gobias

I don't think they're going to gut the team yet. Next year's line-up is still very competitive AND they have more salary cap to work with; not only because a lot of expensive UFA's are leaving, but the cap is also going up. Hudler - Datsyuk - Grigorenko Williams - Zetterberg - Kopecky Maltby - Draper - Cleary Holmstrom - Franzen - Samuelsson Lidstrom - Kronwall Schneider - Lebda Quincey - ?? ??? Howard Comments: Re-sign Samuelsson, Lidstrom, Williams, Lebda, Hudler, Cleary, and Franzen. Don't re-sign Yzerman, Shanahan, Lilja, Woolley, Rivers, Chelios, and Mowers. Bring up Hudler, Grigorenko, Kopecky, Lebda, Quincey, and Howard (Filppula needs another year in GR). Trade Lang. Sign a UFA Goaltender (Nabokov, Biron, Fernandez, Roloson, Toskala, Legace etc). Sign a cheap, tough defenseman (a guy like Danny Markov would be ridiculous for this team). Voila, a younger team that is still a contender. Being a fake GM is easy.

The Osgood comments pertain to this thread, but thanks. In his past 12 starts, he's given up 2 goals or less 5 times and 3 goals or more 7 times. His GAA is 3.01 and SV% is .888. This is not awesome. Osgood and Legace have never been super consistent, but Legace's highs and lows are simply better than Osgoods. You're 100% correct. However, the good goalies give up fewer soft goals than the average to bad goalies. Usually when someone says that a goalie gives up soft goals, it's to mean that the goalie gives up an unusually large amount of soft goals. Eh, I disagree. Modin is exactly what we need. Big, strong winger with a good shot who always works hard and rarely floats. The 2 million is a big whatever, as has been noted, adding a guy like Modin could be done fairly easily by dumping players we hardly ever use.

Define awesome. When the only thing consistent about your game is your penchant for giving up soft goals, awesome does not come into play.

Lilja has been pretty good for us, better than most teams' #4 defenseman. Chelios doesn't play a lot of minutes and even still, he's been great on the PK. With Kronwall coming back, I can't find many teams that have a better line-up. Thanks for the info on Bykov. I do remember all the stories about Greenstin. That's a shame.

Yeah, having one of the leagues best defensive line-ups sure does suck. What is the story with Bykov anyway? I liked him the first time around, then he just disappeared.

Well, that's why I'm advocating trading Lang. He doesn't give us anything we don't already have in abundance (Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Draper, Williams, Franzen, Yzerman - all natural centers) and he's on the payroll for 3.8m. Ship him off to Phoenix where Comrie really isn't living up to his 1st line potential and suddenly they're looking a bit more hungry. They've got some good defenseman there too, Mara might be a guy we'd be interested in. Would Lang get him? Who knows. But yeah, Rivers and Mowers could easily be gotten rid of and that's 1m there.

It doesn't count so long as he is on the IR iirc. The payroll listed on this site is pretty accurate even with the few changes it's missing. Leaving Lebda off and counting Kronwalls million since that's the likely path for now. (Total) 37,557,330 (+Cleary) 450,000 (+Woolley) 507,000 (+Franzen) 650,000 (-Fischer) 1,387,000 =37,777,330? So, 1,223,670 to spend, I think.

I hate saying this just one game after Lang scores and Zetterberg gets 4 points playing Wing, but Lang should be traded before the playoffs. Zetterberg should be playing center fulltime and Lang is the only thing stopping that. His salary is still affordable and a lot of teams are looking for a #1 center, we should be able to get a good return for him. Phoenix and Calgary come to mind, though what we'd get in return I have no clue.