Drake_Marcus

Actually, on that note- did anyone else here have a bit of a depression set in after the Ducks won in the 06-07 conference finals? I couldn't shake that miserable feeling in my gut for weeks. I ended up having the best summer of my life at the gym, though. Maybe bitterness helped fuel my gymrage?

I won't rest easily this summer until I see Lidstrom with the Cup over his head on live TV.

The confidence of the entire Canucks team is definitely closely tied to Bobby Luongo's, probably moreso than any other team aside from the Devils. While that's a weakness, it didn't stop some of those Devils teams from getting their name on the Cup...

Both teams will make for a tough, tough series, but I'm confident the Wings can beat either team in a 7 game series as long as they play Red Wing hockey. Luongo is playing out of his mind right now (along with the rest of the Canucks and the genefreaks). But everyone knows the secret to beating a hot goalie- crash the net, block his view and pour shoots onto him while a big ass is sticking in his face. The Wings are a team optimized to meet that kind of threat. Holmstrom, Franzen and Cleary all excel at cracking nuts like that. Easy series? Hell no. But it's definitely a winnable series. Hiller would probably be easier to beat using those methods, but the team around him is a bit scarier in terms of their potential for deliberately causing injury. The Canucks' physicality shouldn't be underestimated, though! As a student in Canada I find that the later half of Hockey Night in Canada frequently coincides with my free time I definitely wouldn't describe the Canucks as a soft team, but I wouldn't describe them as overly dirty either. The Ducks, on the other hand, are dirtier than a hobo's underwear.

It's true, but one thing you'll notice about Shoreline if you stick around here long enough is that he's the internet equivalent of a drunk that picks fights with everyone else in the bar. You can stand around and argue with him but it won't change the fact that he's just trying to make a scene and get attention (although it's debatable whether or not he's doing it deliberately).

I wouldn't worry about it man- that list became so laughably dated so quickly that the Hockey News went and did another list (focused on the best players since the expansion) only a few years later. In all honesty, I think these lists should only contain retired players to help curtail things like that. Judge the players once their career is over.

I like Pi.

I recommend you find someone who does woodworking and ask them to turn something suitable on a lathe. Turning wooden bowls on a lathe isn't easy to do if you haven't got the experience, but lots of woodworkers do it to make salad bowls and that kind of stuff. The other alternative would be to just go out and look for a wooden salad bowl- they tend to be big ass affairs.

Funniest sentence I've read all day.

59pts and +31 isn't an average season. He's won it recently with a 62pt total- and that was with a full season. He missed 4 games this year (so if you average it out he'd have put up about 62pts if he had played all 82 games). He's not a lock like we're used to seeing, but then again he is almost 40, so what else do you expect? He's far and away the best defensive player that will be nominated, however he'll be the second best offensive player nominated (since Green ended up with insanely good offensive numbers). Still, all I can do is hope the voters understand that Green is 6th defensive in PK minutes per game on his own team. In other words- he's the last roster defenseman chosen by his coach to play on the PK. A Norris winner should, at the very least, be trusted on the PK by his coach, and in all honesty, should be one of his coaches first choices on the PK! Instead he plays twice the PP minutes of any of the other candidates and just skips the PK. In the instructions handed out to the voters, the Norris is described as being the trophy awarded to the "defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position". However, given the amount of press Green's gotten this year because of his super-awesome ability to be a forward playing the point, the "greatest all-round ability" part will likely be ignored so they can give the turn-over king some props. That's the price Lidstrom has to pay for winning 6 of the last 7 Norris trophies. Voters get sick of voting for the same perfect player and would rather vote for the exciting new guy on the block, regardless of his decidedly poor defensive capacity (hell- you could try to argue it all the way up to 'average', but even that's a stretch). Edit: Torry Spelling

Gary Bettman is a parent!?! I knew the father in The March of the Penguins looked familiar.

Good point.

Somewhat ironic SandMan... The percentage of Blue Jackets fans who are classless, poor losers is probably identical to the percentage of Red Wings fans that are classless, poor losers. Predators and Penguins aside, there are no NHL teams with fans that are inherently ****** bags.

It can change quickly once the blinds go up?

I see a future for you as a diplomat.

Not really. Maltby and Draper retiring will only save you 1.3 million combined IF you replace them with league minimum salary near rookie scrubs (note that nearly all rookis start over $500k). Doing so significantly impacts the quality of the team on the ice (face-offs go dooowwwnnnn, and so does leadership and the like). Neither Maltby nor Draper have the kind of contract that hurts your cap. Maltby makes $883,333 and Draper makes $1,583,333. Good luck finding similar players for a significantly cheaper price. One could argue Helm on the surface, but once you factor in reality that kind of falls apart (switching Helm for Draper is a huge risk, switching Helm for Maltby doesn't give you a right hand shot, but is otherwise fine).

Instead of conjecture (although that's fun!) I've decided to provide the cold hard facts: Current Roster for 09/10 Season: Zetterberg - Datsyuk - Holmstrom Franzen - Filppula - Cleary ? - Draper - ? Meech - Helm - Maltby Lidstrom - Rafalski Kronwall - Stuart Lilja - Ericsson Lebda Osgood Howard Cost: $52,822,424 Remaining Cap: $3,877,576 (assuming a $56.7 million cap next year) Everyone above is already signed next year. Ericsson and Howard have to come up. They're exposed to waivers otherwise. If you dump Lebda you've got $4,527,576 in cap room to sign Hossa, Hudler, Leino, and Samuelsson. I've brought Helm up since that seems to be Holland's intentions next year (I'll be flat out shocked if he doesn't bring Helm and a re-signed Leino up next season). Note that there are two roster spots vacant and Filppula and Cleary are playing above their reasonable capacity by having them on the 2nd line.

Not a chance. Kindl still needs to get his defensive woes under control AND he's still got eligibility in the minors so there's little chance they bring him up unless there's significant turnover in the defense (as in they lose multiple 3rd pairing players and a 2nd pairing player).

^ This. And additionally, I feel that Datsyuk is funnier than Crosby. For example, as mentioned above:

Someone in the photoshop thread did something just like that. It's a switch that goes from "regular season" to "STFU".

Haha... Dan and I can drive from Fredericton to Detroit to: -> See a game -> Get our eyes zapped by Dr. Rahmani -> (hopefully) See another game -> (possibly) Complain about our partial blindness Of course the last two are conditional

And none of those people seem to notice when Crosby has games where he's got 2 goals and is a -4. I'll take Datsyuk with 1 goal and a +4 over that Crosby any day (for reference the game in question happened in the last week of this season). I'm not singling out Crosby here- Malkin and Ovechkin have games like that too. I'm just pointing out that goals and assists only tell part of the story. Plus, as others have calculated (someone on HFBoard?)- if you take Dats off the PK and throw him some more even strength and PP time like all three players above him in points had and the numbers slide up for Dats.

Yup Nothing to feel anything but good about for Wings fans right now