toby91_ca

I understand why some people have a problem with the suspension, but they need to get over it and understand that you can't hit like that. It really isn't that difficult to avoid. The video even acknowledges that players will leave their feet sometimes on natural follow through, but he clearly went airborn long before contact. If the shoulder went into his chest, it would simply be a 2 minute minor for charging. Since it made contact with the head, it's a suspension. Simple as that really.

Honestly, I hate the idea.

He had 21 minor penalties last year, which is significantly less than what Quincey and Bertuzzi had last year. It's also very consistent with what 5 other Wings took last year (+ only 5 more than what Zetterberg took).

I think it's mostly to do with very little 5 on 5 time last night. I think, generally, he's only going to be playing 5 on 5, which is fine. If you look at last night's game, I think there was only about 33 minutes in 5 on 5 action. Of those minutes, he was in the box for 5 of them. So, there was really only 27 minutes available to get him out there. If you split that time evenly amongst 4 lines, that's a little under 7 minutes a line. It obviously isn't an exact science, but that leads me to conclude that his little under 7 minutes makes perfect sense. He's likely to play more than that most nights, but in penalty filled games, he'll likely play less.

He's been a full time NHLer the past 6 seasons. In those 6 seasons, he's averaged 64 games a year, only 1 year has he appeared in more than 72 games. I'm not disputing whether it's likely he'll play 82 games a season, just wondering why that would be likely. Based on history, I'd lean more towards it not being likely at all. Ignoring suspensions, as you say, the style of game he plays is high risk when it comes to potential injury, especially for a smaller guy. Ignoring all that, you also have to consider whether he'd ever be a healthy scratch or not.

To be honest, I'm more in the middle. I've never held Holland up as the perfect GM or anything. That said, he would be very well respected around the league and that goes a long way in being able to perform his job. I'm not getting down on him now either, why would people be doing that (for not getting Suter?). There's only so much he can do. That said though, based on what you've just described in saying it's not Holland's fault that Bettman has forced parity, aren't you idirectly saying that Holland would be able to build a stronger team if he could spend way more money? If so, how does spending lots of money make you a good GM?

Haven't read the full thread, but people expecting 5g, 15a or 20pts to be on the high end (even for full season) might be because he's only scored more than 18pts once in his entire career. It helps that it just came last year and I know if you look at the stats, he was close to 20pts the 2 seasons before that only playing 50 some odd games, but you have to consider that too, what are the chances he plays 82 games?

A guy not named Joe Murphy or Keith Primeau that is.

My point was that you really don't know what he got it for, the vast majority of 10 minute misconduct penalties in my league are for getting in the refs ears a little too much. The thing is, when I saw Tootoo do that I thought to myself, how does he get away with doing something like that? Perhaps the refs though giving hi the misconduct was something they could do without punishing the Wings by putting them on the penalty kill. Who knows. Not a big fan of it, but I might be able to see some of the logic. Perhaps that call doesn't happen if the game isn't 5-0.

Am I the only one that thought the TooToo attempted hit was pretty bad? He launched himself through the air like a missle. If he connected with someone, it might have been ugly. I wouldn't complain too much about him getting a 10 minute misconduct as we really don't know if he got it for that or what might have happened after that (more likely).

Record with DET - 317-149-75 - .655 win% Record with others - 84-67-20 - .550 win% My argument has never been with the Wings making him "look good" my argument has always been with people that look at his all-time wins being over 400 and suggesting he must have been one of the best. I don't think there were many people out there that thought he was one of the best in the league throughout the years, but now you look and all the wins just seemed to add up. I'm not sure how you can't assume a lot of that isn't due to the team he played for. It's not like they had a drop-off without him. The other thing I looked at (very high level) was that the other goalies on the other teams he played with did not have signficantly different records than him.

Well, you can only do that if you have the right players at the NHL level. The Wings have been in really good shape for a long time. That gives them the luxury of letting the younger guys play in the minors for a bit. Some teams do not have that luxury.

Not just different wording from different sources....different wording from same source. NHL.com under the calder trophy qualifications also has the wording 26 or younger. Either way, Brunner appears too old....either by 6 months, or 1 year and 6 months. What I'd love to know is what is considered major professional league besides NHL (see Ovechkin comment earlier). It's obviously not the top league in Russia, obviously not the Swiss A league (Brunner has played 7+ seasons there). What about SEL? Is there any league outside of the NHL considered major professional? If it's not Russia, I'm not sure what else would be.

Because it is very close to a useless stat. It's much more a team stat than individual. Also, the more offensive guys are more likely to have a good stat in that area than a good defensive guy, yet people use it all the time to try and explain why someone is good defensively.

September 15th is technically the end of each season, not the beginning. If you recall, the lockout commenced when the old deal expired (on September 15th). So, when determining September 15th of someone's rookie year...for the 2012-13 season, that's Setpember 15, 2013. So if someone is 26 now or will be before that date....not eligible.

For the 2012-13 season, I guess the rule is that you need to be 26 or younger on September 15, 2013, not 2012. This got me thinking about one of the other criteria: having played more than 6 games in two preceeding years in a major professional league. Ovechkin won the award over Crosby in 2006 after playing 4 years for Moscow Dynamo. So, outside the NHL, what is considered a "major professional league"? If it wasn't the Russian league, what would there be?

I always thought he wasn't eligible, but may you are right. He'll be 27 in a couple months and I thought the rule was you had to be under 26 on Sep. 15 of your rookie year, not 26 or younger.

The $5.75 million annual cap hit is stupid enough, the fact that he got a MAX term deal brings the stupidity to an even stupider level (I know that's not a word).

Maybe I missed the comments, but I didn't think anyone compared Letang to Lidstrom (could have missread though). I thought Letang's name came up when referring to who the elite dmen are in the league, that's about as far as it went. That said though, at the same age as Letang, Lidstrom was about 5 years away from winning his first Norris trophy. That said, yes, it would be a joke to even think about comparing him to Lidstrom. What's changed is that they didn't get someone else to fit that role so we now have to convince ourselves that Kronwall will be the man. Let's not kid ourselves, Management sure as hell tried to get someone. I'm sure they hope the current guys step up, but there has to be some level of concern.

He won a lot less than he did with the Wings. He really didn't do much better with those teams than any of the other goalies on the team. That's why I've always seen Osgood as a guy who benefited a lot from his team. You can say the same thing about most goalies though.

I've almost thought of Kronwall and Letang as being at a similar level (not similar style). Maybe Letang a bit higher, but not much. I think Letang really started to breakout last year, but then he got hurt. We'll see where he's at now. He's much cheaper than Kronwall. I guess the other big difference is that he is more than 6 years younger, so he's likely to improve. I think people get caught up a bit in that, but you have to think about LIdstrom as the guy playing his last year of his career....that's a bit easier to replace than Lidstrom in his prime.

Am I the only one that finds it a little weird that Kronwall is 32 years old? I guess him really breaking into the roster at 25 or 26 makes me think he's younger than he is. I think we'll find out how good Kronwall really is this year. Part of the problem I see is not that he can't replace Lidstrom (prime Lidstrom anyway), we know that, but even if he is a legit, elite, #1 Dman, we had that for 20 years + at least 2 or 3 other really good Dmen. Not sure that is the case now. We'll see. On Weber, I think this season may show a lot as well. Some think he might struggle, but I've seen others thinking he may have a career year. I've seen him picked by a lot of analysts as the Norris winner this year.

I've read a bit on Malkin recently and while he liked playing in Russia, he seems happy to be back. He had some comments about how he has a new appreciation for what it is like for Crosby on a regular basis (i.e. he got a lot of attention while playing in Russia). “I understand now how hard it is for Sid,” Malkin said, referring to Penguins teammate Sidney Crosby. “He does such a great job. It is hard. I get it.” He also seems to be the anti-Fedorov if you believe what Gonchar has to say: “He never wants to be the biggest man in town,” said Gonchar, who shares a floor of an apartment complex with Malkin in Moscow. “Evgeni would like to play hockey, and he can be the best hockey player,” Gonchar said. “But maybe he would like best to do it out of the spotlight.”

Blame them for what? As far as I know, it's always been his plan to finish his career in Russia, has nothing to do with lockout. He turns 35 soon, will be 36 after his contract ends. A signficant decline in abilities will come, the question is when. It comes at different times for different players. I'm not as fussed if he plays out his late 30s in Russia (assuming deminishment), but I do like guys to stick around and finish their careers here. I don't know why, there is no real logic to it beyond it feeling good that a player didn't want to go somewhere else. Much less to do with missing out on what they'd bring to the team at the end because the assumption is that there would be much less brought in the end.

By way of comparison, they were 32-15-1 after the first 48 games last year (but that included a 6 game winning streak in games 43-48). They followed that up with a pretty bad 16-13-5 to finish the season.