toby91_ca

What do you mean?

Top seed plays low seed.....

I didn't see this on here (though I probably missed it). Thought some might be interested in the read. http://www.nhl.com/nhl/app/?service=page&a...rticleid=359029

You may hate it, but there is some truth to it. He had good stats outside of Detroit, but so did some of his goalie teammates on those teams as well. Have a look at the stats of every other goalie that has played for Detroit over the past 20 years and try and tell me that the team doesn't inflate some of those stats a little. The more I think about it, pretty much all goalies' stats are going to be inflated or deflated depending on the team they are playing for.

Huh? Since you use the word "technically" I'm curious. Do you have some sort of technical answer as to what age a player hits his prime? Maybe it is getting later these days, but I've always thought a player hits his prime around the age of 26. Datsyuk will be 30 in a few months, so I don't quite see how one could suggest he's just entering his prime. I don't believe his anywhere near approaching the downhill yet, but I don't think he's just entering his prime either.

I think when you use the phrase "little do any of you realize" - which would seem like you are mocking everyone's intelligence, you should be pretty sure you are making accurate comments. I'm fairly certain that Buffalo has retired his number, but I do not believe that New York has. I will not pretend to be an expert, but pretty sure his number is not retired in New York, nor should it be.

I was thinking about this as well and it didn't make a lot of sense to me. I think the real reason Crosby didn't play is because they were protecting him in the final game of the season (which didn't mean that much to them, more on that in a minute) against a team that was going after him pretty hard a few days earlier. I think it was pretty obvious that they were not all that interested in winning the game and the Eastern conference, I take that from 1) sitting Crosby and 2) the way they played yesterday. I think they simply wanted to face Ottawa in round 1 instead of Philly. I'm wondering if this is really the best decision. Ottawa has sucked lately, but they did go to the finals last year with a team that really hasn't changed much (that said, they do have a couple key injuries). I think the other thing to consider is that Philly really plays Pittsburgh tough. Lastly, I bet they didn't feel getting home ice at least until reaching the finals was all that important. They will have home ice over every team except Montreal, so that means that would have home ice until the Eastern conference finals (assuming Montreal makes it that far as well). So maybe not a big deal to them. I know Crosby loves playing in Montreal, so maybe they didn't even care about Montreal having home ice advantage. Here's the other angle: Is Crosby hurting and everyone is sayng otherwise? Obviously he is not 100%, but did something happen in the previous game to set him back a bit?

You have seriously never heard this before? Hasek was notorious for his tantrums. I have carefully chosen the word "was" because I haven't seen evidence of it as of late. When the Wings brought him back last year, they were definately thinking about potential attitude problems. I was listening to an interview one day in the summer with Mr. Nill and he was quite open about those concerns, but they were comfortable that he wouldn't be causing any problems off the ice. As far as I can tell, there have been no problems, I haven't heard a thing over the past couple years until I started reading this thread.

Dion will get a lot of 2nd place votes, but not 1st. That's how the voting works right (1st, 2nd, 3rd)?

It actually has nothing to do with Crosby.

Yeah, that's probably the biggest game of the night. If the Caps lose, the Canes clinch the division and the Caps chances at the playoffs would be very remote. They would be 3 pts out with only 2 games to play. They would have to win those two games and hope that one of PHI or BOS lose all of their remaining 3 games.

Someone could also say that it is completely absurd to take offense to a comment about a potential weakness on the team. If someone doesn't have only glowing comments about the Wings, are they all of sudden idiots? Why do you take a comment that the Wings are an older team, which could work against them and turn it into.......all the other things they have going for them is irrelevant because they are too old to win. Truth be told, they are an older team and that may be one of their short comings come playoff time after a long season. Though, at the same time, you could look at it as a positive in that they have a lot of playoff experience, which is extremely valuable. Look at the Pens, they had absolutely no experience last year and it showed. That little experience from last year will help them this year, but you still have to wonder if they have enough experience to be able to sustain a deep run. It works both ways.

I thought he retired last year.

I thinking more of the teams that are "mathmatically" already eliminated, vs. the ones that are simply longshots. If you put money down on Phoenix, for example, you are a complete moron.

Their updated odds are not very up to date. The odds include teams that have already been eliminated from the playoffs.

I totally disagree with taking the top 16 regardless of conference. In that case, it woudl be pointless to have conferences, which are needed for scheduling (travel, etc.). The reason it doesn't make sense, isn't fair, is because teams from different conferences play the majority of their games against other teams in their conference. However, it probably wouldn't really make much of a difference anyway. If you look at the standings now and apply your suggested method, the same 16 teams would have playoff spots I believe.

Ummm, I think you are WAY OFF. I think this may be a common misconception. Maybe it is because of the salary cap, but recently, there has been a lot of parity in the league and the regular season seems to mean quite a bit to the vast majority of teams. If you have a look at the standings right now, you'll see the following: - Number of teams that are more than 10 pts out of a playoff position - 5 - Number of teams that have more than 10 pts more than the last playoff position team - 2 In 1995/96, the first place team in the league had 90 more points than the worst, this year, that difference will probably be less than 40 pts. I know I took a year where the Wings had 131 pts, but still, that's a whopping difference.

Yet, Ontario alone probably has 10 times as many people interested in hockey.

That's news to me. Either my communication skills are lacking, or your reading skills are poor.

For the fans that have had the opportunity to have children, it will be no question with them, there is absolutely nowhere else on the planet he should be other than with his family during that amazing experience. For those that do not have children, I can seem them questioning it.

Visors will likely become mandatory. I think this is different though. You are dealing with adults, who should be able to make the choice vs. players under 18 who shouldn't have the choice. Either way, this is probalby being discussed more than changing the icing rule, so I'm not sure why you are making the comparison.

I understand what you are saying, but you need to consider this: - a change that would save 1000 injuries a year would result in basically changing the game to a different game all together - a change (icing) that would save 10 injuries a year (actually less) would result in absolutely no change to the game really, actually, it could improve flow.

In the NHL, when it is obvious that an attacking player would get to the puck first, the icing would be waived off or the linseman's arm never would have gone up in the first place. This is why I am suggesting the rule change would have no impact on that scenario.

I'm sorry, it was bad, but this has to be the most blantant dive I have ever seen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVe4XNWVFUM

Yeah, it should be no different than any other situation. Players get suspended all the time on incidents that never resulted in penalties.