Drake_Marcus

I'll kick anyone in the neck who says Feds. He got screwed by management's last minute change of the deal (they refused to give him more time to consider the changes in light of the shorter term they threw at him). He has every right to be bitter about how that deal went down. Plus he was absolutely essential to the 97, 98 and 02 cups. That is all.

Hahaha- that poor bastard gets invoked in this sense far too often to be a happy HoFer.

I find it laughable how many people in this thread/forum have no idea just how good Forsberg and Bure were. Forsberg WILL make the hall- no question. Look at his stats! His ppg, goals, awards, clutch play- that man is one of the greatest playoff performers in the past 10 years. Honestly- doubting whether Forsberg or Bure are first ticket HoFers is like doubting Jagr. Forsberg- douchebag or not, enemy or not- has the following: 2 Olympic golds 2 World Champ golds 3 World Champ silvers 1 Hart 1 Art Ross 1 Calder 7 All-Star games (a 6 year streak in there too) 885 NHL pts in 706 games 1 big ego and jackass smile Bure?!? 779 pts in 702 games. 2 60 goal seasons, a 58, a 59 and a 51 goal season. That dude was a goal scoring monster.

Just an additional note: In the current issue of the Hockey News the editors had a list of the "top 10 rookies we're already excited about seeing in the NHL next season". They listed Ericsson as the #8 prospect in that list. #1 was Stamkos, with various other top draft picks (including the top 3 picked this year) filling out the list and the Brunnstrom thrown in for good measure.

No problem dude- if you read my original statement differently I'm sure others did too, so I'll be more careful in my phrasing in the future. I had to double check the definition once you pointed out my original post because I wasn't 100% sure either.

Bah! Hextall didn't need huge pads to scare the opposition*. *As you already know.

When I say that Lebda and Lilja have little to no upside I mean that they're pretty much at their peaks- they're as good as they're going to get. I'm not so sure I used upside correctly, but I always took it to refer to a predicted future increase in value based on untapped potential. In other words- (Current Datsyuk) - (Rookie Datsyuk) = (Rookie Datsyuk's Upside).

Let me address each of these concerns in order: 1. The collective drive on these forums to replace Lebda and Lilja is less about these two being useless or terrible players and more about who would be playing in their place. Basically it comes down to: A) As it stands now the Wings have 2 mediocre defensive prospects without minor league options (Quincey and Meech). Both have the potential to become good or maybe even very good d-men in the future. The problem is both need playing time and they need it badly. With Ericsson more then ready to play NHL hockey the Wings simply must evaluate and decide on the futures of Meech and Quincey this season. As long as Lebda and Lilja are around the job of fairly evaluating Meech and Q is a very hard one. B) Lebda and Lilja hold little to no upside. We know exactly what they'll look like in 1 year, 2 years, 10 years. Trading them for rookies that provide nearly the same thing but have a ton of untapped potential may make the team better but likely won't make it much worse. 2. Stuart provides Lilja's stay at home play without the bone-head moves. That's the difference between a second pairing and a 3rd pairing d-man. He also provides big hits, although he has an annoying tendancy to sacrifice positioning to get the big hit at times. He was great against the Pens and certainly made the Wings much more dangerous by providing heavy hitting and giving Kronwall the chance to roam a bit in search of big hits.

Fine. I'll do it. *sigh* I'll take one for the team. I'll be the new Captain of the Leafs. If anyone needs me I'll be out shopping for a new pair of skates.

Ok... so Franzen's looking at a 3-4 million $ raise, Hossa would probably sign at the same salary, Zetterberg is looking at 4-5 million $ more and Hudler would get about the same as Filppula (so that's 2 million more). We can assume Kopecky, Sammy Worst case that's 18.5 million extra Little Ceasers FunBucks. A team of: Datsyuk Filppula Cleary Holmstrom Draper Samuelsson Maltby Kopecky Lidstrom Rafalski Stuart Kronwall Lilja Ericsson (no waiver exempt status next year) Lebda Meech Osgood Howard (no waiver exempt status next year) That team would cost $44,533,667. Let's assume the cap does not change (just to be conservative). We have $12,166,333 left to spend on Zetterberg, Hossa, Franzen and Hudler. Given the estimate above of their collective salary increases that leaves the 09-10 cap hit in the red by 6.5 million dollars. Kopecky and Lebda, while inviting candidates for a dump on the curb treatment, are so much cheaper than their cheapest replacements that dumping them would cost money. Dumping Sammy for Helm would only save about $500,000. 6 million left to find. Switch a renewed Hudler contract for Abdelkader? That saves 2.26 million. So now there's only 3.74 million left to find. Dump Lilja for a league minimum Downey and you save another half million. That leaves only 3.24 million left to find. If the Cap goes up by 4-5 million next season Quincey isn't retained, Hudler, Sammy and Lilja are let go in favour of Abdelkader, Helm and Downey, and Hossa, Franzen and Zetterberg all sign for 7.45, 5 and 7.65 million dollars, respectively, then the dream is possible. Final roster would be: Datsuyk--Zetterberg--Holmstrom Franzen--Filppula--Hossa Cleary--Draper--Abdelkader Kopecky--Helm--Maltby Lidstrom--Rafalski Kronwall--Stewart Ericsson--Lebda Meech Osgood Howard

QFT I really don't see the players arguing against the CBA given the cash being thrown at 2nd and 3rd tier players.

Thanks

Then how else do you assign the rating? I guess it comes down to what you define overrated as- pundit/media/public based or your personal rating.

:clap: :clap: Exactly. I couldn't have put it better myself. I'm sick and effing tired of my parents, brother and the rest of Halifax, Nova Scotia saying Crosby is the best player in the NHL. He's simply not. He wasn't even the best player on his team this year. In the finals he wasn't even the best player on his team- Hossa was (and Fleurry too for stretches- especially in game 5). He wasn't the best rookie either- Ovetchkin was, so that leaves one season of unquestionable dominance for Crosby (last year) and two for Ovie (rookie and this year). Is Crosby in the top 5 in the NHL right now? Yeah, of course. Top 3 if you look solely at the offensive side of the game. But he doesn't have grit, defensive skill or anything terribly impressive in the way of leadership (based on listening to him parrot his coach and create personal and team excuses during finals pressers). The fact of the matter is his "rating" is based on talking heads, experts and every day people. And based on those people Crosby is most definitely overrated. It'd be damn near impossible for Crosby to ever live up to the rating people in Canada assign him.

Damn Hopefully they'll have a white jersey variant.

Makes sense... they get a high priced player that they could use in the short term (they've got a pair of good goalies in the wings with one of them being really good). Makes more sense than tying their hands up by overpaying one of their own RFAs then having it bite them in the ass when they're trying to keep a young team together in a few years.

Well he put up 1-7-8 in 16 games with Atlanta last year- 0.5 ppg isn't too shabby for a call-up, but that may have been on the first or second line with Atlanta's roster... so who knows? Regardless, this is obviously a good move for Grand Rapids.

Agreed! Right now I'm hoping against hope that 07/08 Franzen pulls a 06/07 Zetterberg. In otherwords- that he steps on the ice in October and picks right up where he left off. Remember how Z had a fantastic 06/07 campaign that started off really slow but sped up right until his back issues after the allstar break? Many of us were skeptical but still hopeful about his ability to maintain his momentum through the summer and carry it through the start of this past season. Obviously he proved his doubters wrong by leading the league in scoring for a period early on and putting up that record tying scoring streak to start the year. I really hope Franzen's able to do the same thing this year. I should point out, however, that he did have a phenomenal preseason last year that gave people a reason to think he was ready to leap forward in his development. His injury slowed that down, but after recovering and getting 2nd line minutes thanks to Sammy's shot to Cleary's head, Franzen picked up where he left off in the preseason. Based on that last observation I'm pretty confident that Franzen will keep producing- if not at a slightly diminished pace (hopefully he doesn't become a superstar before resigning!).

You should write this down and mail it to the Wings! We'll eliminate high sticking penalties next year!

Christ. *sigh* This from a Bertuzzi fan?!? Yeaahhhhh- god forbid someone take an inopportune penalty, let alone an accidental high-stick! NHL players never accidentally high-stick each other!

Nice to know there are some non-retarded posters when it comes to Hudles! P.S. Any further doubters need only look up the definition of "top six forward" then check just where Hudles ranked among Red Wings scorers (regular and playoffs) to finally STFU.

What's wrong with you dude? He posted a useful rumour from a Swedish source that 99.9% of the posters on this forum would never otherwise know of and you make an asinine comment about it? He simply provided his source for anyone who could read it to verify it themselves. Alternately you could've shoved the text into a babblefish-like translating page. Or, just not be an ass about being tricked by the apparently deceptive norran.se link.

I wonder who Radulov will be traded to? I imagine the situation in Nashville would be rather unfriendly when he comes back... Obviously the Wings won't get a division rival's player, but maybe the Leafs will nab him. He's a young, dynamic player- just the sort of kid Fletcher's looking for. Plus the Nashville management might look at it as a little bit of the old payback for jumping ship on them

Can't argue with adding Vernon as your goaltending coach. The special assistant part seems to be the less important of the two duties given TB's goaltending reputation