Andy Pred 48

Jan is doing the business for Belleville in the playoffs. Has 6+9 from 12 games and also is a +9.

Pasha puts on a clinic and Ellis's luck finally runs out as he gets chased from the net in the 1st!!! Wings 4-1. Rex with GWG.

Hold your horses guys, Nonis has been sacked. The so called main reason Brunnstrom is going to sign for the Nucks is not there anymore. Will the new GM promise him the top 6 playing time he was after? More to come out of this story yet I feel.

Although Dats has been a comsumate team player all year, I think he would really like to hit that 100 point barrier. So I'm predicting a Pasha clinic with the Wings winning a high scoring 5-4 and Dats helping himself to a 2+2 game. Hank gets 2 goals to hit 45 and Rex finally scores one.

They have won their last 7 straight and are 11-1 in the last 12. The Canes must be kicking themselves after letting their playoff hopes go in the last game of the year. Must say that the Caps have been playing playoff hockey the last month and may just have burnt themselves out in making the post season. Hope not as they have been great to watch.

I really feel for the kid. He's made big strides this year and now this. Last year it was our D that was losing the players and now its the forwards turn. Hopefully we can get some bodies back before our first game on thursday. All the best Tomas and speedy recovery.

just rewind to last year, we lost our last away game in Chicago before putting on a show at the Joe in our last game of the season, 7-2 i think. Yesterday was a bad day at the office, nothing more. Chill folks.

How about doing this with just Wings and ex wings players.

I have no doubt that the Wings will hit the 100 pt mark again, but can one of the eurotwins hit that mark in the scoring? With just 14 games left Dats needs 22 and Hank 24. Who was the last Wing to get 100pts ? Both need 10pts to beat their own previous best tallies.

Well, Pasha now has 6 games to get 10 points; I hope he carry's on the way he has being playing of late as he has 5+5 in his last 6 games! Think that the games lost to injury will stop Z, but for that he would have got the 100 pt mark I have no doubt. 15pts in the last 6 is probably beyond even Z's talent.

The Ontario Hockey League annually polls its coaches to recognize players who might not receive formal awards for their play, and Detroit Red Wings prospect Jan Mursak ranked highly in several categories of performance recognition: March 19, OntarioHockyeLeague.com: The Ontario Hockey League today announced the results for the 2007-08 Coaches Poll. The OHL Coaches Poll provides team coaches with the opportunity to recognize players in several skill categories within their own conference. The top three players in each category from the Eastern and Western Conferences are recognized. Coaches vote for each category within their conference and are not permitted to vote for players on their team. Players receive five points for a first place vote, three points for a second place vote and one point for a third place vote. Here's the official tally, courtesy of the Globe and Mail's Tim Wharnsby: March 19, Globe and Mail: Eastern Conference: Most Underrated Player: Jesse Messier, Mississauga (22) Jan Mursak, Belleville (16) Pat Daley, Peterborough (13) ... Best Playmaker: John Hughes, Brampton (30) Logan Couture, Ottawa (19) Jan Mursak, Belleville (16) ... Best Stickhandler: John Tavares, Oshawa (41) Jan Mursak, Belleville (20) Logan Couture, Oshawa (13)

Yesterdays game was either about the Jax goalie being excellent or our forwards sucking in the shooting department. You out shot the opponents 46-17 and lose the game, it will happen, another time we will put 6 or 7 away from those amount of shots, would we still be looking at our goalies performance so deeply then? No, we would have said bad day at the office and gone forward to the next game, so we get an early chance Weds to put it right.

WANTED= Please can you get us a sniper for next year Kenny. 44-17 in shots!! I'm not pi##ed cause we lost its the amount of goals we don't score that does.

Well Flip isn't doing himself anyharm with his overall performance so far. He has moved up into the top 10 in the +- for forwards, and now only 1 shy of a 20 goal season. He looks much more stronger going into the corners these days, and is starting to come out more often than not with the puck. I really like the way he has progressed these past 2 years, and he will be more valuable than Cleary in the next year or 2, so it will be interesting to see what Kenny offers him. Huds has a $1.015m contract until the end of next year, I would say Flip would want parity at least with him. My concern is we have $39.5m locked up already in next years budget, we won't be making any major new signings in the off season unless we offload already signed players. Drake Downey Lilja Stuart Cheli Hasek and Hartigan are all UFA's and have a combined payroll of $8.975m at present. With Flip we also have Helm Howard Ericsson and Quincey who will be RFA's and they have a combined payroll of $3.675m at present. Toatl $52.15m. has the cap for next year been set yet? So yes I say we need to lock up Flip, but who will we be saying adios to?

Thanks KP, i thought it was Feds.

The Preds are at the Kings on Thursday. Bet he doesn't try any crap there with Ivanans circling around. Still if he did try his stuff with Kopitar or Frolov, there wouldn't be much left for DMac or Downey to chew on come Sat dinner time!! Mind you he's got to get past Shelley and Murray on Tuesday first.

With the addition of Brad Stuart and the promise shown by Meech and Ericsson, Detroit are going to find themselves with a big problem come the start of next season. Just who do they sign and will they let anyone go. Stuart may very well play himself into a contract offer by the Wings but would he stay. Lids, Raffi, Kronna, Lebs and Meech are all signed until the 09-10 season. Stuart, Cheli and Lily are all UFA's at the end of this year. Ericsson and Quincey are both RFA's at the season's end. I would say that only Lids Raffi and Kronna are locks for next season at present. Cheli will probably sign another 1 year rolling contract, but I think he may be more of a mentor next year. So with 3 spots left who gets the jobs? Do we trade away any of them? Who looks more likely to hit the road, if Stuart signs, I would think that Lilja would make way but would Lebda fetch more back in a trade than Lily? It looks like Ericsson has overtaking Quincey in the pecking order on the rookie front, and may well challenge Meech for the 7th D spot next year. Let us not forget Kindl either. Although he is having a bad 1st year in GR, he is the most skilled of all our blue line rookies. I think he will be staying in GR next year but he may well be pushing the others for a spot. Whatever happens, the D this summer is going to be a closly watched topic. Now if we can just add some more up front......

Aged 23, Oleg Piganovich from Yaroslavl, a hockey powerhouse that has recently seen grow good players as Sergei Mozyakin, Vitaly Vishnevski and Ivan Nepryaev, has entered into Russian hockey history as he broke Nikolai Makarov’s record for more goals in a RSL season, 21, recorded in the 81/82 season. This kid hasn't been drafted, has some size to go with his shot, 6'5" 220lb. Its his rookie year in the RSL and with stats like these, maybe some NHL will be looking a little closely at him. 2007-08 Chelyabinsk Traktor Russia 56 21 7 28 179

No I think he starts on Monday 10th

Downey gets his first goal as a Wing, Huds comes outa his slump with a multi point game and Ericsbigson lets his 100mph slapper go to put Manny in the net eating the biscuit!!! Wings 5 - 2

The big + for Ericsson is that Babs has a soft spot for him and at 6'5" 220lb he is what we are lacking. Now if he can add say another 10-15lb of muscle and get a meaner streak, happy days!!

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the roster size and playing roster increase come the playoffs? I thought we can dress 2N/M 7D and 13FWDS, 22 in all? or is that only in the minors?

Ericsson will be sent back down, but once the Griffs season is over he'll be back up anyway. No point in risking losing Meech or anyone else via the waivers. I can see Cheli having a good rest, it'll be killing him not playing thou, and letting Meech have a prolonged run in the team. Babs sure is going to have a headache when all his D are available, but come the playoffs we'll be having 7 D on the roster anyway.

The reason for the Wings current slump in results is a cunning master plan by the head office. With the NHL imposing the salary cap and therefore shafting the bigger organisation's the Wings have decided that the only way that they will ever get another 'Superstar' player into the roster is to finish dead last. So they have decided that to do this without too much notice is to start losing games now, have an early exit from the playoffs and then carry it into next season. The Wings will finish the 08-09 season in last place which will give them the 1st overall pick in the 09 draft. This will no doubt be the young star in the OHL John Tavares. Maybe this is a bit drastic, but I can assure you all that the like's of the Kings, Panthers and Bolts would consider the prospect of a last place finish for getting a player of Tavares class a worth while proposition. I have a hard time buying into the concept of rewarding teams who fail in the season with the top picks in the draft. This is supposed to be a parity league now due to the cap so why do we still have this sort of system in place? I feel that the league need to look into this as it is now an out dated concept. The problem is that the better teams are having to fork out to get top players into there organisation, while the teams who finish bottom are getting top prospect in on the cheap via the draft each year. You only have to look at the Penguins to see this is all to evident. I know we have drafted well and Dats and Z were low drafts but that is a raretiy overall. Maybe if it was restructered in that the winner of each Division getting the first 6 picks,with the top point scorer getting 1st overall and then working downwards 2-6. This would then carry on with the 2nd in each division gettting picks 7-12 and so on until the 30th pick. Yes I know that it wouldn't be viable as teams have traded picks with each other, but its something to look at. My own choice would be to reverse the current system so the President trophy winner gets first overall pick and so on the last place team in the regular season gets the 30th pick. Would be interesting wouldn't it. Just look at it like this, if this was the rule since the 2000 season, our last 8 picks would have been, Heatley, Kovalchuk, Bowmeester, Marc Andre Fluery, Ovechkin, Crosby, Johnson and Kane. Yes you are right, there's just no way the league would let the Wings have a team like that in this so called league parity cap era!!!! Makes you salivor just thinking about it thou doesn't it.

If the boys need any motivation, then surely this headline in NHL.com will inspire them; "Slumping Red Wings limp to another loss in worst stretch in nearly 20 years" Come on guys lets blow those offence cobwebs away by getting a win with a few goals to boot!!