Drake_Marcus

MATH TIME! 1.797+0.625 = 2.422 1.797+1.25 = 3.047 Holy crap! I'm some kind of number crunching genius! You see, when you trade a defenseman to cut the roster down to 7 d-men and keep the only d-man who's capable of covering the 13th forward and 7th d-man spots you get 2.5-3 million in cap room for one player.

I'll take your tired, your broken Yzermans and umm... do whatever that statue says after that part. I missed out on Hank because my girlfriend was horrified I'd buy a toy and I was new to the relationship so I played it off like I was kidding. Pavel- they didn't have his white jersey and I'm a stickler for consistency. Lids I was trying to get the chase version with the cup logo on the sweater and ended up missing out... *sigh* I really screw that stuff up. Oh well I have to get on ebay and fix this!

Mail it to me! I'll fix it and put him with my Feds, Shanny and Howe figures. (My 3 year old brother gave me Howe for Christmas, so I'm pretty proud of my ability to force small children to remember what the Red Wings are)

You also had me at "inscrutable name" but that's about you, not Betts.

You had me at "great on the PK".

Hahaha... awesome. And something I'd totally say to a cop while drunk.

If the first letter of his last name is any indication he's going to be sweet in the playoffs!

We definitely missed Lilja's shot blocking ability, there's no doubt about it. Ideally I'd like to keep Lilja, have his concussion issue completely disappear and only dump Lebda if we have to. If Meech can play forward Lebda should be able to too, right? Meech is fast and umm... fast? Lebda has the exact same description.

I assume so? I'm using the salary cap numbers they state here on LGW for the "cap hit". If I'm wrong I'd like to formally shift the blame to Matt

Agreed!

Wrong. The Wings have 2.6 million left to sign 2 forwards assuming they want to keep 8 d-men. If they trim it down to 7 d-men they have over 3 million to sign two forwards. Cut 600k off there to pick up a grit player with PK skill and you have at least 2.6 million to sign a top six (depending on which d-man you drop). Capgeek is wrong. I have the spreadsheet sitting in front of me that I've used to calculate this. And my numbers agree with what Holland's said in interviews. Otherwise there's no way he could say they would be able to afford Hudler at 2.5 million without trading off players other than making a single move on defense. If you read what I said I specifically stated that the defense needs to improve and the PK has to be fixed by picking up a good grinding PK guy. At this point you're just quoting people then screaming at the keyboard with your fingers about whatever the hell you feel like screaming about.

I'd like them to play better than in the 09 playoffs. The PK was pathetic. That was their bread and butter in the 07-08 championship.

Capgeek is flat out wrong. I've got the numbers in a spreadsheet in front of me. The Wings have 2.6 million to fill two forward spots all WITH 8 d-men on the roster. Drop one d-man and you've increased it to over 3 million.

Huh? We just lost 23 goals and 57 points all on top of having already lost 65 goals in Hossa and Sammy, and your response is "f*** scoring, we need more grit!". Dude, we just lost 88 goals from last season. I could care less about Hossa's 40 goals because the team was better without him in 07-08 when they focused on winning with defense. Last year they fell back on scoring more than the other guy, regardless of whether or not that meant letting in 4 goals-- just score 5. That doesn't win cups and we knew going into the post season that it wouldn't work. Yes- we need a free agent forward that grinds and more importantly- makes our PK not blow donkey nuts. BUT- our more pressing need is a top six forward. We lost two so far. Hudler and Hossa were among the top six scoring forwards for us both regular and postseason. Why is the scorer more pressing right now? Because there are far less of those to go around. We can get the grit for a cheap price. Scoring on a budget is much tougher. Edit: I do like some of the guys on your list for the 12th forward position.

Retarded words are in the dictionary. The following list of real Oxford dictionary words comes via cracked.com: -muggle -blamestorming -gaydar -grrrl -threequel -mini-me -screenager -cyberslacking -lookism -frankenfood -riffage -bouncebackability -prebuttal -ego-surfing -meatspace Seriously man. Also, grammar isn't the act of using proper dictionary words. It's more concerned with the way sentences are constructed.

Ahhh dude? Read my post again- I was mocking him for saying you were posting a sky is falling thread.

Say they ditch Campbell and replace him with a minimum salary player. That gives them about 3 million each for the big three RFAs. Still not enough of a raise. Add to that the cap going down and the fact that they have more than 3 RFAs and they're still in hot water. Ditching Campbell and Huet is clearly the idea, but doesn't it strike you as humourous that those two were the Hossa and Maddens of last year's UFA season? In other words, failed attempts to boost a club up that's already boosting itself up through the excellent play of their young players? Tallon- stop ******* around with the chemistry of your club- it's doing great without the help of more FA's.

With two forward spots open and all 8 d-men here we've got 2.58 million dollars in cap space. I'm assuming you've got Abdelkader penciled in the 11th spot? We can definitely find a cheaper veteran, which is what I think Holland will do. Abdelkader's development is better suited by a year in GR playing 20+ mins a night than he is playing in Detroit 8 mins a night. Plus I don't think Holland is comfortable suiting up 5 rookies all year. Otherwise, yeah your post is spot on. The Wings need to sign at least one player that's elite or near-elite on the PK, regardless of what his scoring talent is. Defense and the PK were the Wings' undoing this year, not scoring. So I definitely agree with you on Draper and Maltby.

OP: "Hey guys, how do you feel about the sky? It looks close to me, but I'd like to hear what you think of it" You: "Lolz 'tha sky uz falling'"

While waiving those guys is a possibility, what if no one takes them on entry waivers? I know they did it to Khabi, but I'm shocked they're willing to throw good players in the minors and expect to maintain a positive culture within the club and locker room. Why would future FA's sign with them knowing that they're more than happy to put a legit NHLer in the minors if he has a year that doesn't meet their expectations. No NHL player wants to face waivers-- you have no control over where you'll end up and it's probably quite a humbling experience (and not necessarily in a good way).

The big RFA season is only a year away so I have a hard time believing he's going into it with no plan at all.

Sure. At 2/3 of the price spread out over the remainder of the contract. Buy outs are definitely not an ideal solution to cap troubles.

Haha. The funny part is based entire on the title of this thread I guessed you were talking about the new action figure. I was so annoyed that they did a figure of Ozzy in an Islanders uniform but didn't do a Wings variant. Lucky for us they decided to do one now I'm still annoyed that the Yzerman with Cup figure is nearly impossible to find but there are 7 million Gretzky figures, and at least 2 or 3 of every star player on a Canadian team. They really need to re-release the Yzerman figure with an updated Cup. The original figure's Stanley Cup was just plain gray, but the newer Messier figure comes with a chrome style finished cup with simulated writing around the bands and proper detail on the top and bottom. Throw that version of the cup in the package with the old Yzerman figure and you're golden. Hear me McFarlane?

Well I'll give you that much- the team in front of Huet is very good and very deep. And it's not like mediocre goalies don't win cups- is Huet really much worse than Fleury? Fleury is pretty inconsistent and has as many s***ty games as he does dominant ones. Huet isn't much worse.

Extremely disappointing because the Wings get nothing out of all of this. I'm guessing they'll probably retain Hudler's rights because he left while awaiting arbitration. So I guess the only piece of upside is that he gets 2 free years to develop in the KHL? f***. This just blows all any way you slice it. *sigh* Well the one good thing is I was going to shell out around $50 for a hockey card of Hudler that was limited to only 10 copies, but I ended up not buying it because I wasn't positive he'd stick around. I guess my instincts were right on the mark. I did shell out a chunk of change for a sweet Franzen rookie card containing a piece of a jersey he wore... then a month later he signed his long term deal here. So I guess my instincts are 2 for 2.