toby91_ca

All NHL ice surfaces need to be a standard size, I believe it's 200' by 85' or something like that.

I think the ref got it right on both calls, sorry, I think he got it right on the "non-poke check" call and the video wasn't good enough for me to assess the second one, so I assume he got it right. At a minimum, there is no way someone should be screaming that the ref is incompetent.

Not exactly fair comments considering Kesler is really just starting out in his career and hasn't really made much money yet. If you want to use the Wing's players as an example, which one of them have taken a home town discount at the point in their career that Kesler is currently in?

Messier is a decent example, but if you are looking for someone who has won a lot of cups, I'd go with Henri Richard....who has won 11 as a player (pretty crazy when you think about that for a minute).

He's only played 2 seasons where his PIMs were greater than 3 per game. My comments would still be the same, his major penalties would be largely occuring during those years as well, so I'm not sure his minor penalties were any greater back in his prime.....perhaps simply becasue he was on the ice more though.

I don't think there should be much of an argument, Lidstrom in his prime was better than Chelios in his, but Lidstrom this year is not better than Chelios in his prime.

Not even close, his career penalty minutes per game is 1.76. He did take a lot of lazy minor penalties, but that penalty minute per game stat would be a lot lower if you exclude his fighting majors, misconducts, etc. He has about 50 fights for his career and I'm sure he's got plenty of 10 minute misconducts.

I'm not so sure about that: Lidstrom - at $7.45 million a year, it's tough to argue that he's below market value when the only dman in the league that makes more is Chara, who makes $7.5 million. It probably is below market, but not much, especially when you are effectively making the most for a defenseman. Rafalski - when they signed him at $6 million, I was thinking that was a lot of money, he's probably worth it, but I'm not sure I'd say it's below market Datsyuk - when he signed his contract, he wasn't worth the money they signed him to. He's showing that he's worth more than his cap hit now, but that wasn't the case at the time he signed Zetterberg - his cap hit for his new contract may look low (maybe not so much when the cap goes down), but this is only due to the structure of the deal, the Wings are certainly taking a bit of a risk on him and I don't think there is really much of a discount, if any here. I think for the PA or league to get concerned, you'd have to see some hefty discounts taken. I'm not sure you'll see Hossa take a discount to the point people will start questionning.

Just some stats for fun of the only defenseman in the history of the NHL to score 30 or more goals in a single season: Bobby Orr - 5 times, won Norris each time Paul Coffey - 4 times, won Norris 2 of those times, the other 2 he lost to Rod Langway (one of the best stay at home dman who didn't get enough credit) and Chelios (who happened to have a career high in pts that year) Dennis Potvin - 3 times, won Norris each time Phily Housely - 1 time, didn't win, same year that Langway won Ray Bourque - 1 time, didn't win, same year that Langway won Kevin Hatcher - 1 time, didn't win, Chelios won that year (interestingly enough, Chelios has scored 73pts twice and 72 pts one other time and he won the Norris in each of those years) Doug Wilson - 1 time, won Norris Based on this, if Green does score 30 this year, I think he's at least in the argument, wouldn't be my pick, but at least in the argument. I think history has shown that scoring does influence the voting, even for the Norris. That said, looking at my list, there are only a few guys on it that I would say didn't play a heck of a lot of defense.

So this is basically what I heard: Savard and Crosby get into each others faces a few times early in the game and at some point, Savard suggests he'd fight Crosby, but won't because Crosby wears a visor and basically ridicules him for it. End of shift, Crosby goes to bench, has visor removed and comes back out and challenges Savard......nothing happens. While nothing really comes of this....pretty damn funny.

Can you help me understand how that makes any sense at all?

Not that I'm a fan or anything, it would be nice to see CBJ make the playoffs as I believe they are the only franchise in the league that has never made it.

When you say "everyone wins", you really mean "the rich teams win" right? Edit: and the players

Well, Ottawa is a bilingual city, while only about 15-20% have French as a first language, I have to imagine a pretty healthy percentage of those with English as a first language know quice a bit of French. What I can tell you is that Marc Savard can at least speak French (not sure what his first language is, but probably English). For that matter, Crosby can speak French as well, first language is English, but he picked up French while playing in Quebec for a couple years.

I'm sort of on the fence on this one. Back in the 80s to mid 90's (I can't really comment that intelligently about earlier than the 80s as I only started watching in the 80s (other than video of older games)....if you hit a star player, clean or not, you had to pay for it, usually with a fight. You simply didn't hit Gretzky, Lemieux or Yzerman without getting something in return. Lemieux maybe less so than Gretz and Yzerman because he probably had a little less protection. You didn't see the same with a guy like Messier, but he tended to intimidate guys on his own. The thing about this is that not only would these players be given more freedom to be able to make plays, as you would like to see more of, they also didn't get beat up as much and their be less of a risk of injury. Look at a guy like Crosby, he probably faces more punishment these days than most other guys in the league.....almost the opposite of what you saw with Gretzky. I think if I were to put my opinion on it, if a star player gets drilled, I'd like to see someone go out of their way to hit that guy hard, but not necessarily drop their gloves with the guy.

Are we talking this year or next? If this year, they are stuck with what they have, they cannot add any new players.

This would effectively mean the cap can never go down, which the owners would have to be incredibly stupid to agree to something like that. If revenues decrease, the salary cap has to decrease, it is that simple.

I'm not so sure about that. I think that's the way it used to be, but not so much anymore and certainly not when the Pearson was first introduced. Between the early 80s and late 90s, the Pearson would very rarely go to someone other than the Hart winner, however, during those years you had guys like Gretzky and Lemieux winning most of these awards. In the last 8 seasons, the Pearson had gone to someone other than the Hart winner 4 times (I wouldn't call those rare exceptions). In the 37 year history of the Pearson, it's gone to players other than Hart winners 15 times. I'm thinking we might start seeing it going to the same guy most years again though with guys like Crosby and Ovechkin, you would have to imgine they will battle for the awards most years and if one gets more votes for the Hart than the other, you have to figure they'd also get the Pearson (held true for the past couple years anyway).

It was his ex's brother's wife, who he is now married to.....gotta be weird. No, it is not incest, which I never eluded to, but you have to imgine that his ex wife and his ex brother in law don't think he's the greatest guy in the world.

His ex-wife might disagree. I know some people refer to him as "Uncle Daddy"

How was this game not on NBC, especially after the s*** that happened the last time they played? Or was it? The Rangers game was (earlier), but in Canada, this game wasn't on. I did watch though (Centre Ice). Anyway, an odd thing about the game, there was a guy in the crowd wearing a Wings jersey. Not that odd I guess though, you'll always find a few of those people in the crowd at any game (guy wearing a jersey of a team separate from one of the two playing).

CBC

The +/- stat is correct as everyone else already pointed out. Also, I would hope that the +/- stat is almost ignored when it comes to voting for the selke, for example, but I know some will place some value on it and sway their vote.

No, that statement is 100% wrong. He bashed Crosby in the past for even scoring a fancy goal when his team was winning big....there wasn't even a big celebration...if there was, Cherry probably wouldn't have gone insane.

Moreau's feet might as well been in cement because they didn't move an inch. I know you were kidding about the slewfoot comment....well actually, you said only partially......it isn't even close to being a trip. Miettinen trie to lift Moreau's stick out of the way, that's why his stick was coming up. The loss of balance and falling caused it to come up higher and faster than it otherwise would have.