NomadFromKazoo

I like Dats better because he wants to be here. Federov tried to leave at every chance he got and after saying how our last offer was an insult to his manhood left for LESS money. Screw him.

Well, we're all wrong sometimes...it's your turn.

I lived in San Jose a while and keep in touch with Sharks fans. I was hoping for a Wings/Sharks final, let the best team win for the last 10 year. All that ended when the Sharks signed the evil one. Die, Sharks, Die. I told my buds the same thing. The Sharks suck and will as long as they are willing to win without class. Which is what signing Lemieux is. And while their butt head coach may not have been here when Lemieux was with the Avs, f*** him to hell anyway.

From everything that Holland is saying and doing, it seems Plan A is to keep Hossa and Franzen, get rid of as many middle tier players as required to do that (likely Flip, Hudler) while keeping as many as we can, and fill in with our GR crew as required. I think that's a lot of the reason everyone's getting a turn up here, to be sure they're ready to do that. That Holland's saying maybe we can keep Hoss AND Mule's an indication he and Babcock think it's viable. I think it's a great plan and if we have Z, Dats, Hoss signed to long term deals we'll be in a position to increase pay for our youngsters who turn out to be as good as we hope and still look at the FA market as the economy improves and the cap goes up in future years. Based on what Holland and Hossa are saying right now, it seems very likely that deal IS going to get done and really the question is Franzen at this point. How much money and how long both sides can do?

Um...read your own post. If "you" are to believe "you" then clearly Hossa is more likely.

So you go into one of the 50 Ozzie sucks threads and give us a "reality check" that what almost everyone's saying is right that Ozzie will be our playoff goaltender? Thanks for that insight! Yes, I'm here too, but just to mock you and the thread starter and the rest of your ilk of repetition of the obvious and well known.

Talk about posting nothing...

From Holland the only reason he hadn't come up was he had some sort of hand or wrist injury and he would be up for his shot when he's healthy.

So how exactly did you come up with this thread idea exactly? Wow, a thread about Ozzie. Talk about out of the blue. Is it that you hadn't seen one in over 5 minutes? Ozzie threads by the way are like bad goal tending . Even though it seems like a bad goaltender can't stop a shot, they are still usually stopping about 90% of them. Just like it only seems like almost every thread is about Ozzie when actually probably only like 40% of them are. OK, Ozzie threads are worse at this point then bad goal tending, but the principle's the same.

Um...do the math. If we sign him to a seven year deal for like 10 mil a season he gets like 70 mil. If we sign him instead for a 10 year deal for 7 mil, he gets like 70 mil. He gets the same money, we have 3 mil a season now when 3 mil is a lot more then it will be in cap (assuming we have the same system) in 7-10 years. Do you get it now? This is win-win. And Z gets to play on a better team now and we get to keep him for cheaper dollars later in his career. I see this comment over and over and over on the site and it astounds me that people don't get why we're doing this and how it helps us hold onto our team and even talk about guys like Franzen and Hossa who we'd have so little left to go after if we weren't spreading it out.

Those of you who think the Wings are going to go to the wall over this and play them are dreaming. Besides the risk there will be a stiffer penalty later, there's no possible way the Wings would want to turn this into an ongoing drama and diversion over a one game suspension. They didn't go to the All Star game because we played until June and hope to again. Bettman's an ass, but it would just be the height of stupidity to turn this into a bigger, lingering issue then let them rest a game and we're not stupid. If we really wanted to protest this, we would rest all the guys who should/could have gone to the game and turn it into a pre-season game. Let our fourth line be our first and don't play Z, Hossa or Rafalski either. Screw Bettman, but no way we screw ourselves by turning this into a dragged out affair. Get it over with and move on.

I'm generally not one for the obvious, but all I've got is Bettman's a dick. I have nothing deeper that somehow expands on that thought. I hope Dats and Lids pass on each and every all star through this and every other year because the game is Bush league... OK, I did have another thought. I will not be watching the game. Bettman's son sucks dick and Bettman, um...sucks dick...

Lidstrom should say that after showing up for 10 games in a row Bettman is a boob and he'll never go to an all star game again based on Bettman's zero thinking policy. I mean zero tolerance...

Stupid people are everywhere, they see what they want to see. I'm with you, obiously we're completely unbiased. Grin. But seriously, I've never gotten the argument that somehow he's diminished because he plays on a good team. Um..yeah, the Wings sign a bunch of good players who every year their main job is to make Lidstrom look good. Being the year in and year out best player on the best team means nothing, you have to be better then a bunch of hacks to be great, not the leader of a bunch of great players! Yeah, that's the ticket...

What a stupid poll. Kids, don't try this at home... I didn't pick any of your idiotic choices because my view that it was a decent long term signing of a good player wasn't represented. No, he doesn't suck and he's not the second coming and we didn't sign him for a ridiculous pile of cash. The deal keeps getting better over time, something we need when we keep bringing in guys who could demand top dollar. We need an entire roster and we're not going to keep winning if we turn over our roster every year. Wow, what a radical position. If you think even if we can keep Z, Hossa AND Franzen without TWENTY more guys to play with, and I don't mean just scrubs who will play for the minimum until someone will sign them for more and win the division much less Stanley Cups, you know less about hockey then I think you do already.

Let's be serious. You're clueless. The Wings are winning but you're not impressed. Have you paid ANY attention at ALL to hockey? We played until frigging J-U-N-E. We're WINNING but it's not good enough for you in DECEMBER!?!?! Have you lost your mind!?!?! We're winning, it doesn't count other then positioning which, hello, we're DOING. It's MONTHS from when it WILL count for real. It's quote un quote "fans" like you who suck. You DESERVE to root for a lousy team because you're a lousy clueless fan. OK, so let me dumb, dumb, dumb this down for you. Pay attention in February. We're winning, we played to June, it's a long way from when it'll count, and it's STILL not good enough for you? Wow. [/rant]

The issue is who we are going to keep, not who we are going to get... It is possible we can keep the big three, but obviously not a certainty. If we can sign Z to the long term cap "friendly" number and if Franzen and Hossa want to stay enough to take good money but sacrifice the top dollars they can get, it can happen. But it's going to be a long process to try to work that out, and until it does, absolutely nothing's going to happen for free agents.

Umm...dude....EVERYBODY said that. True, yes. Insight, no.

No true Wings fan old enough to remember Lemieux, Roy, Foresburg, Sakic et al would ever wear an Avs jersey no matter how much the rivalry has gone down, and I agree it has. The votes yes are either not fans or kids.

First time in his career? Huh? You must be young, this happened before. The last time we made him the undisputed #1 goaltender.

We played until June and the playoffs don't start until April. We're winning games and have played almost 2/3 of them on the road. Anyone PANICING now is N-U-T-S. The one thing that does concern me is Ozzie though and only because We've seen this movie before. When he's motivated like last year he can play lights out great. "Comfort" has never worked well for him. Once he became our steady last time the D was so good they carried him to the Cup. That may happen again, but this is just looking too eerily familiar. Frankly if he were just inconsistent right now I'd have the same attitude as for the rest of the team that it's too early to be concerned. He's a solid #1 now without a challenge and giving up a steady diet of 3 goals a night to the opposition. It's so familiar it's really starting to concern me. When Ozzie went to the Islanders I remember saying he's got the talent to win a Cup on his own for them, and if he does it I still won't be sorry we let him go because he wouldn't have done it for us. He was comfortable and unfortunately in the past comfort for him has always equated to his sucking. I'm looking for any reason to see it as different this time, but right now I'm not. We're lighting up the scoreboard, that's why we're winning. It gets a lot tighter in the playoffs, you just can't give up 3 goals a game.

OK, the Refs decided that this was payback, they are going to do EVERYTHING in their power to make the Pens win this game, but you have to be kidding me, FIVE GOALS in the last 20 minutes? Ozzie SUCKS. I say that as an Ozzie 1.0 AND an Ozzie 2.0 fan. The guy cannot win when you are COUNTING on him. He SUCKS! We should start Conklin and Howard and WAIVE the useless leach. When you don't need him, he's an All Star. When you put everything on the line for him, he S-U-C-K-S! My two cents.

Well he is a Leaf. I was against it for that reason, until I thought about how much it would completely piss off Leaf fans to have him help the Wings repeat. If we win ANOTHER Cup with him, we pull a Cup closer to Toronto at #2. I have nothing personal against him, except the Leaf part. So I'm for it if we can do it. Clearly he is worth sacrificing one of our guys like Sammy for as an upgrade with all the youth we have on the way up anyway for the long run.

Hmm...It's HINDERING our young talent to play them in Grand Rapids? Who exactly are you proposing to sit on the bench in Detroit rather then play in Grand Rapids to speed their development? The end of the road in the NHL for McCarty and Maltby is coming. They've been in the league a long time. But what we get are vets who get our system and team and history who are willing to play the minutes we give them with a good attitude. You can't play 23 guys all the time, you need guys like that you can count on in limited minutes. They know how to play the game and their development isn't being hindered as you propose to do with our young talent by having them sit at the end of the bench and play a few minutes a night.

Whiff. The DATA in the post you replied to addressed the "key to success" a lot more then "loyalty." We PLAY our youngsters in Grand Rapids rather then lest them SIT in Detroit.