Zetts

People are really counting Cleary out after one season where he was injured? I admit, it was a terrible choice for him to keep playing like that. But regardless, when he's healthy, he's a pretty valuable guy. Our bottom 6 will be gritty enough and also be able to score a bit. No, it's not perfect, but it's good enough, which is more than can be said about our top 6 or our defense. Also, Clutterbuck wasn't on the block, so it's a pointless comparison. You may as well have thrown Bob Probert in your "ideal bottom 6" for good measure.

From our perspective, when does a bit of overpayment stop being a reason not to sign someone? I mean, we have how much cap space? We're pretty much there. My only hope is the overabundance of forwards we have (16 I think, if we re-sign Abdelkader). I'm hoping we can use the extra forwards as leverage in a trade for a decent d-man (i.e. Yandle).

Any speculation about this part? My impression was that it was given that Nyquist and Smith would be on the roster...is he talking about somebody else?

I hope a lot of forwards would be going back the other way towards Phoenix in such a scenario. If we were to also re-sign Abdelkader we would have 19 forwards.

What needs were addressed by Anaheim in taking Mark Mitera? Or by Montreal in taking David Fisher? Or Sanguinetti, Persson, Vishnevsky, Summers, Corrente, Kana, Sneep, Alexandrov, Swan, Holzapfel, etc, etc, etc being taken by their respective teams. All of these were taken prior to Lucic and have never and will never come close to his impact. Maybe Boston just did a great job of scouting this one particular player among thousands. Or maybe they got lucky. Either way, this is a ridiculous argument - many teams dropped the ball in passing over Lucic. You draft for talent, not needs. That's a common philosophy. If it was known how good Lucic was, he would have gone prior to the Wings ever making a pick.

Yes, that was exactly my point. Perhaps Ilitch initially indicated to Holland that he would only go to 80M, then decided to try to stomach 90M. To go to 98M (for BOTH players, who wanted to play together it seems), people are so sure that Ilitch must have been fine with what would amount to another 16M between the two. I'll wait to see what happens on defense before throwing him under the bus. There's plenty of time to go. Lucic was drafted 50th overall. Plenty of teams passed him up. Just as is the case every year. Holland has also had some great steals in the draft. This particular point is just ridiculous to even argue. Scouts give the GMs most of their information. And at that, it's a GUESS. Get over it. Hey, if GMs were perfect, NY would have already had Parise, taking him at #12 overall in 2003 instead of Hugh Jessiman. See how ridiculous it is to say things like that?

1. Lidstrom retiring is out of Holland's control. It's ridiculous to blame him for that. 2. Schultz not coming her was out of Holland's control (he wanted to play in Canada). 3. Again, you're blaming Holland for not offering more of somebody else's money. He did what he could, I'm sure. But if, hypothetically, Ilitch said he wouldn't go higher with the offer, that's not Kenny's fault. In fact, I believe it was Ilitch himself who was the last one to visit Suter. 4. Offensively, we're actually ok. So the signings of Bertuzzi and Samuelsson aren't an issue, nor have they impacted our ability to get anybody that might be better. Also, every player won't be a superstar. They're not actually bad players. 5. Gustavsson was a good improvement as a backup. I don't know what your complaint is there. Maybe Holland could have made better moves or been more aggressive in some ways. But your critisisms of him are way overboard.

Has it occured to you that maybe Ilitch wasn't ok with that amount of money? Holland doesn't get to unilaterally make these decisions. 90M was them upping their offer, which Ilitch might not have been crazy about to begin with. I know that we just assume that Ilitch's wealth is unlimited, but maybe things aren't going quite as well these days? Just a thought. Man people are fast to throw Kenny under the bus.

Competitive to make the playoffs? Abolutely. IMO their team is nowhere close to good enough to win the cup though. Looking at CapGeek, they've got a respectable team.

Per Darren Dreger's Twitter:

Via Andy Strickland: From what I've seen, he tends to be a reliable source. Regardless, I'm not holding my breath that the Wings get Parise.

I think we need a general thread so that a new one isn't made for every signing. To start it off, per Dreger:

Well, we potentially have Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Franzen, Cleary, Filppula, Brunner (maybe) and Bertuzzi as forwards for the 2 PPs. Perhaps Nyquist if things are going well for him. And seemingly Samuelsson might be in that mix somewhere. I know that this might be a bit unorthodox, but why couldn't Datsyuk be on a point? He could run the PP from the back end. He's got unbelievable vision, a good shot and would be great at holding the zone. Personally I'd much rather that than Sammy on the point. Also, Samuelsson could (IMO) do a decent job with his shot from more of a halfboards position. So, we could rotate Kronwall, Suter, Datsyuk and one of Quincey/Ericsson/Smith/White on the points. Maybe it wouldn't work, but I'd like to try it. It would keep Samuelsson off the point at least. Of course, if we don't get Suter, we're really in trouble.

Agreed. But that's why I said: Saying someone is "better" = more skilled. "A better deal" = better value of skill/$. To be clear, I prefer our goaltending situation to Montreal's.

If you factor in salary, obviously you have a better deal with Howard. But in terms of comparing them as players, I do think Price is better. He's put up pretty good numbers on a bad team. If Howard was in Montreal, I personally don't feel that his numbers would be as good as Price's. Regular season career: Price: .916 SV%, 2.56 GAA For Howard: .917 SV%, 2.41 GAA. Pretty similar numbers, but Montreal is...Montreal. It's certainly close.

Based on the offer they reportedly turned down from NY, that wouldn't be NEARLY enough. And that's ignoring the fact that we're also a team in the same division. The cost would be astronomical.

I don't mind having Sammy back. I think I was one of the few who was fine with him before. As long as he's used appropriately (meaning NOT the point on the powerplay). He gives good scoring depth on the third line and is ok defensively too. Also, he's able to fill in on the top two lines if there are injuries. From what I recall, our third line during the cup win was Sammy-Fil-Hudler. Having a bit of production from the third line was crucial to our success and Sammy helps us with that extra bit of depth. I do find the NTC weird though...

I do think Price is a bit better than Howard, although I agree with the rest: definite overpayment.

I don't know how much stock to put in it, since I never followed this guy on Twitter prior to another user here posting a rumor from him today. @NHLSourcesSay has just tweeted: I'm still inclined not to believe it from this source.

Can you please explain how having "only" 17m would in any way hurt our ability to get one of the two? Even in considering pursuing both of them, trades are possible to shed salary. We're certainly not going into next season with 16 forwards, so trading or waiving players is inevitable with or without Parise. And if both Suter and Parise want 9 million per season, we'd be better off without having TWO such ridiculous cap hits anyways. We lacked depth this past year and now have a little more. I think that peoples' personal dislikes of the new players are causing over-exaggerations about the room/cap space they take up.

Parise has NOT decided per David Shoalts twitter (@dshoalts): This was all 3 minutes ago.

McGuire.

From USA Today. Now knowing that the Ducks pretty much have to trade Ryan, maybe the asking price could go down slightly? We can hope.

They're not going to get it for his rights.

For anyone curious about some more accurate numbers for the finances of the Jets: http://www.forbes.com/teams/winnipeg-jets/ 24th most valuable team in the league 71m revenue -5.2m profit 43m in player expenses