Zetts

Oh lord. The Penguins can do no wrong in your eyes can they? This is my last response for the night, I have other things to do. The Penguins (obviously) don't actually suck. That was a crack at them. The point (if you've somehow still missed this) is that their drafting isn't that great. The Wings got beaten by a good team. That team was made up of 3 parts: 1. Crosby and Malkin, superstars which were easy to draft 2. Signed free agents 3. A few draft picks which happened to be good because they were picked so high. If their drafting was any good though, these players could have been even better. There's how many players on the team that Pittsburgh drafted that weren't from the first round? I'm not sure, but I'm willing to guess that the number is quite low. Again, the point is that their drafting hasn't been great, they've just had high picks for a long time. Clear?

As I said:

30/30 teams would have picked Crosby and Malkin in the positions they were taken. That's all that I'm saying. It's not because of their amazing scouting that either of the two worked out. ...I don't think that they purposely drafted worse players so that they could stay within the salary cap.

...yeah, and none of those teams have Crosby or Malkin to go along with those players either. Both of whom, as I said, anybody could have picked. My point isn't that the Penguins suck (although they do). My point is that their drafting should hardly be held up as the pinnacle of success. Whenever they haven't had a superstar practically shoved up their ass, their scouts haven't done particularly well. If you seriously don't think that having Crosby, Malkin, Eric Staal and Toews on your team would make a dynasty (which the Penguins will not be) then I don't know what to say to you. ...of course in that scenario there's also the salary cap to worry about, but that's another story altogether.

I get that you like them, but it's a joke to say that they are "very well built through great drafting". They sucked for a loooong time, and got good picks because of it. Anybody could have picked Crosby and Malkin. And in case you forgot, they picked Jordan Staal ahead of Jonathan Toews, Nicklas Backstrom and Phil Kessel. They picked Fleury over Eric Staal. Yeah, that's some world class drafting right there.

If the organization genuinely saw it that way, they should have made a deal for a backup goalie. If they really think that their current backup can't start against the Oilers, then that's a hole they needed to fill before the trade deadline.

I wondered about this too, but I'm thinking that the excuse then would be that they're trying to keep Howard in a groove for the playoffs. To me, that actually seems like it might be an even bigger slap in the face to only play him when (if) we're clinched, but that's just my opinion.

I hope so. I would much rather play the Coyotes than the other possibilities. Not that I think the Coyotes will be easy, but still preferable.

I think that this got humiliating for Osgood a while ago. I doubt that Osgood feels any more or less humiliated now - I'm sure he expected not to play tonight. And it was definitely obvious when he didn't play against Edmonton that he wouldn't be playing again. I agree with you though, it seems unfair. There has to be something else behind this story that we don't know. Babcock isn't stupid.

Probably Johan Ryno. Hopefully Ericsson is more useful than that tonight though.

Well, that brings the Wing's record to 2-4 in games that I've gone to. I miss Zetterberg's domination. What the heck happened to this guy over the past year? It was a fairly exciting finish though. My voice is gone from that.

What did you expect Boston to do? Every team can't have Andreas Lilja on it.

I'm glad that Howard is starting because I'm going to the game, and want a nice, lopsided Wings victory. And there's no way Osgood would be particularly good given how long it's been since he's played. On the other hand, it sucks that Osgood isn't playing because realistically, if he doesn't play now, I think we can say he's probably not going to for the rest of the season.

Or, alternatively, you could ditch Meech and Lebda, then rotate Lilja, Ericsson and Kindl. Or just rotate Ericsson and Kindl and leave Lilja in. There hasn't been anything to suggest that Kindl deserves a roster spot at all right now. It's all potential. I'd be pretty angry if a player as solid as Lilja got the boot in favour of a guy who could very well not be able to cut it. Besides, I think Lilja will re-sign for relatively cheap on a short term deal. Being out for so long doesn't put him in great bargaining position. If he plays well for a year or two then he'd be more likely to get the slightly bigger contract that he probably deserves. I doubt he'd complain about another year on the third pair in Detroit.

He's still better than Jason Williams.

We'd better keep him. Then we have relatively solid goaltending for cheap. Osgood has the potential to play pretty well if he gets in a groove. There aren't many guys that I'd rather have that we could also get cheap. Of course, another question is how angry Osgood is with his treatment and if he'd want to leave. It must be difficult for him. He seems to love the organization and the city, but his career is almost over. He likely wants to play while he can, so it wouldn't be crazy for him to ask for a trade.

Ideally we'd have neither. Oh and goaltending threads. None of those. In the Crosby threads and goaltending threads at least people are only stupid though. Here a lot of people are stupid and rude. Edit: And now of course we get the double whammy of Crosby Olympic threads. Ugh.

I can't wait until the Wings play again. Can we all promise that the second the puck is dropped tomorrow there won't be another Olympic thread for the next 4 years? Please?

I'm praying that you meant to type "twins". I just threw up a little bit.

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See, I knew you secretly agreed.

There's only one rule change that I really care about. Get rid of that trapezoid. It's bush league. Hey, I know, lets paint a hexagon in the high slot where defending players can't touch the puck. That would increase offense too!! /sarcasm Edit: And hand-passes should either be legal in every zone or legal in none. But that one can wait.

Meh. I'm pretty sure that the majority of people who have every been around hockey have done it. And we're all fine.

Am I blind, or did both Canadian GDTs get deleted?

Martin St. Louis has been doing this for a while in practices and I thought we actually saw it at an all-star game once. Nice move, but it seems kind of dangerous going in head first. What if the goalie's poke check or skate gets his face?