Drake_Marcus

As long as everyone remembers that those athletes don't represent a race, they represent themselves. I don't think it's fair to lump the stupid behaviour of those guys in with the entirety of the African American community. Lots of black guys in the NBA and NFL are upstanding citizens who do community service and are a credit to their teams.

Agreed. Kronwall's defensive ability seemed to erode last year. The pairing with Stuart never seemed to work all last year and especially in the playoffs. The best Kronwall looked all year was when he played with Lidstrom. Of course you could throw Meech up with Lidstrom and he'd look ten times better than he really is. And of course, it's my opinion that Rafalski took too many risks when paired with Lidstrom. All last year he seemed to count on Lidstrom to save his bacon when he made a dangerous decision. I'd much rather see these pairings next year: Lidstrom-Kronwall Rafalski-Stuart/Ericsson (Ericsson would only be playing 2 or 3 minutes a night along side Rafalski here) Ericsson-Lilja The idea behind giving Ericsson a few minutes with Rafalski on the 2nd pairing is to allow the 2nd pairing to basically split the time with the top pairing. That way Rafalski's minutes don't drop and Lidstrom isn't forced to carry too much load. I'd really like to see Kronwall get more learning time with Lidstrom before he retires.

And we've been unlucky twice too-- both Vladdy and Fischer were taken away from the Wings before they could truly fulfill their potential (Fischer more than Vladdy, who at least played long enough to establish himself as a top pairing quality d-man).

I'm pretty sure the whole diversity thing is tongue-in-cheek in here. Any reasonable person should agree with what you're saying.

Deal!

Are you sure that's how it's paid out and not just how it is applied to the cap?

Great young player. He's looked really good playing international hockey for Canada.

This. Although there has to be another factor here. There are millions of middle and upper class African American homes and African Canadian homes that can afford to have their children play hockey. Another issue lays not just in the cost of kids playing hockey but the cost of prepping your kid to make the NHL. Once their child hits 14-16 years old parents who are 'serious' about trying to give their kids the best chance at playing pro hockey will send their kids to a hockey boarding school (as Crosby and Kane's parents did, for example). That's where the price of your kids playing hockey can jump drastically. That and having a kid who's a goalie. My mother had to deal with my brother's love of goaltending and his insane growth-spurts at the same time.

Clearly the NHL should force the Flames to trade Iginla to the Wings. But only for the sake of diversity. Seriously. In the words of a Bostonian- how wicked sweet would that be?

Tell him we'll give him a 1.25 million a season for two years and he can room with Meech so he feels important and tall.

God that's a brilliant episode. Cartman's time travel is genius. Leave it to Matt and Trey to make fun of both sides of the argument.

I'd happily pay him 1.25 million to do that. 1 million if he hasn't gotten healthy enough to prove his durability to the training staff.

Which kills me because Kessel will be a good player for a long time.

To be fair- at that point Datsyuk still used his dangling powers for evil as well as good. Thankfully he's reformed his ways.

Well the Flames are already stocked for full-time NHL d-men. And they're still tight against the cap. Stralman is dirt cheap so they won't want to dump him cheap, but it's possible he could be had.

I'd love to add Sundin if he was willing to come cheap and doesn't hold a grudge against the Wings. I know he didn't want to leave TO, but he did reject a deal we had in place to aquire him in 07-08 (thankfully! I'm not sure who we would've had to give up but we obviously didn't need Sundin that year)

Yeah, something has to give there. I assume that Stralman is out of AHL options (?). Maybe they'll send Bouwmeester to their AHL farm team... he must not have used his AHL options up yet.

Makes sense I suppose. Two Marlies that couldn't manage to stick on the roster of an already talent deprived team get traded for a Burke style player with a contract the Flames needed to dump and a pick Burke wants.

Watch out for that sperm Agent Jenkins!

I'm not sure it's fair to describe the things at the ends of that guy's arms as hands.

Now that's a scary thought.

Seems silly. I'd have guessed it'd be 90 to 10 percent. There must be political pressure to include more KHL players than comparative talent would dictate.

Just look at the NBA! They have worse attendance than the NHL (but more market share, so they make more money), but their players already have reached the point where a tall, but average to slightly above average performing centre is getting 10 million a year and the superstars are looking for 20 million dollar contracts.

According to reports from last week the season ticket sales are rolling in without much disruption compared to last year. At this point it looks like the league's finances are no worse than last year. Also, it's worth noting that the Canadian dollar is worth more than 90 cents compared to the American dollar, so the exchange rate isn't much of a factor either. We'll have a better idea of where we're at in October. Just note that the sensible among us said all last year that the cap would be about the same this season. I know people called me out on it, but look where we are now- just about the same cap number as last year. Anyone who called for a sizable drop last year didn't understand when the league's revenue streams came in or how different sources of revenue effected the cap. Same will happen this year- no matter how cheery it looks in October there will be columnists saying the cap is going to plummet.