b.shanafan14

Howard 6-8-7 2.65GAA . 910S% (. 400 in shootout) Gustavsson 8-1-2 1.93GAA .933S% (.778 in shootout) Pretty glaring.

Howard is injured and has played like twice as many games as Gustavsson. Gustavsson has earned every game he has played this season and has a 1.5GAA in his (recent) two losses. If we were playing to win, it would be Monster's goal to lose as we near the halfway point of the season. He looks like he is going to stop everything, just needs goal support. Howard has been a dog all season.

Pathetic. "I know the last 4 guys tried a shot to the low glove side, but maybe, just maybe... Nope" That is two straight losses for Monster in 1-2 games, this time much worse. He held them off for 5 straight attempts in the shootout. Jimmy hasn't stopped two consecutive shootout attempts his whole career!

They love them some Jiri Hudler right now. Who'd have thought 28 points in 30 games with the Flames.

This argument is completely invalid so long as Alfredsson, and more to the point Abdelkader, both produce significantly more offensively than Weiss. You can't say "Of course he only has 4 points, his most frequent linemates this season have only have 35 points between the two of them!" Beyond that, Weiss has proven much worse in all areas of the ice. Andersson has 10 points and Miller has 7 points, both playing primarily as shutdown role. As I said earlier, Weiss is not under-performing. If he had Abdelkader's 12 points right now, his being with Cleary, Samuelsson, Abdelkader, or whoever might be a reasonable cause of such low production. He has 4 points. He is non-existent in every facet of the game.

Speaking of Cleary and Samuelsson, since they all have about the same PPG (0.16) but the glimmer twins each have more shots on goal in less ice time with a better plus-minus, couldn't it be argued that Weiss is the worst player on that line?

Not sure if his game is suffering from a lack of balls or a yellow belly. Waiting to hear back from MRI.

Looks to me like he aimed higher than need be and caught him good in the head. Perfect example of how the mechanics of the hit and the result are sometimes at odds, and thus why the Department of Player Safety needs to get much better at weeding out hits based on action not outcome. I'm not saying to disregard injuries when deciding on the severity of a punishment; I'm saying that the lack of an injury shouldn't equate to a lack of punishment.

This is why I think he is done. It won't be the first time a player with a previously good track-record absolutely disappears, especially after signing for big dollars and term. Scott Gomez, Johnathon Cheechoo, the recently-discussed Mike Commodore (though he was never nearly as good as he thinks he was), and so on. We picked the wrong player at the wrong time. Its not necessarily Kenny's fault, but he needs to be bought out come June. I'd rather be paying $2M+ for an empty roster spot than $4.9M to watch Weiss float and durp for the next four-and-a-half years. At this point I just pray he doesn't have some late season hot streak to make Holland think twice about keeping him.

When the topic came up a while back, I said that I would respect his decision if he chose not to play (at the time he sounded uninterested). He has given us enough and I completely understand that his knees are a wreck... That being said: HOLY s***!!! STEVIE Y!! GIVING US MORE THAN WE COULD EVER HOPE FOR!! I LOVE YOU, MAN!

This is not a guy under-performing. If the conversation was "what's wrong with Weiss, through 25 games he only has 12 points", that would be one thing. In that situation, I could understand the excuses in terms of transition, poor linemates, etc. That isn't the case at all. He has 4 points. FOUR. A guy brought in with considerable dollars, to fill a considerable role, expected to play responsible, be a good team player.... blah blah blah. He was brought here to boost offense. He has 4 points. Some nights he looks like he MAYBE might be ready to possibly get his 5th point... but then doesn't. He isn't under-performing, his performance is non-existent. Bust with no hope of substantial turnaround.

This. This as hard as my keyboard will allow me to. Look at our healthy roster at the top around Weiss: -Zetterberg started on pace for a career season before injuries slowed him in the last few games -Datsyuk was his typical dominant self from day one -Alfredsson despite inconsistent linemates (Weiss, invisible-until-recently Franzen) is not far off a point-per-game pace -Franzen started extremely slow, part because of Weiss, part because... because typical Franzen. Now on fire. The latter two players eventually overcame once Weiss was removed from their line. We left so many points on the table in the first two months of the season because we lacked a capable 2nd-line center, putting all of the pressure on the first line to score 1 or 2 goals with no support. Out of the 31 games played this season, the Wings have scored 2 goals 9 times, 1 goal 3 times, and been shutout twice. That is nearly half of our games with 2 goals or less, most near the beginning of the season, and many in 1-goal winnable games.

Unfortunately, he is 25 games into his stint with the Red Wings and saying "he actually looked somewhat decent" every few weeks is all he has garnered thus far. He saw as much time as he is going to see with Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Helm on the shelf and has one assist in the past month to show for it. As those players start to return, his role will be further phased out until he is back between plugs on the 4th line with single-digit minutes. I wanted Weiss to succeed as much as anyone, and I had really hoped he would take advantage of these last few games. Seeing how he played against the Panthers the other night sealed it for me. If he was ever going to wake up, he would have done it against his former team, but he looked lazy and lost out there. He has a worse PPG than Dan Cleary while being paid to be our 2nd-line center and provide offense. At this point it would take a miraculous turn around to warrant keeping him at his cap-hit and with the return of Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Helm on the horizon and the emergence of Nyquist and Tatar, I don't see how that is even a remote possibility.

For what its worth: http://www.capgeek.com/buyout-calculator/?player_id=812&buyout_y=2014&buyout_m=06&buyout_d=15 I'm assuming that means he is not a compliance buyout and instead we'll be on the hook for the following cap-hits if we buy Weiss out in June: 2014-15: $2,108,333 2015-16: $608,333 2016-17: $608,333 2017-18: $2,608,333 2018-19: $1,708,333 2019-20: $1,708,333 2020-21: $1,708,333 2021-22: $1,708,333 Overall, not bad, especially since the cap will likely rise in the coming years. Then again, it probably looks so "good" because this season we are accustom to paying Tootoo $1.9M in the minors, similar with Eaves, another $1.75M for an empty Cleary #71 sweater floating around, and $3M for Samuelsson....

I have to say, really extraordinary game from Franzen. He has really turned it around since that timeout a month or so ago. He has been playing great on both ends of the ice and tonight was probably his best, most complete game since 2009. Keep up the great work, Johan. Another solid game from Monster. Goose and Sauce are really coming on, too. When our depth steps up like it did tonight it really shows how dangerous the team can be healthy. LGW!

PK has tanked since Z went down.

"I was thrown off the team in Columbus because I was single and I was making a lot of money. The coach was jealous because he played a lot of years, he had a wife and kids and he felt he didn't earn a lot of money so he booted me off the team." I love to think that someone could be so delusional and paranoid that this thought would inhabit them long enough to become a personal reality.

In other flash-in-the-pan-former-NHLer-in-the-KHL news, Johnathon Cheechoo receives a quote "brutal" hit to the head from behind... apparently something is lost in translation and the Russian word for "soft" is easily confused with the word for "brutal". From what I can see he barely gets a shove from behind and you'd think his head came clean off his shoulders the way he dropped. http://www.khl.hr/en/medvescak/video-cheechoo-brutally-hit-in-the-head Is it too soon to make a joke about taking him off the ice in a tarp?

Boo-hoo. The guy couldn't get a job and stick any where in the league because he didn't earn a spot even when the Wings had injuries or players under-performing that season. He didn't stand out, and its not Babcock or Boucher's fault. Defensemen are usually a universal need and if he was good enough to stay in the league, he would have stayed, even if he had to earn via a PTO. The fact of the matter is he couldn't stick in the league for more than 500 games because he couldn't cut it. Honestly, I don't know what makes the guy think so highly of himself. The guy was a career minus player over his 480+ NHL games and averaged about 18 points over every 82 games. And in what universe was he a part of one of the best defense pairings in the league? Part of the reason he couldn't find a job is that he paints himself as ever the victim instead of doing what needs to be done to get better, and now he is just playing the KHL's PR game to say North American organizations conspired against me to ruin my career.

Terrible, terrible news...

NOOOOOOOOO! So basically down 3 world-class centermen who were on pace for career years. Didn't we sign some high-profile FA to play center? Maybe I'm wrong...

I would agree that its a terrible excuse to play someone who is playing worse in a desperate attempt to justify their contract, but I do think the Wings are guilty of this, especially this and recent years. I think this has to do with the unfortunate accumulation of these contracts, putting pressure on management to save face. Yes, we have benched Hall of Fame goaltenders in the past, but these players weren't given huge contracts while playing on a team with a lot of other poor-spent dollars. If you look at our cap situation if you have Weiss, Samuelsson, Cleary, Quincey, and Howard getting limited playing time relative to their performance, in addition to Tootoo and Eaves elsewhere, you are looking at a total of over $21.8M either riding pine or limited to as few minutes as possible while still maintaining enough active players to ice a team every night. That is just over 1/3 of our cap space on plugs, busts, inflated contracts, and now a grossly under-performing "elite" goaltender. I for one would rather have that dubious distinction while still winning hockey games, but then again, I'm not the GM.

Looking over my posts from the night, I mentioned "letting in a stinker" once, and that was speaking more generally about his play this season. Specifically, talking about his demeanor after a soft or otherwise untimely goal. He let in several untimely goals tonight, and looks to sulk afterwards. Once that starts the goals follow in rapid succession. Was there any one goal tonight that you could blame 100% on the goaltender? No. But its the sum total of the goals that is the problem. 1st goal: big time screen, can't see through flesh, that's fine 2nd goal: Read gets on the inside, Howard doesn't stay tight enough for a good lateral kick, but a defensive breakdown, whatever 3rd goal: he has Simmonds in front, but more than anything loses the puck in bodies, not great, looking flustered 4th goal: he seems to be swimming a bit before getting to his feet and coming way out, easy tap in on the opposite side, now he is done 5th goal: Hartnell fires a quick clapper, good shot, but Howard looks done, resting hands on the pads low with half-hearted swats as goals pile up The Wings tonight, like most nights with Howard in goal, just needed one of those saves. Just one. They were some of the only threatening shots of the night and he missed the majority of them. He let them go by in rapid succession, 3 in 5 minutes, tanking the teams morale on top of the losing on the scoreboard.

Maybe I am missing some technical nuance, being of the unwashed masses, but is his job not to keep pucks out of the net? Is Howard technically playing better, you know, for style points and technique?

The name of the game is stop the puck. He doesn't stop the puck. Sure he gets a lot of screened shots from time to time, but he has trouble with everything from a wraparound to a wrister from the dot. Every other goaltender in the league sees the same. Excusing him for not making the difficult saves is getting obnoxious when he has tanked more times than not this season. Puck on net, puck in net is not a good trend.