Drake_Marcus

Fantastic analysis. Best post I've ever read about Red Wings goaltending.

He also consistently had a sv% around 0.910 and was never worse than a "good" goalie in the AHL. It's funny that so many people think he failed in the AHL when he actually excelled at times: # 2005-06 AHL Goaltender of the Month (March) # 2005-06 AHL PlanetUSA All-Star Team # 2005-06 AHL All-Rookie Team # 2006-07 The Hockey News Future Watch (NHL's 71st-best prospect) # 2007-08 AHL Goaltender of the Month (December) # 2007-08 AHL PlanetUSA All-Star Team # 2007-08 The Hockey News Future Watch (NHL's 55th-best prospect) # 2007-08 Grand Rapids Griffins Man of the Year # 2008-09 Grand Rapids Griffins Man of the Year So in 4 years he was an All-Rookie once and an All-Star player twice. Half of his seasons in the AHL were All-Star seasons. One year he was tied for third in the league in shut-outs (6). His GAA numbers were hurt by the fact that he played on some s***ty teams that couldn't even make the playoffs. Perfect? No. But someone here called him a mediocre AHL goalie, which is utter bulls***.

Here's the problem with that (putting aside the fact that Abdelkader is 300K more expensive than Eaves): 1. Datsyuk 2. Franzen 3. Holmstrom (clearly I'm listing these in the order of where they play, not who's the best) 4. Zetterberg 5. Cleary 6. Bertuzzi 7. Filppula 8. Leino 9. Williams 10. Helm 11. Draper 12. Eaves 13. Maltby 14. Abdelkader We can afford to have Maltby as the 13th man, but even if Helm can't play in the first week, we can't afford to keep Abdelkader up on the roster because there's no cap room. The only way we could keep Abs up is to send Eaves down to GR until Helm is healthy. Once Helm is healthy if you want to keep Abs up Eaves would have to stay in GR. But then do you keep Abdelkader on the 4th line? Holland clearly wants him playing lots of mins to continue his development, so someone like Williams would have to drop down to the 4th line to let Abs play on the 3rd. Even then he wouldn't be racking the mins up, but at least he'd get enough time to make it worth it. Of course, once Lilja is healthy there's no way Abdelkader could stay on the roster-- he's just to expensive compared to the alternatives.

So I thought I'd have some fun and play with the lines now that we know Babs has his heart set on splitting Dats and Z up (at least at the start of the season). I've included the full line Babs likes where applicable. Note that Helm isn't shown because I'm assuming he's out for the first week or so. Lilja is also excluded due to injury. Franzen-Datsyuk-Holmstrom Bertuzzi-Zetterberg-Cleary Leino-Filppula-Williams Maltby-Draper-Abdelkader Eaves Lidstrom-Rafalski Kronwall-Ericsson Stuart-Lebda Hmmm... I guess that isn't so fun afterall given that I've basically just stuck the lines up that Babs stated he liked. Here's a more creative one: Franzen-Datsyuk-Holmstrom Leino-Zetterberg-Bertuzzi Cleary-Filppula-Abdelkader Maltby-Draper-Williams Lidstrom-Ericsson Rafalski-Kronwall Stuart-Lebda PP1: Zetterberg-Datsyuk-Holmstrom Lidstrom-Rafalski PP2: Franzen-Filppula-Bertuzzi Kronwall-Williams PK1: Datsyuk-Filppula Lidstrom-Ericsson PK2: Zetterberg-Cleary Kronwall-Stuart

I wouldn't take him that early, but he's definitely worth picking in the 2nd round. I'll be shocked if he doesn't hit 40 goals, but I doubt he'd get much more than 45 this season. If Franzen can hit 45 goals this season we're golden... that will depend largely on his ability to stay healthy and develop sufficient chemistry on the first line (and of course in that scenario he'd have to be playing with Datsyuk or Zetterberg).

Larsson will most definitely get some consideration if Jimmy continues to struggle. He's excelled at every level he's played and adjusted to the AHL amazingly quickly.

The difference there is that last year we scored the most goals in the NHL. This season the defense won't get the bailing out it got last season. If the goalie is bad and the defense is bad we'll lose far far far more often this season. I think that's got more to do with how the fans expectations have changed, not what the Wings think. I'm sure Holland is disappointed that Jimmy didn't make the next big leap after his all-star season in the AHL, but to say that expectations have shifted from "NHL starter" to "maybe an NHL backup" is an exaggeration. If his stock was falling that quickly they'd have bailed on him. The fact remains that Jimmy has a goalie's frame, a ton of talent, great reflexes and good form. His rebound control has never been brilliant, but that's something that can be repaired with more focused coaching (not that he hasn't received enough coaching before now). He's very inconsistent, which is very worrying, but so are 95% of the young goalies that come into the NHL. All they can do is wait and give him a shot before bailing on him. This is a similar situation to Quincey, except Quincey was much lower on the prospect depth chart than Jimmy is. At no point was Quincey even among the top five prospects in the organization, but Jimmy's been in the top 3 for 4 or 5 years now. I never said they were the same animal, just that tons of good NHL goalies stated out inconsistent and rough.

Sweet I can't wait to hear how Leino and Tatar do tonight. Here's how I'd put the lines together if this game wasn't about evaluating prospects and Babs just wanted the best lines: Franzen-Datsyuk-Holmstrom Leino-Filppula-Tatar Ryno-Abdelkader-Ritola Newbury-Emmerton-Maltby Kronwall-Ericsson Kindl-Stuart Meech-Delmore Larsson Cloutier PP1: Leino-Datsyuk-Holmstrom Kronwall-Ericsson PP2: Franzen-Filppula-Abdelkader Kindl-Stuart PK1: Datsyuk-Filppula Kronwall-Ericsson PK2: Franzen-Leino Stuart-Meech (Kindl and Delmore are terrible defensively, so Meech is the best option here)

Someone's here to make friends

And someone else will forget about the difference between an expiring NMC that turns into a limited no-trade clause (the limited part being in Holland's favour) and a NMC.

I'm fine with keeping Stuart-- he's a valuable player. Just don't let him stall Ericsson's development. If Ericsson continues to play like a top 4 d-man you can bet Stuart will play on the 3rd pairing until a spot opens up, because the Wings' brass is very interested in Big E maintaining his level of development into a top pairing d-man. His development is far more valuable to this team long-term.

So basically we have a gross over-reaction here about a young goalie who has potential but lacks the eye-opening NHL appearance to convince us. Guess why the Wings haven't bailed on him yet? Because the reward outweighs the risk at this point. Expect Larsson to get his shot as soon as the risk is greater than the reward for Jimmy. It's friggin' September-- Kenny's got 7 months to figure Jimmy out. Edit: Plus, I'm not going to lie here-- we could use a goalie that forces the defense to get better.

Oh yeah man, you should call the best GM in hockey and ask him why he's given Jimmy the time of day for the last few years-- I mean wouldn't he have dumped him when he was considered a blue-chip prospect by the hockey world if he noticed this insightful facts?

That's the funniest thing I've read all day. Filppula will score more points this year than Zetterberg did last year. Filppula's going to jump up into the superstar point per game range. Man, I want what you're smoking.

This sucks.

Chicago knows they're going to collapse in on themselves this offseason, so why not go for it in their one year window.

Huh? Look, I'm not a huge Howard fan but that statement makes no sense. How does Howard control whether the offense scores on the 40 shots they took? Doesn't matter if the shots are 100-20, if your team only scores one goal on those 100 shots and your goalie lets in 2 on 20 the offense still didn't give him enough offensive support. The only way we could've won last night without changing the Detroit offense was 1-0. Hardly a ton of options for Jimmy.

I like this one better. Ericsson was getting more than 18mins a night last season and managed to crack the top 4 in his first playoff run. He'll crack the top 4 really fast. I give you my word on that.

A much more reasonable assessment.

Best thing you can do is write a goalie off as soon as possible-- in the preseason if you can. For example, last year? Man we should've written Ozzy off in January and gone with Conks in the playoffs. That would've worked out amazingly. Also, I heard that if a goalie can't win in his first 15 games he'll never be a star. I mean, hell, I can't think of one single goalie who didn't mature with time. Are you sure you haven't been the GM for the Coyotes the last 10 years?

This.

I loathe perry because he's a pathetic little ***** that picks on non-fighters and backs down when a real fighter steps up. Getzlaf I would love to add to this team.

It's no biggy Eva, neither will be a top six d-man in Detroit next season