CenterIce

To me, that is a positive. If your first powerplay is Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Holmstrom, and you can put Hossa on the second powerplay with Franzen that is awesome. To the point of the thread, this is why you need to concentrate on playing well defensivley, so that if you go on a scoring drought, you can at least keep the other teams totals low. Hopefully, you can then score one or two to win.

That wasn't the right time. I was watching the game, too. To me, pulling a goalie that early is basically giving up. Your last stand.

Duluth was actually behind by two with about twenty seconds left and still won it in over time. They were the play in team in the WCHA Final Five, and they won all those games to win the WCHA. So, they are on a roll.

As was pointed out, Hitchcock has a defensive style. If you look back, a lot of the goalies that played for Columbus recently got a lot of shutouts. He is a good goalie, but he also benefits from Columbus' style.

They can, but the player's association wouldn't like what it would take to get that to work.

I thought Lebda was playing pretty well with Ericsson. Maybe the constant in this is make a run with Ericsson. Hopefully, Lilja gets healthy soon and, as one person put it, use: Lidstrom - Rafalski Kronwall - Stuart Lilja - Ericsson Meech can be a spare forward and Lebda and Chelios can be subs for defense.

For # 3, they always come out in a certain order. Lilja will step in when his spot comes up. Hockey players are very superstitious.

From what is reported lately, they have been selling out, but for some reason or another, the butts never get in the seats.

I think you got it right there. It is where he trains and has a home.

http://www.nhlscap.com/tagging_rule.htm

For both to remain a Red Wing, they can only sign one before July 1st, so whoever signs first more than likely will get the better deal. The other would have to sign after free agency begins.

You are correct, sir. I got it free with an ESPN the Magazine subscription. Otherwise, I never would have got it.

It just links to a Free Press article and says that Holland will be talking to Franzen and Hossa's agents in the coming days. http://www.freep.com/article/20090319/SPOR...ce%20of%20Hossa

Burke has been asking for this for a while, even while he was still with Anaheim.

18 blocks by Philadelphia and 2 by Detroit.

Gerber's Darth Vader Mask

He has had one of the newer styles for a long time, but he just doesn't like them.

From ESPN.com: NAPLES, Fla. -- After two days focused on fighting, NHL general managers finally turned their attention to the sagging economy on the final day of their annual meeting. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Wednesday he expects the salary cap to be "about where it was this year" for next season, but there's more uncertainty about 2010-11. The collective bargaining agreement, reached after the 2004-05 NHL lockout, is set to expire in 2011. Players could vote to extend it for another year. The recent decline of the Canadian dollar will also affect revenues, Bettman said. "We've very leery of contracts that run into the 2010-11 season. We think it's going to be very tough," said Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke. "I think we'd be delusional to think we'd not see some impact [from the poor economy]." Added Ken Holland, GM of the 2008 Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings: "We know we're going to lose some players [in the next two seasons]." The general managers also voted against a proposal Wednesday to change the tiebreaking procedure for playoffs. Holland had suggested making regulation wins the first tiebreaker instead of overall wins. This would avoid rewarding teams who win in shootouts, which aren't considered "real" wins by hockey purists. Burke said he thinks Holland's idea could be passed in the future. "I think it makes a lot of sense," Burke added. Burke got a victory of his own on Wednesday, as one of his many proposals was finally passed by general managers who agreed that TV timeouts should be allowed after an icing penalty. But Burke's proposal that teams could continue to pay some of a player's salary after trading him, in order to complete trades that might not otherwise go through, was still stuck in neutral. "I think it's gathering support," said Holland, who would like to see the proposal pass. On Tuesday, the GM's tackled their top issue -- fighting -- by suggesting a new rule to punish "staged" fights with a 10-minute misconduct penalty and more aggressive calling of the instigator penalty. Bettman said the group had also recommended earlier intervention from the linesmen if a fight was clearly one-sided. The death of Don Sanderson prompted a serious discussion about fighting at this year's meetings. Sanderson, an Ontario native, died in January of injuries sustained when his head struck the ice during a hockey fight in an amateur league "Fighting has always been an emotional issue," said Bettman, who maintained fighting's relevance to the NHL. "The overwhelming sentiment is that [fighting] is a part of the game. These are tweaks around the edges." Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press

I don't see the player's association agreeing to allowing a decrease in player's salaries over their contracts.

Most teams do not do well when they flip flop goalies in the playoffs. Since it is such a short tournament, you want one guy focused in and on a grove. You usually don't switch to your backup, unless something is really going wrong.

http://www.amazon.com/Detroit-Red-Wings-Ch...8/dp/B0015NQEME

The thing is that most guys who are mostly goal scorers are this way. They go in streaks. You just have to hope that their goalless streak is short and that not everyone is on a bad streak at the same time.

I am not sure where everyone is getting that Bettmen said the Wings would be the one to go East. He has said on his radio show that no team is favored, and, as someone has said, Bettmen mentioned how the the Wings are one of the bigger draws in the West.

From NHL.com: Kelly: Make February break permanent 03.09.09, 12:23 PM NHLPA Executive Director Paul Kelly told me earlier today that part of his presentation to the GMs included two potential scheduling changes the players are in favor of implementing going forward: 1. Have the Stanley Cup Final end around June 1 rather than June 15. 2. Make the two-week break in Olympic years an annual thing. The first proposal is certainly straightforward. Kelly and the players propose to start the season a bit earlier and compress some of the scheduling in the middle so the Stanley Cup Final is awarded in early June rather than the middle of the month. The second will definitely pique the most interest. Why would they break every February? How would they make it work? What would they replace the hockey games with? Wouldn't it stop the momentum of the season? Are they nuts? All good questions you're probably asking yourself. Kelly told me he thinks it's a good idea to build the two-week break in February into every season so the players can recoup their bodies and refresh for the stretch run, but it's not that he wants hockey to go away for two weeks in non-Olympic years. "We did raise this with all 30 teams and got an overwhelmingly positive response," Kelly said. The proposal includes bringing back the World Cup of Hockey and playing it once every four years in that same time frame as the Olympics. "If you're going to hold a World Cup and you're going to hold it every four years, let's hold it in those intervening years in between the Olympics," Kelly said. "You'd have the Olympics in 2010, the World Cup in 2012, the Olympics in 2014 and the World Cup in 2016 and just do that recurring schedule in the same February footprint all the way through." What about the odd years? Kelly suggests they could shrink the break from two weeks to one week in the non-Olympic or World Cup years and expand NHL All-Star Weekend to five days rather than three. By doing so, you would also give the players who are playing in the All-Star Game an extra 24 hours on each side to rest, totaling the seven-day break. "Right now we play games until Thursday and we fly our All-Stars into whatever the city is on Friday. Then we fly them back out Sunday or Monday morning and they're playing on Tuesday night," Kelly said. "You could make the event bigger by drawing more attention to the event and at the same time give those players a little bit more of a breather so that they're ready for that haul down the stretch." He suggested adding a hockey summit into All-Star Weekend, "bringing in not only medical people but hockey experts, international people to talk about the key issues in our game." He also thinks they could hold a major youth hockey tournament in the host city of All-Star Weekend, and probably an alumni game or tournament as well. I then suggested the idea of playing an outdoor game during that time frame as well. Kelly said it's certainly something to think about, too. "That's another opportunity," he said. "You could do an outdoor All-Star Game. You could do an outdoor game together with an outdoor All-Star Game. I think we need to start thinking outside the box a little bit." -- Dan Rosen

Two points: 1. NYI have a preseason game scheduled for Kansas City next year, so they have been hinting at this for a while. 2. Bettman has said that it is not a forgone conclusion that Detroit would move East, if a team moves West.