toby91_ca

I've seen a lot of this game so far, but not all....only saw the Murray goal....awful. I did see the Orpik thing, thought he dove, but he's not really the type. The other thing to think about is that he missed some time at the end of the year, including the first game or two of this series with some lower body injury apparently. He might have tweaked something there...he went off to the bench slowly after that. It's time's like this that I like being in Canada and watching on TSN....don't have to sit through an NBC telecast.

Time for sports psychologist?

The closest I can think of is Bill Ranford

I'm actually very surprised by this. This makes going back to Fleury later a challenge, but I suspect they will, hope that he gets his confidence back.

Exactly, Fleury is letting in bad goals that are pure fundamental flaws...a kid could save them, hug your post.

Wayne Gretzky would tell you that Fuhr was one of the best goalies ever....he's biased though. On Fleury, he's still young (about the same age as Howard), but I think we've now seen more than enough to assume this isn't due to a young goalie working out the kinks, he has consistently demonstrated that he will be prone to really, really bad goals. Just in the past 4 games, how many goals has he actually scored on himself. There has been at least 4 or 5 that have come from the goal line or below.

He'd be my 3rd pick from that list. I think Letang is better both offensively and defensively, so Subban wouldn't even be a choice for me. So, between Letang and Suter, some would probably discount Letang's offensive numbers because of his teammates and then they'd consider Suter to be better defensively + he had the highest ice time = win for Suter. I haven't seen them all play all that often though, so the assumption that Suter is better defensively might not be a valid one.

Perhaps, but offense has always been a pretty big component as well. In that last 45 years, there has only been one player that has won the award while scoring less than 50 points (Rod Langway). Actually, other than Rod Langway, in the last 45 years, there has only been 2 instances of less than 59 points (50 and 54). I didn't bother checking where those lined up against other defensemen for those years though...the 50 and 54 may have been very close to leading

Maybe you need to familarize yourself with the rules. Leaving your feet before contact is always a penalty, but just because your feet are on the ice at the point of contact, it doesn't mean it is legal. The rule mentions "jumping into a hit" or something like that. It doesn't reference when the skates leave the ice. The general rule would be that if your skates are on the ice at the point of contact, they would allow for some momentum that brings your skates in the air, but not significant. Abby's feet ended up pretty high in the air. They also got him for charging because of the distance travelled to make the hit (signficant). As a fan, I love those types of hits and don't like that they may be going away, but I also have no problem with it and understand it. It's easy for a fan to call it "pussification" when you don't have to step on the ice to take that type of hit. The league felt something had to be done about head injuries in the game and the players agreed. You can also use the NFL as an example, they have more strict rules about hitting defenseless players. With education comes change....to some extent, the change can remove some of the entertainment factor.

I have to be honest, I don't understand the argument here. Abby's hit was pretty clearly bad, the only argument should be on how many games. I thought it was worse than the hit on Eller, different result though. You could argue whether the head was the principle point of contact, but it was blind side and he launched himself way in the air + had head contact. I didn't see Shanny's video, but pretty clear suspension to me.

Two dumbass penalties by the NYI. I guess the first one he was trying to slow him down on a dump in, but not much danger there, I hate when guys take penalties away from the puck. The second one was just boneheaded.

No contact with the head until he landed on the ice? I can understand the argument for no suspension, but I haven't seen a single argument suggested there was no head contact here...until now. There was clearly a head shot....it was the first point of contact. The argument against suspension is that it wasn't the principle point of contact because there was so much other body contact.

To be honest, this is exactly the type of whining I was referring to. I can't remember the hooking, but on the Getzlaf goal, the puck was already in the net before Filppula got pushed into Howard, that's why no one anywhere was complaining. What series against the Sharks are you referring to? 2010-11 series (DET had 30 PPs and SJ had 29), in 2009-10 (DET had 24 PPs and SJ had 32), the last time they played other than those years was 2006-2007...but I didn't check the stats there as I assumed you were thinking of something in the more recent past few years.

I will admit that I will occasionally scream out while watching a game when I think a ref missed a call to put the Wings on the PP, but that's mostly emotion and bias jumping out in the moment. I actually avoid the actual Game topics becuse the level of whining in there about officiating drives me insane. The bias that goes on it off the charts. If that's coming from a Wings' fan like me, I cringe to think what a fan of the opposing team would be saying if they came over and partipated in those topics. They'd probably walk away thinking we were the whiniest fan base on the plant. Okay, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I can be logical and assume I'd see a similar trend when I went to any other team site.....it's bias and it's logical to complain about officiating. At the end of the day, I think the refs do a really good job, they make mistakes every now and then, but I try to stay away from whining that they are missing all the penalties committed by the opposing team and calling our team for phantom calls.

I have managed to avoid being hit hard most of my life, but yes, I've been hit fairly hard a few times and never have been stunned to the point I don't have control of my body to brace myself....that only comes from a head shot. If you look at the replay from behind the Eller approaching the blueline. His head is CLEARLY the first part of his body to take contact if you are looking to see an inch of movement on any part of his body. At a minimum, it's not cut and dry, especially at full speed, so I'm not sure how you can get on the ref too much here. Lastly, have you played any games in the NHL in the last couple years? If not, I'd be interested in what you'd think if you went and played a couple weeks...would you come back thinking that there is not much hitting? I saw it definitely as shoulder to head as well, but I guess I'm confused now after watching Fraser's analysis on TSN. The head was hit first, with the shoulder, but not principle point of contact because there was enough of the rest of the body involved...confusing if you ask me.

His face doesn't bounce off the ice if he simply gets hit in the chest. He was clearly knocked out from the hit, otherwise he would have been able to brace himself. Just watching the TSN analysis on it now, they thinking it was a clean hit, but it's hard to tell. If you look at the replay from one side, looks like the head is the first part of the body hit. I guess what they are saying is that as long as you also are hitting enough of the body as well, it's clean because the head doesn't become the "principle" point of contact. What I'll say though, I have no problem with the call made at full speed, it looked bad. Am I the only one that is starting to get really annoyed with the No Hitting League comment everytime someone gets called for a questionable hit? It's getting really tired. There is still tons of hitting in this league, there is no attempt to remove hitting from the league, all that is being done is to try and protect players from having their lives altered (which concussions can do). What is wrong with that. Will refs occassionally make a bad call? Sure....so what? Happens in several other instances as well.

What happens more often is people have more of a bias against certain teams and see things differently. Example, people around here think PIT get better calls from the refs what is actually isn't the case. I will admit to having only seen about 10 minutes of last night's game when it was already 5-0 and NYI got away with a few blatant penalties, likely because they were down 5-0 and the refs didn't want to make it worse. Other than that, all I can do is look at the box score and see that PIT had 3 PP's and NYI had 4 I think. Hard to think there is bias from that.

I'm in burlington, but not going down. Only time I've been able to see the Wings in person has been at places other than in Detroit. Even if you find someone to go down with, wouldn't you have to find tickets as well?

I don't like the over the top celebrations myself, especially if the player is going off on his own rather than celebrating with teammates. Didn't see Dupuis goal or celebration yet, but he's not the guy I'd normally think of showboating...maybe he does though. I've seen what Malkin does from time to time, doesn't bother me too much, it's pretty low key. I hated the Yakupov one from earlier this year and also some of Ovechkin's in the past.....especially the "hot stick"

To answer the question on whether your leg comes out like that when jumping, I'd say, absolutely it does. It's naturally to do that to maintain balance. This about hurdlers as an example of how you jump over something. Having both legs go in a straight line doesn't work so well if you want to land on your feet. If he had of just kept skating, he would have slammed right into him, he jumped to try and avoid contact.

Fedorov isn't eligible until 2015. Lindros definitely deserves to be there and I'm sure he'll get in soon enough. If it weren't for injuries, he might be considered up there with the all time greats. Injuries didn't keep others from getting in. With Lindros, I always compare to Neely, Lindros deserves to be there much more than Neely as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't see the Detroit feed, but safe to say, the TSN angle was much different. They were suggesting it was a terrible call. Perry drove the net hard and with Kronwall coming in on him, he tried to jump to avoid getting hit and hitting Howard. The debate during the intermission is whether it should have been a penalty or not.....there wasn't a single person questioning whether it was dirty and should be something more (for reference, most thought it shouldn't have been a penalty). I orirginally thought it was a bad call and shouldn't have been a penalty and probably still do. The only thing he could have done differently is not drive the net....which I'd never want someone to avoid doing. The only thing you can question is whether he stuck his leg out on purpose. I find it hard to believe he would have done that considering he's got a sharp blade on foot, which could slice someone's throat and kill them. That said, it's possible he wasn't thinking about that, thought he could stick it out and nudge him....not a stretch considering who we are talking about. No question Howard threw a huge dive in there to get a call though...which I don't like at all. I have more tolerance for goalies, but I still don't like it. It annoys me sometimes how a lot of people on this board yell and scream about divers (Selanne last night) and have excuses for any Wing player that does it. I've noticed Nyquist diving a lot this year and last night as an example.

Interesting. Surprised someone would say that about Datsyuk last year. He had 70 pts in 80 games a few years ago, followed by 59 pts in 56 games i think and then 67 points in 70 games. So, on average, less than a ppg for the past 3 seasons. However, he's right around there, why would anyone so "factually" state that his ppg days are behind him? If someone asked me, I'd suggest that he's unlikely to get you 90-100 points, but somewhere around a ppg is realistic. I'd expect the same next year (perhaps less due to a full season, year older, etc.). On Lilja...to be fair, that was written leading up to what would be his first full year in the NHL. He put up pretty good offensive numbers in the AHL.

Do you have any historical knowledge of how the draft has worked? I could be wrong, but your comment makes it seem like you have zero. The "new" NHL is ridiculous in that it awards poor performance with the top pick? Do you realize that the NHL used to award the team with the worst record the top pick autmatically? Now, finishing last doesn't guarantee you the top pick, it actually only gives you a 25% chance of getting it (better odds than any other team though). History is actually the complete opposite of what your complaint suggests.

What are you talking about? Living with Mario before being drafted? Colorado (along with Pittsburgh at the time) was the worst team in the league, had the best chance at getting #1 pick.