Drake_Marcus

And by play you mean 'sits dead-centre on the bench'. Agreed. And once they do the Wings will happily trade Kindl, Hudler and a 1st for the Sedin twins. You're forgetting the Luongo--Chicago dynamic. The s***hawks are definitely in his head.

Hey-- if he retires with three Stanley Cup rings from the Wings I certainly won't complain about the soft goals.

The Wings finished the game up 5 mins earlier than the scoreboard did. PLEASE SPEAK UP-- I CAN'T HEAR YOU. Don't mind Crymson... the title under his avatar isn't a joke. But he'll grow on ya.

Smoking hot photoshop work there Matt. I can't believe you manage to do this stuff, manage/maintain LGW, Red Wings Central, AND Cap Geek all while holding a day job. You must only have time to sleep at your keyboard while photoshop loads.

I doubt it. That would be an impressive turn-around time.

Did anyone just see the Penner press conference? He's huge... maybe it was the coat he was wearing but he looked really big. I knew he was tall but most NHL players don't look so big off the ice. The amount of cardio they do really slimms you down.

Niemi got 2 mil from SJ but his award in arbitration with Chicago was 2.75 million. Halak got 3.75 mil a year for 4 years from St. Louis as a free agent. At this point I think 2.25 million is a good deal for Howard. He was second in voting for the Calder so that certainly would have factored in the negotiations (assuming his agent isn't terrible). Given that Howard was going to be a restricted free-agent this summer I think the arbitration award Niemi got would have been the comparable Holland was thinking about if they ended up going to arbitration with Howard. So basically our cap just got 1.53 million dollars smaller next season...

Buff's production dried up when Enstrom (his partner) was injured. Coincidence?

That was my first thought as well. I'm guessing his contract (4 million dollars a season) and declining goal production factored in. Still, he has 41pts in 62 games this year and isn't too old.

Phillips was re-signed by the Sens today. The rumours are that the Oil are asking way too much for Hemsky/Penner to justify either being picked up as a deadline rental type player. Obviously we don't know whether that rumour is true... it's not like the Oilers have a history of being savvy dealers.

lol TSN. I don't envy the producers in charge of tomorrow's trade-a-thon.

Edit: this is stupid and off-topic. Whatever.

Lidstrom put 60pts up as a rookie. The Wings knew they had someone special even back in his rookie season.

Good thing Crawford's put amazing numbers up so far and has to be re-signed this summer. 14 goals and 35pts in 44 games this season. Let's chain ourselves to a 32 year old forward on the decline for another 10 seasons at 5.3 million dollars a year.

Simple. He's divisive. Hudler's incredibly talented offensively but is average defensively. He's capable of making great plays but is streaky. Hudler's undersized and an average skater at best. He left for the KHL last year and many people feel betrayed by it. People end up taking a side on Hudler and just running with it. Hence we always have long threads about the guy. Right now the Hudler talk is heated because he's done so well since Christmas and because he was rumoured to be part of Atlanta's asking price for Bogosian (a deal Holland denies even discussing with the Thrashers).

Holland had an interesting quote on the trade deadline situation right now: With 23 to 24 teams battling for 16 playoff spots the market is obviously going to be inflated.

I wish that was true but it simply isn't right now. Of all the forwards on the Griffins only Tatar apears to have a talent level comparable to Hudler's. Mursak and Emmerton can't touch Hudler's skill set or hockey IQ. At the moment Tatar doesn't appear to be ready to make the transition to the NHL as a scoring forward. By the end of the summer his strength and comfort-level might be there to step into the NHL. In the long run I think Tatar will be a really good player. Let's not forget that Hudler was a star in the AHL. In his last season as a Griffin Hudler had 36 goals and 60 assists for 96pts in 76 games. That year he also put 6 goals and 16 assists for 22pts in 16 playoff games. So far we haven't seen that kind of dominant scoring from Tatar but I believe he's capable of doing it. All our other forward prospects are either offensively inferior to Hudler or haven't played in the AHL yet. Plukkinen and Jarnkrok look like they'll be studs but they're both very young and will need some time in NA to adjust to the game. People seem to forget how rare scoring forwards are in the NHL. Not many guys can put 57pts up in a season like Hudler did in his last NHL season. Last year only 62 players in the league had more points than that. Drafting a player who can put 60pts up in the NHL is a home run. I really hope we have multiple players in the system who can come into Detroit and play a better offensive game than Hudler but you simply can't assume that. The transition from the AHL to NHL is pretty damn tough.

Babs is just playing the hot hand.

I'm not really sure Kolosov will be an NHL defenseman at this point. I hope he makes it but right now he still needs to take that next step in his development. Logan Pyett excites me more at this point. He's cut from the same cloth as Meech, though, but he still might be an NHL player if we're lucky. Our future on the back end doesn't look bad at all: -Smith has the potential to be a top 2 defenseman -Gleason Fournier has a ton of offensive potential too (playing at a point per game pace in the Q) -Adam Almqvist looks like a could be a real stud... can't wait to see him play in NA. His hockey IQ is off the charts but right now he's built like a 13 year old girl

Well yeah... if you're going to copy someone in the shootout the smart choice is to choose the guy who goalies are terrified of.

He was pretty much the only guy who had a jump in his step out of the gate (actually Val did too). Modano looked pumped to be back out there. He just needs to get back in sync with his linemates.

If Lidstrom wasn't 40 I'd be fine with taking a ding going into the playoffs for the sake of the future. But he could retire at any time and when he does it will really, really hurt this team. Holland has to push hard now before Lids hangs his skates up for good. Bogo is an RFA this summer and rumours are he doesn't want to stay in Atlanta. I'm sure Holland would rather take a run at him then. Plus Holland outright denied that he spoke with Atlanta about obtaining Bogosian. I'm sure he's kicked the tires but that could be as simple as chatting with another GM and asking him what Atlanta asked for. Holland obviously plays his cards close to his chest but I very much doubt he'd straight up lie to a reporter about this. If he didn't want to comment he'd just tell them he has no comment on the record.

The kid scores the game winning goal with less than a minute left then he ices the cake in the shoot-out and you still s*** on him. If we're going to talk about missed shots pissing people off please review Franzen's tape from the last dozen games or so. I can't frigging wait for him to regain his scoring touch! The man refuses to cut inside and rush the net right now! Doesn't he remember how many goals he's scored that way?!?

Actually the oddest thing about Ericsson's +12 is the fact that Lidstrom is -1. +/- obviously isn't the be all and end all of stats (no one in their right mind would argue Lidstrom isn't a million times the d-man E is in every facet of the game aside from fighting-- and Lidstrom could probably be awesome at fighting if he felt like it). But still-- how is that possible? Luck can't be the answer either-- the Wings have played 62 games. Part of it is Ericsson's season throught the first 50 games or so was a mile above his play last year and part of it is Lidstrom's partners this season.... I think another issue is that our top 6 forwards just haven't been as dominant defensively as we're used to. Another big issue is Datsyuk's 19 games lost to injury.