Drake_Marcus

Sorry I'm late with this-- the game started an hour and 20 mins ago... Boxed Score Chris Whitley (invitee) is in net for the Wings. They're currently losing 2-0 to the Rangers with 0:43 left in the 2nd period. On a positive note Callahan fought some kid with the unfortunate name of Mike Berube.

The pro transition has been rough on Pyett... last year his strength and conditioning just couldn't stand up to the AHL's grind. Hopefully he worked hard on that this summer.

Man, if this kid is another Kocur the future is going to be that much more entertaining.

I think the key here is that the management is the same. Detroit is the best team in the league for one reason-- they have the best management/ownership in the league. As long as we can keep that part steady the rest will follow. The thing I'm most scared about is Nill leaving when his current contract ends in a few years. I'm hoping he's offered the co-GM position with Holland such that the overall operation of the team remains the same. That and they should give him a nice fat raise (hey-- he's earned it). Nill is absolutely critical to the drafting success that's made this team so good. The Wings management seem to realize that they don't seem to have an obvious superstar forward prospect in the pipeline and took a flier on a guy like Tatar this draft to try and land one. Tatar appears to have top 10 first round pick talent, but he doesn't have the size or history of that success to back the apparent talent, so teams didn't select him ahead of kids with proven skills. Remember that Tatar's apparent dominance only started to show at the WJC tournament this year where he tied for first in points. After that he went home to his club and played fantastic for the duration of the regular season and the playoffs. Before that he wasn't really on many radars. If Tatar had a few years of that level of performance under his belt he surely would have been chosen in the first round. This type of dice rolling pick is a great thing right now because we need our next Zetterberg/Datsyuk to enter the system soon. With that in mind I think it's odd that the Wings didn't aquire a pick or use one of their own to take a chance on Tony Rajala (sp?)

Actually you make a great point there. Ozzy is one of those goalies who seems to conserve his regular season energy to dominate in the playoffs. I'm totally cool with Ozzy only playing 50 games when he's the pushing the stat leader boards in the playoffs two years running. Everyone knows the regular season is just a warm-up for the playoffs anyway. It's like the play-off preseason.

Fleury? FLEURY? At no point in his career has he been a better goalie than Osgood. I agree on the other goalie invites deserving the nod, but not Fleury. His stats were terrible in the playoffs, unlike Ozzy, who dominated the last two playoff years. Ozzy deserved the token invite out of respect. It's not like the #4 or #5 goalie invites will get to see the ice in Vancouver, anyway, so give a guy like Ozzy that nod out of respect for his career and achievements. I don't think it has anything to do with Babs, Holland or Stevie, though, I'd say it has more to do with Fleury's past history with Hockey Canada.

The season hasn't even started yet and people are already calling the Wings done. How many years have we heard this? Sounds like 2006 all over again.

As far as I know there won't be video coverage of the games in this tournament this year. Apparently it was too difficult to film last year due to the size of the rink.

Sweet. Well the Wings will gladly give Boston 1.5 million in extra cap room. Huge deal man, spread the word!

For the record, when asked after the playoffs this year who the best player was Sid said... 1on1 it was Ovi, but overall he said it was Zetterberg and mentioned that Z is the hardest player to play against in the league. This is according to a talk radio show I heard online-- Fan 960 (Calgary).

Thanks man I'd never let ya down.

A+ Sounds great to me. I'd like to see Dats win more than that, but I can't complain with that list.

Shocker. How many Lidstrom centre ice goals on Cloutier before he gives up and walks out of camp?

Expert trolling right there. He does it for the lulz.

I have no idea how much Chara makes, but tell Chiarelli we'll give him Rafalski for Chara.

The Tatar performance is really heartening for me. The big risk with his pick was that his WJ and play after the WJ championships wasn't representative of his future value. i.e. scouts were worried he got hot and would just fall back down to Earth. This kind of game after spending a summer idle gives us hope that he's not a one hit wonder. If he had played like he did at the WJ all year he would've been picked much higher in the draft.

No. That has nothing to do with anything I posted, so I can see why you didn't agree with me. What happened to Datsyuk's scoring prowess? Franzens? Those 7 games were hard on lots of players.

Nah, I think we can read a bit into the Ryno situaiton-- his moving to Sweden instead of staying in GR the first time around has really hurt him. He better hope he can show the Wings something in this tournament and preseason (or at least do it in GR this year) or his ass isn't getting much consideration when contract time comes next summer. I'm actually excited about Callahan. He's reported to have a great set of wheels and some slick hands-- if he can be an enforcer that puts up 20-30 points as season without being a defensive liability we've finally got a great young fighter to throw on the 4th line.

You hear voices inside your head too?

I'll agree he doesn't deserve the free pass like the guys you listed did. He really could've helped more against the Pens, but he seems to be the kind of guy who shoots his wad early in the playoffs like Franzen does.

You might be reading too much into the dieing seconds of a prospects tournament game Pare's a good young player, though-- he seems to be the kind of guy who develops great chemistry with other linemates even when he hasn't played with them long.

Nice sample size. Who scored more over the course of the playoffs? And none of the players you mentioned have any bearing on this discussion given they all lived up to expectations in the playoffs. Oh, and Ericsson was a standout in the playoffs, so wtf? He scored the only goal in game 7. Stringing these two posts you made together really speaks volumes.

Huds still scored in the top six like he did in the regular season. Yeah his rank dropped a bit, but I can't blame a supplemental player for the team's failures.

Hossa has everything to do with the discussion. He's the one who failed to live up to expectations. Hudler scored like he was paid and given the opportunity to do. You can't dog on him for not playing up to the unrealistic expectations you've chosen to select from a pool of public opinions. Here, watch this: Some people on here really like Maltby and Draper. I'll choose to take the opinion of the few that love them at this point in their career and now I'll say "where were Maltby and Draper when the Pens were scoring on the PP and why didn't either of them score in the finals!?!". Now sure, that's being dickish and stupid because they weren't the people who vastly failed to live up to expectations. Of course neither did Hudler. Whether you chose to assume the opinion on Hudler's impressive talent and upside represents what he should've done in the finals with 11 mins of ice time is besides the point. And for the record-- yeah, Hudler's short, we get it. He also had one of the best sets of hands on the entire team. Put him in a 6'3 body and he'd be a super star. What's the ******* point? So he isn't tall, he still scored among the top 30 centres in the league in his fourth year. What's the point on ragging on him for being short? At least he wasn't a useless f*** like Kopecky who was gifted with the perfect hockey frame but did s*** all with it (except get hurt).

Ask Hossa. He got paid 7 times more than Hudler did to score. Hudler scored in the top 6 for a million bucks and did so while playing on the fourth line-- well above what he was being paid to do. Hossa did jack s*** in the finals even though he was given 18 minutes a game and always played on the top two lines, all in addition to being paid to be "that guy". Keep bagging on the supplemental players, though, if you really like making pointless accusations.