Drake_Marcus

*le sigh* The girlfriend cashed in her "you watch hockey too much" points. So I have to go see 2012 tonight instead. The worst part is I agreed before realizing this game was on CBC! The last time I missed a game to go see a movie with her Zetterberg, Lidstrom and Datsyuk all had multi-point games, though, so things could be worse. Hopefully I can watch the replay of this game tonight on the CBC website. LET'S GO WINGS!

God knows I wanted to blame Shoreline for the loss, but now it's your turn to shoulder the load. However, if we win tomorrow I'm fully prepared to accept that burden for you. You're welcome!

Are you sure it was a drunk guy? Could've been McCarty razing Draper like he loves to.

Fair enough.

From what I've read on the Griffins m-live site as well as the Griffins Central and Red Wings Central message boards he's looked like an AHL player out there so far. Apparently people are 'seeing glimpses' of the kind of play that impressed the Wings in camp. With his 2 helpers tonight he's got 1 goal 6 assists and 7 points through his first 12 AHL games. Assuming his play doesn't pick up as he gets comfortable but stays at this pace that's a 44 pt rookie season as the youngest kid in the entire league. I'm still excited about this kid.

Can I count on you to stream it tomorrow? I'll be watching (assuming my GF doesn't protest). Can't wait to see if Tatar takes this head of steam and rolls with it.

Deal.

I actually have one of those. But she's less than a year old. Luckily I'm old enough that when I'm seen with her people inevitably think I'm the father.

I just wanted to clarify that I know he's made some stupid mistakes-- I groaned too. That bad pass that Getzlaf knocked down and passed to Perry for the goal was as painful for me to watch as it was for you. I'm just trying to point out the good things he's done that seem to have been overshadowed by a few higher profile mistakes he's made over the last few games. Defense is a position where you can make a 100 great plays but you'll be the goat if you make that 1 bad play. Ericsson's rookie mistakes are also amplified by having Lebda as his partner. Normally you'd want to give your rookie d-man a capable defensive partner to guide the way and mask some of his errors. It seems like people are letting a few errors outweigh all his promising play even when those errors are to be expected. Obviously my opinion would be different if he weren't a rookie, but you've got to cut the kid actual slack when he's learning... not just say "I know he's a rookie, but he sucks defensively". His defensive play certainly isn't bad compared to a rookie.

Calgary fan?

Your mom.

This, this, this!

The PK position owes a lot to his size, and readiness to block shots but it's certainly a vote of confidence in his defensive abilities. There's a reason why Miller walked in and played on the PK and it's the only reason why he's in the NHL-- he's a capable defensive forward. Miller was known as a defensive rookie coming into the league with very little expectation offensively. He's basically a Helm type of guy who didn't catch on like Helm did. Defense is definitely the only reason why the Wings picked Miller up.

He hasn't been "good" defensively compared to how well he played defensively in the playoffs, but he's been good for a rookie. As far as saying we're 26th on the pk... well that reflects on Lidstrom, Stuart, Kronwall, Datsyuk, and Zetterberg just as much as it does on Ericsson. Again, for a rookie, he's been good defensively. From what we saw in the playoffs, his call-ups last year and the AHL it's clear he's capable of playing better defensively. But compare him to Lilja's play when he was healthy. Or to Lebda who's a 3rd pairing guy with 4 years of NHL experience. He's as good right now as Lilja is when healthy, on average, and he's already superior. Look where Ericsson makes mistakes-- it's almost always when he's making offensive choices. When it comes to playing his man he's solid. Occasional poor defensive outcomes when making offensive choices is the hallmark of a player making the NHL transition. It takes years to learn to read the NHL game right. Look at Kronwall's NHL transition. He was brutal defensively. Absolutely brutal. Last season was pretty damn rough defensively for Kroner as well, but this season he's been very good defensively. He was rough early on but now he's the second best defensive d-man on the team. When you compare their rookie seasons and their histories, it's clear that Ericsson has the potential to be an impact player as big as Kronwall with even stronger defensive abilities (mostly owing to his size advantage). Kronwall was known to be defensively suspect early in his career while Ericsson's expectation based on his play last year and especially his play in the AHL is that he's strong defensively. Give Ericsson time to learn the NHL game man, he's stud.

Q: What's the difference between a Red Wing who's 2 years past his usefulness and a Red Wings who's leading the team in goals? A: Nothing. (According to Jake Ryan)

Eaves would be my fav out of the free agent additions. Ericsson for the rookies. It's interesting how much flack Ericsson is taking for not being the best defensive d-man on the team. Interesting because he's a rookie, he's a mainstay of the PK (an strong indication that the coach feels he's a good defensive player) and he's only a -2 right now. That -2 seems bad until you notice that his partner is a -3, Cleary's a -1, Rafalski's only a +1 even though he plays with Lidstrom who's a +9, and this team is 8th in the West right now. So now that we've established that -2 isn't bad for a rookie in his shoes I'd like to point out that he lead the defense in scoring through the first 15 games. He did so with an average PP time per game of 0.0 mins. That's very impressive for a rookie d-man who's getting zero PP time. Ericsson's on pace for a 13 g 27 a 40 pt rookie season without playing a minute of PP time. A 40pt season as a third pairing rookie d-man is Calder material folks. Let's look at last year's #1 rookie d-man: Drew Doughty 81gp 6 g 21 a 27pts -17 23:49 TOI/G How can you call Ericsson a disappointment so far this season? Because he's made a few rookie errors out there defensively? He's a frickin' rookie. Rafalski's got more turnovers than he does. But hey, he does have 15% more turnovers than Nick Lidstrom. That's a tiny number in this situation. If you expect a rookie to walk in as a d-man and read the plays at the NHL level to the extent that he's among the bottom third of the defensive +/- on the Detroit Red Wings you're either insane or think he's Bobby Orr. Calling him disappointing is patently absurd. EDIT: Spelling.

Sweet deal. Being +5 on a team with only 3 wins through 20 games is pretty amazing.

When you phrase it like that there are two options: 1. Your astute analysis and vision far surpasses that of the man who is widely considered the best GM in hockey. You've seen through his careful planning and unmasked him as a short-sighted fool who made a pair of poorly thought out signings. 2. You're over-simplifying a complicated situation and giving yourself too much credit.

Ian White's impressed me in each Leafs game I've seen this season. That's only 3 games, though, so I'm not sure how fair that assessment is.

Well I'd give you a dirty look if you slammed the glass at work and distracted me while I was busy, so it's pretty much the same thing.

Hmmm... Halak is in goal, eh? Wish it were Price. Halak's had a much better record over the last two seasons...

Come on Wings! Win this one for me!

As far as Datsyuk being cold goes... coming into tonight's game he had 12pts in 10 games. He's got 17pt in 18 games so far this year. He's cold for Datsyuk, but I wouldn't say he's struggling. I was just watching the Sharks game on the team teal webcast and they think Datsyuk's having a terrible season so far. They told me he'll have a point total in the low 70's and definitely won't top 80. They said he's ice cold. So I told them about the 13pts in the last 11 games thing and mentioned that he's got 17 in 18 games coming off a really cold start.... and they didn't mention another word about it. So I just told them to count on him having a "Datsyuk" season.

I suppose it's better to blame Holmer than Dats, but I'd like to point out that Datsyuk was on a hot streak for about 6 games this season.