 3 players have to be moved out somehow. Joey McDonald is a lock to eventually hit waivers and possibly go to GR, but what 2 skaters should go? Should the Red Wings keep 14 forwards and 7 dmen or run a 13/8 combo? I'd just like to hear everyone's REALISTIC opinions on who should go and why. And by realistic I mean no impossible NHL13 scenarios, and you have to obviously know that Holland is not going to waive or dump Cleary or Quincey. And also I don't want to see the words "buy" and "out" next to each other either, as you can't buy players out until June. Here's my opinion: I think it would be smart to go with a 13 forward and 8 defensemen setup. The Red Wings are very deep up front with 18 forwards that can skate in the NHL, not counting Sheahan. On D, the Red Wings really only have 9 NHL dmen. So I would think that no dmen get waived. I have to think that at this point Mursak has to be at the bottom of the forward depth chart. The guy can't stay healthy and the Red Wings really haven't been able to see what he can offer, while every other bottom 6 player has found there place (along with Tatar). After that I think it would come down to Emmerton, Miller or Eaves. Emmerton is probably the most obvious choice, but the Wings are kind of the thin at center, and have a glut of guys that can play on the wing. Miller and Eaves always seem to be in and out of the lineup depending on who's healthy, but I think that the Red Wings like that Eaves can fill in on the 2nd line and the PP, while still killing penalties and playing on the 3rd/4th line. So for me, it would come down to these players, in this order: 1. MacDonald (obviously) - I do hope he would clear tho, so we still have strong depth in net. 2. Mursak 3. Emmerton or Miller Who would you guys pick?

I was at the game yesterday. I can't stand the concourse. If you want to get up and not miss any of the game ,good luck because it is virtually impossible. Takes forever to go to the bathroom, takes forever to get food/drinks, takes forever to leave. Don't even get me started on the bathrooms... Kind of an embarassing story, but at a game last year my stomach became conveniently angry during 1st intermission. I needed to use the bathroom badddd, and not to pee.... I got to the bathroom and the line was massive. Once I made it into the fricken door, I saw ONLY 2 STALLS! Even with all the pee troth space, people were using the 2 stalls to pee while I waited in line. Once I got to one of the stalls, there was piss EVERYWHERE! So yea, that was my horrible JLA story... Parking sucks too.I hate parking in the garage because you have to walk through that stupid tunnel thing at a snails pace. And I also hate parking on the Cobo roof, because after the game everyone is packed in that little entry way waiting for the slow elevators, and it takes about 10 minutes of shuffling through them to get to the stairs. From what I've come to understand, the city wants the land that JLA is on to expand Cobo anyway...

I don't think Joey's departure had anything to do with Mrazek being "better" or "ready", it was more or less that KH's hands were tied. I think KH wanted to keep Joey around as a good insurance policy, considering Gustavssons now questionable durability. However, I don't think the Red Wings wanted to toss McDonald in the fold when he hasn't seen any action in 11 months. They also didn't have a roster space they wanted to keep open in order to send him to GR on a conditioning stint, especially considering how injuries have gone this season. He needed to get some games in at the AHL level, and unfortunately the only way the wings could do that was through waivers. I think KH took his chances with waivers, hoping that no one would claim a 33Y/O #2/3 goaltender who has been out for almost a year with a bad back.

I'm all for Emmerton staying on the big club. I think there's a reason why the 4th line has stayed the same almost all season. Miller, Emmerton and Tootoo have been a very good 4th line combo for the Wings this season.

Lol, don't jinx it! I went to the Wings game yesterday and after the game my friends was checking some sports feed on his phone and said Joey Mac had been waived. I had a hunch Calgary might take him. Smart move, considering Kiprusoff has shown he isn't completely made of iron, and they traded away Karlsson earlier in the season. I wish Joey good luck in Calgary. Glad he gets to stay in the NHL.

I wouldn't really put all the blame on Babcock. The team was playing like garbage, and McDonald wasn't having a good game. Most coaches switch out a goalie if they are having a bad game. McCollum let in three really bad goals though, on only 8 shots...

He kind of became a more dumbed down but entertaining remake of "The Alexandre Daigle Story."

O'Reilly has to agree to the offer sheet. If he wants's $5mill a season, then he certainly isn't going to sign a $3.364/yr offer sheet. If this drags out long enough, I'm seure an offer sheet is not out of the question. But it will be for the money he wants, and Colorado I'm sure will certainly match. For $5mil/yr the compensatio would be a 1st and a 3rd. For a playoff team, that's not really an awful price for a top 6 forward. Again however, if an offer sheet goes to O'Reilly it would have to be outrageous for Colorado to not match.

That was horrible for McCollum, but that wasn't the last time Joey played for the Wings.

I don't really remember hearing much about his off ice stuff when he was with the Wings. Then again, I am getting old.

IIRC, Ansar Khan said that on Mlive when he got called up.

I don't wonder why they let him go. I just wonder how me might have turned out if Detroit hadn't let him go. He didn't really take a huge nose dive until Hull gave him that big contract in Dallas.

Probably still Tatar back to GR.

Unless he lets a couple of center line floaters, then I'll blame him.

I'm keeping my expectations neutral. I'm just excited to see the kid play, as I would be for any player making thier Red Wings debut. Hopefully he gives us something positive to discuss on here.

I read somewhere that the Red Wings wanted to get him into a few practices with the big club before they gave him a start. Hence, why he didn't start on Tuesday.