toby91_ca

A player of his caliber wouldn't have a shot with Team Canada, but I'm not as familar with the US team.

Most of the names you expect, but Fedorov not being there was surprising to me. I think there was a bit of a bias towards stickhandling in the list, perhaps that is why he wasn't there.

If he makes the team I suppose. He does qualify from an age perspective (less than 2 months from being too old though).

There is definately no real basis to say Fischer would have ended up playing dirtier and dirtier as his career progressed, but to be fair, Fischer had been suspended 2 times. At the same point in his career, Pronger had 0 suspensions, was a 2 time allstar, 2nd allstar team, all rookie team, +/- leader and a member of Team Canada's olympic team.

I know you are just exaggerating, but not only are you way off on ice time, I don't think Lidstrom or Rafalski really played overly more than they do any other year. Neither played anywhere near 32 minutes in regulation in any single game all year, let alone every night. Rafalski played a grand total of 1 game in which he played 30 minutes in regulation, Lidstrom had zero, he didn't eevn play a single game at 29 minutes in regulation. Lidstrom averaged 25 minutes per night (well below what he used to play) and Rafalski averaged 24 minutes per night (about average for his years here, but below what he used to play in NJ).

It would be nice and doesn't look overly unreasonable, but if you compare to last year's totals: Zetterberg - 23 Franzen - 10 Dats - 27 Hudler - n/a Homer - 25 Flip - 11 Bertuzzi - 18 Cleary - 15 I know injuries played a role in that, but injuries happen, unlikely like last year, but still, that's a big jump. From those 8 guys, you are talking about going from 129 goals to 248 goals. I think 4-5 is the safe bet, considering that's what they had 8 of the past 10 years. The other 2 years = 3 last year and 8 in 2006. I think there is about 8 or so that are capable, but unlikely to happen all at once. Kronwall's career high is 7 goals.

That was his only shootout goal last year, he was 0-6 up to that point.

Modano isn't particularly good in shootouts.

Too early to start laughing, Janik isn't even on the roster yet.

As much as I am not a fan, I'm not sure how the Maple Leafs are not in there somewhere.

You got me there. Edit: In terms of 10, these are the guys I was thinking of (I didn't go to check the stats to make sure, so I'm probably wrong): 1. Datsyuk 2. Zetterberg 3. Franzen 4. Filppula 5. Cleary 6. Ericcson 7. Helm 8. Eaves 9. Miller 10. Abdelkader

I think the most unrealistic part of the prediction is that you have about 10 guys having career years and others having improving years over last year.

No, it says soccer was used before the "singular word" football, but it was still orginally football. In fact, it was actually football (the singular word) even earlier, but in that time the word referred to many different sports. It was referred to as "association football", then "soccer football", then "soccer", then "football", so to me, it is pretty clear that "football" is really the orginal name.

I don't know about that. He did get his elbows up here and there, jumped into hits now and then. His hits were hard and generally clean, but there were quite a few that were borderline dirty and I don't think they'd fly in today's NHL. As an example, I can't imagine he'd get away with the Kariya hit today.

Same 17 year deal, but what about the money? Choice of team? Is the league going to pay for most of the contract? I would really be concerned as to whether all of the money would end up getting paid on such a deal in the KHL. Who knows where it will be in 10 years. A lot more security in the NHL I think.

I don't believe this to be the case, soccer is not the original name. I think this is how the name really came about: - term "football" was used in England to describe many different sports, all of which were played "on foot" - generally by peasants, as opposed to other people who played sports on horseback. - in around the 1860's, people decided that rather than a game where you had to carry the ball down the feild by foot, you could carry it (later to become rugby). - a lot of people didn't like the idea of being able to carrying the ball with your hands, so they wanted to distinguish between the original sport which get the ball on the ground and they came up with the name Association Football. They also liked to shorten words, so it often became known as AsSOC Football. - in around 1880, AsSOC was then referred to as "soccer", so it became soccer football. Eventually, they simply dropped the term term soccer and kept the simple football name.

True enough. The other thing to think about here, it's not like he's talking about the actual game of hockey at all, he's talking about the guy as a person, so I'm not sure I care about the 3rd liner vs. star player angle. In actuality, it's stuff like this that 3rd and 4th liners tend to do. A lot of them are agitators and go out to stir up s*** with star players and get them off their game. When I first started listening to the clip, I thought it was a bit of a joke, if he really felt that way, would he really be saying all this publicly? Sounds more like publicity stunt. However, it's more likely not and he was simply calling him a ******.....which I don't think is very professional.

So would you be okay with it if Crosby called Ovechkin a ******? I suspect if that happened, we'd have a 20 page thread by now and ripping Crosby apart. Problem is, I think it would be very, very rare that you would ever find a star player that would make those types of comments. Here's a question though, how would everyone feel if it was someone like Draper or Maltby that made the comments? Personally, I have not met either Ovechkin or Talbot, so it would be pretty unfair for me to judge whether either of them are douches, so I won't really comment much further.

It would leave about $2 million for Staal, assuming no other changes.

That is who you think should be paid $3 million, but when you look around the league at who is paid $3 million or more, Frolov at $3 million does not equal overpayment if you ask me. I understand your argument and I agree that he is lazy and may wind up in the KHL some year down that line, but you need to consider that this is only a 1 year deal. Also, Flip's offensive production doesn't even compare to Frolov's, so suggesting he is worth it more because of his defensive game and improving, etc. doesn't really fly with me. If you think about it, Flip's best year for goals was 19 (this equals Frolov's worst year apart from his 14 goal rookie year). Flip's career best for points is 40. Over the past 5 years, Frolov has averaged better than 26 goals and 60 pts. He also hasn't gotten worse every year. He's down a little bit the last couple years, but he's still put up more than 50pts for 5 years in a row, 48 pts the year before that. If your prediction is true and he only puts up 47pts, I think that will still more quite a bit more than other players being paid $3 million.

Will be interesting to see how the arbitrator rules, but if he/she rules in favor of NJ/Kovalchuk, the cap really becomes pointless. The league will face some challenge because of the Luongo and Hossa deals, but the Kovalchuk deal goes quite a bit further than those (i.e. not all that comparable). However, I don't think those deals should have been approved either.

Overpayment? How? If I think of other players paid in the $3-4 million range, I can't think of many that Frolov isn't better than.

You can try, but who's going to want to take his $5.6M cap hit?

When you buyout a contract, you do not eliminate the cap hit, only reduce it.

I don't know, in my opinion, Pouliot is a better player and is much younger, but that doesn't mean he'll get playing time over Durno. Need to look at needs (centre, wing, etc.) Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think Durno was anywhere close to being a ppg player at anytime last year. Where are you getting that info?