Drake_Marcus

Crazy stuff...

My thoughts exactly.

Good deal for the Leafs. Colborne was drafted 16th overall in 08. His stock hasn't risen since then but he's still a 6'5 kid who was a point per game player in college and has plenty of time to continue developing. Add in a 2011 1st round pick and the Leafs got more for Kaberle then most expected they would. Don't forget that everyone knows the Leafs want to dump Kaberle and this hasn't been his best season.

Smith won't battle for the 7th spot. He'll either make the team's top 6 or play 25mins a night in GR.

Rutuu's a punk. I don't want a dirty guy like him on the Wings. He may be effective at what he does but he crosses the line too often and too visibly. Badly timed penalties ahoy!

But he did catch it. So it was pretty brutal. It's not like Rafalski didn't know a 6'6 monster was standing between him and a clear sheet of ice. Roflski take way too much s*** around here but that play hurt to watch.

Indeed. Sick pass from Huds and a sick deek from Dats. I love it when we can roll a dominant top 6!

Krejci and Wheeler are the most likely guys to be moved. They're both young and have upside which makes them of the most interest to teams like Toronto. Given how rough Krejci's year was last year I wouldn't be surprised to see him go (although I'd feel the same way as you if I were a Bruins fan).

In all honesty? He'd have to net a 1st rounder in this trade market. He put 57pts up in his last NHL season and is only 27 years old. Given how he's played since the end of December it wouldn't be hard to convince another GM that Hudler is over his post-KHL hump. Hudler's small and doesn't play a checking role but he has the kind of vision, hands and shot to play the PP on any team in this league.

Yeah, and John McCain doesn't like visitors. BOOM!

With Savard out for the season they were a bit weak down the middle. I assume Kelly will be their 3rd line pivot. This.

Well the 07 Ducks also had tons of firepower up front in Getzlaf, Perry and Selanni. It's probably in Burke's best interests to focus on getting a good top 6 up front and top 4 on the back end before he worries about adding sandpaper. This trade is nothing but shuffling the deck chairs in my opinion.

Green fizzled towards the end of last year and sucked donkey balls in every playoff game he's ever played. But I do agree that Washington needs a new coach.

These guys get it.

5mil a year for 5 years? Smells like overpayment to me. He has no history as a scoring defenseman to back-up the idea that he can maintain his level of offensive production. He's been in a massive slump this month and that certainly doesn't make me feel more confident that his offensive production this season is going to continue for the next 5 years. Add to that the fact that he doesn't play on the PK and isn't even the best defenseman on his team (see: Enstrom) and this deal reaks of overpayment. Maybe Buff will regain his scoring touch and teams won't figure him out and start to neutralize him (see: Green and Phaneuf). Then again, maybe his love of jumping into the play will start to bite him in the ass as teams break his game down. 5 million a year for 2 years would have been more reasonable.

So losing Hudler would improve the team's scoring? No. The difference between last year's roster and this year's roster is scoring depth. Subtract Hudler and you're asking a 40 year old Modano coming off a serious wrist injury to be the difference in scoring depth. Moving forward, this team will have one less young forward who's a proven scorer. I'm not sure how positive that is given that we have far more proven bottom 6 players graduating to the NHL than we do top six players.

There's a huge difference between a problem child and an employee who reflects poorly on your company. You can't fire a child.

What about a cheaper option who plays a similar game to Phillips? Radek Martinek is 34, makes $1.5 mil and plays for the Islanders so he can probably be had for a bag of pucks.

Replacing Salei with Phillips would be great and would seriously upgrade the defense. My only reservation is the fact that we'd be replacing a cheap defenseman ($1.1 mil with bonus) with a much more expensive one ($3.5 mil cap hit for Phillips). But we'd be asking Phillips to play a smaller role than he's used to (and paying him more than you pay a player on the 3rd pairing). Also, in his last two playoff runs (20 and 6 games, respectively) he's put 0 pts up. That makes me wonder how good his first pass is. Maybe it's just his role that limits his offensive output in the playoffs, but you'd like to see a bit more offense when it counts from a guy being paid that much. Stuart is a good comparable-- he's asked to play the same role as Phillips but can play the PP in a pinch. Phillips is a more imposing physical player but Stuart fits the Red Wings team better. I really don't see enough Senators games to make an educated judgement on this. Lastly, Phillips is a UFA this summer while Hudler is locked up at a reasonable price until next summer. With the prices continuing to inflate I can't help but wonder how much more Phillips would get this summer.

Since his break-out game against the Avs on Dec 27th: 21gp 5g 13a 18pts 0.86pts/g Looks like he's really turned the corner and is playing like we know he should but he'll have to continue doing so until the season's over.

Mario won't sell the Penguins. He's just being dramatic for the sake of making his point. I agree with him that the entire game was bulls***. The Islanders really brought gooning it up to a new level. Scoring 9 goals on them and having some fair fights would've suited the situation just fine. But attacking a guy from behind and ganging up on them non-stop was retarded. At some point their coach should've said "hey I think we made our point". If Mario doesn't want this type of s*** to happen he should take a long hard look one of his own cheap-shotting scumbag players. Waive that bag of s*** once his suspension is over.

Agreed. Martin's lucky he only got 4 games.

IIRC Montoya had a really bad hand injury that derailed his career for quite some time. He used to be a blue-chip prospect in the Rangers' system.

No one in the league has the talent to get buy without working hard as a team in the playoffs. That s*** can fly in the regular season (see 08-09) but hard work and team play wins in the playoffs.