Drake_Marcus

No one in the league is going to take Campbell's bloated 8 mill a year contract on. The cap's going to drop next year and Campbell is grossly overpaid.

Agreed. I'd like to see any of us turn down a 20% raise at work over principle.

It's a wonder they managed to dominate the league in 07-08 with such pitiful depth.

"dicks turned vaginas"... oh snap?

If the Wings can't afford to sign Hossa, how are they going to afford to pay Cammy 6 million a season?

Bwahaha. The 'hawks are going to be f***ed in 3 years. All their RFAs are hitting at the same time and all of them will be getting big raises.

Not even that is too critical. Even if Hudler's salary magically stayed the same the Wings would only have a couple million to toss around. Sign Leino at a reasonable number, give Hudler a reasonable increase and they have a bit more than a million to sign the 12th forward. Cutting some fat on defense should help a bit, although defensive depth saved this team in the playoffs this year.

7 million a year for 6 years and a much smaller amount after he turns 36 does not = 'almost half what he could get'

He's actually pretty expensive for a rookie. Plus I don't really see Kenny icing 5 rookies on this team. He'll probably pick up a veteran forward to be used in a depth capacity on the FA market.

Keep Cleary with Pavs and Z. We need to foster that chemistry and keep that line knit tight all year. The instant chemistry between ZDH was a huge asset in the 07-08 playoffs- allowing Babs to throw them out there and have them click regardless of who had had playing together the last few games. I'd love to see ZDC develop the same chemistry. That means Cleary needs to keep playing with Zetterberg and Datsyuk so he can anticipate their plays like Holmstrom does. Keep Leino on the second line to see how much offense he can help create. Hudler immediately makes the third line dangerous and Holmstrom with fewer minutes should be able to get back into his groove in front of the net. Helm is fast enough to keep the line dangerous even with two slow ass dudes plodding along with him.

Lidstrom is better than anyone on the Flames. Rafalski is the equal of Phaneuf or Bouwmeester (well, not defensively in the case of Jay). Kronwall is better than their bottom 4. Need I go on? The Flames have an awesome top pairing, but their depth can't touch the Wings. The Wings had 3 D-men in the top 11 scorers last season. Lidstrom-Rafalski is far more leathal than Bouwmeester-Phaneuf. It should be noted that Jay isn't an elite scorer, he's a much more rounded kind of guy. I can't really see him topping 60pts. He's definitely an elite d-man, but it's more because he does everything excellent, than because he scores like a monster (ala Lidstrom).

Looks good. But I have a hard time imagining McCarty playing 82 NHL games at this point. He doesn't have the legs. Find another veteran player for the 4th and we're golden. I'd love to get LaPeirre or Neil, but both will be looking for long, expensive deals. Neil turned down a 1.7 mil a year deal from the Sens, so he's obviously of the opinion that he's worth more (I can only assume that either he or his agent has a horrible drinking problem).

He's had a major surgery performed on one of his knees. With knee injuries like that you're almost never going to get back to where you were before the surgery. If you're feeling 100% you're still more likely to have another injury. You'll likely never walk around and have the knees feel perfect like they were before. The human knee is the worst of all our joints from an engineering perspective. Now this is evolution's fault- we're walking upright but our body's retrofitted to do that, the base design is that of a quadruped. The knee is where this becomes more apparent. Our knee design is much more stable and resistant to injury if we walk on all fours. Once you take away that static stability you're relying on dynamic stability to resist perturbations in your gait. What I'm getting at here is that the human knee, once seriously injured, is prone to re-injury due to intricacies in how the structure is stabilized internally and how ligaments (for example) scar/heal. Also, after that rambling it should be noted that it's said Hossa wears knee braces during workouts anyway, so he clearly doesn't feel his knees are sparkling and new. Edit: My ramblings on knee injuries are meant to be specific to the type of injury Hossa experienced

Agreed. I did like the Filppula deal during the playoffs, though.

Are you sure you're a 'left' winger?

Haha. Eklund is hilarious.

Heatly is a ****** bag. First he backs his team into a corner by telling the public he's requesting a trade (and murdering his GM's pokerface). Then, when the Sens figure out a deal to accommodate him he says 'no, I wanna go to a better team'. ******. Canoe.

Yeah, apparently when you feel a player is worth keeping they're upgraded to 'god' status in your eyes. Hossa's 4 million dollar contract broke down such that he was being paid more than 7 million a year for the first 6 years. He wasn't taking home smaller cheques, he was just signing a deal that lasted into his twilight years when he wasn't worth 7 million a season anymore. The cap allows us to take the hit as the average of the entire term, thus dropping the hit down to 4 million. Hossa himself would not be taking home less than 7 million a year until he's older than all f*** (which is generally considered to be age 36). Chances are that he'll end up having the same average pay value over the next 12 years anyway, unless he's going to be a superstar until the very end (highly unlikely). You are aware that each forward you call up isn't suddenly costing you their yearly salary against the cap, right? Otherwise we'd have exceeded the cap so many f***in' times last season it's crazy. Seriously. Look at the cap hits from everyone below Kronwall in this chart. Howard played for one game, he cost less than $8,000 on the cap. That's not because he's making 8k a year. I've shown you in another thread how the Wings can get away with paying Hudler 2.5 mil AND have a spare player for injuries. Edit: spelling

If you completely ignore the stats, yes you're right. If you have some semblance of understanding of what a 23 goal, 57 point scoring 25 year old is worth in the modern NHL you just sound silly. With Filppula we had to pay him more than he was worth to keep him long term and hope that down the road he'd be worth the 3 mil and then some. With Hudler we already have a player who's posted nearly 60pts and is only 25 years old. He's actually worth around 3 mil now if you go by market value instead of feelings.

I think the biggest reason why this is going down like this is that Hossa doesn't want to take the Detroit offer off the table, he just wants to explore other options. I dunno, though. It would've been nice if we could've dealt his rights to someone for a pick and a conditional pick.

"People who post positive feelings about Hudler are hijacking the thread for their "Hudler lover" ways, but you can hijack it to shout that Hudler is the wrong choice with impunity? Doesn't that strike you as hypocritical?

Don't forget that Helm and Ericsson are guaranteed roster spot holders next season (as per Holland's comments). Leino is very likely to play here too.

Ahhh, now we can finally stop hearing the size-freaks shout about Hudler being unlikely to return and deserving little or no raise. This article makes it pretty clear that Hudler's the most likely to stay. I'd like to hear where they are with Leino, though.

Let's be fair about Hossa's supposed massive paycut... a long term deal that averages out at 4 million a year can be structured such that the first 6 years he's being paid an average of a bit more than 7 million a season. Once he turns 36 years old, that number drops to get the cap hit down. The particular deal I'm referencing there was quoted on Red Wings Snapshots. The point is that while Hossa's cap hit would be around 4 million, he'd be getting a yearly salary in excess of 7 million dollars for the rest of his prime hockey years. Given his bad knees, saying he'll be worth 7 million after age 36 is a stretch.