Drake_Marcus

Quintin Howden is an interesting suggestion. A big western Canadian forward who can score...

Ericsson's swagger was gone this season because of his struggles. Once he's comfortable and confident again we'll see more fights... but he'll still pick his spots.

Yes but not at the price he thinks he's worth.

Toews has never scored 70pts in the NHL. Kane has 72/70/88pts in the NHL and is horrific defensively. I'll still take Datsyuk and Zetterberg over those two any day of the week. Keith... well he's just entering his prime and Lidstrom will be 41 years old at the end of the season. I'd kill to get Keith or better yet, Doughty here.

Doing that would eliminate their ability to attract any free agents in the future and would definitely put some heat on them in the future when dealing with other teams. Waiving perfectly healthy and relatively young previous big name FA signings to make cap room is not going to endear them to future FA talent. Furthermore, the NHLPA would likely make a stink. If this solution was as viable as people seem to think we wouldn't see so many bloated contracts sit around (see: Edmonton). The fact remains that waiving players is typically isolated to inexperienced or aging players who can't cut it anymore and need to be moved to the minors because they don't want to retire. Huet and Campbell are both perfectly healthy and neither is looking to retire any time soon. I don't buy this theory for a second. They may do it but they'll isolate themselves from the NHLPA community a great deal.

Huh? How is that related to laughing when he got smoked by a check? Or are you just being a ******-bag? The bond of love can do amazing things.

I'd much rather they took Watson. McIlrath has virtually zero offensive upside and is a mediocre skater. You're paying a high price for size alone. He's strong defensively and will drop the gloves but you can get a guy like that cheaply via free agency and lower round draft picks. The lack of offensive upside doesn't appeal him to me. In my opinion 1st round picks should be able to contribute offensively. Think of it this way-- McIlrath is too limited in the skills that are hard to develop-- skating and offensive capacity. Who's to say he'll be elite defensively in the NHL? If he isn't he's a bust because you just spent your 21st overall pick on Andres Lilja. This might get a lot of flack but McIlrath doesn't strike me as a 1st round pick in Detroit. Holland values a strong breakout pass among his defensemen so if you can't provide that your position on the depth chart will suffer. Look at Stuart-- he's the #4 guy and he fills the same role as what people envision McIlrath in. But he was a very highly touted offensive player when drafted and certainly has some offensive skill when needed.

Moving Draper would make Holland's life much, much easier but I doubt they'll be able to do it unless Maltby can convince Draper to come to TB with him (assuming Stevie brings Malts in which is far from a sure thing).

A promise is a promise. Does UPS care if packages are crying when you drop them off to mail them? The fallback for all Wings fans playing with CapGeek.

I didn't say they were going to be fleeced. I'm just saying they won't get the true value of those players in a trade,

Getting swept by the Devils was so brutal. So frigging brutal.

That's one high profile race sponsor. I'd watch if Lidstrom was driving in the actual race. He can turn left like no other!

It's the offseason man. Any official Red Wings news is noteworthy.

Don't forget his rebounding issues. He was a rebound machine out there. Hey now-- there's only room for one Carman on these boards.

Like I said-- Tallon will get credit for the Hawks win. But make no mistake-- he was far from perfect. I have to laugh when people say Kane and Toews were great drafts by Tallon. Picking the 1st and 2nd overall players is the easiest thing in the damn world. I could have picked those two players by just looking at the unanimous choices made by every single scouting agency on those two picks. Ladd and Sharp stand out as really smart moves he made. Keith was developed really well too-- they weren't afraid to let him develop in the AHL which definitely served him in the long run. But this terrible cap crunch Chicago is in was created by Tallon when he signed Huet and Campbell to laughable contracts even though his team was fine as it was and needed to think about retaining their young talent. Huet is easily one of the worst goaltending signings in recent history and he contributed nothing to their Cup win while collecting $5,000,000 to chart face-offs. Campbell is untradeable because he makes Lidstrom money to turn the puck over and plan spin-o-ramas that do nothing but infuriate people. Of course we could also mention a certain coach who was made to look like a moron in Philly by a superior bench boss. Tallon deserves credit but he deserves his share of scorn as well. That being said I certainly hope s***cago has the class to mail Tallon a ring because he does deserve it.

Yikes. Kane's reluctance to do anything that isn't offensive makes that a hard pill to swallow. Toews may have struggled offensively in the finals but he was brilliant in the first 3 rounds and was out there killing penalties, blocking shots and winning face-offs in all 6 games of the finals. Toews definitely deserved it.

I'm pretty keen on the Wings retaining Miller and Eaves too. They weren't terribly impressive in the playoffs but both had strong regular seasons. I'd like to see Eaves get some top 6 time in the right situations just to keep his confidence up. But 11 goals from a shot-blocking grit guy is great production.

We would have gladly traded goalies with you. Miller was unbelievable.

Abby should be easy to re-sign as he struggled to make an impact on the score sheet while in Detroit. For a guy with his upside that will hurt negotiations a bit. He'd have a better case for a raise if he didn't struggle to score in the NHL since his AHL numbers were very good. Helm shouldn't be tough to re-sign, although the fact that he scored 10 goals in his rookie season will entitle him to a raise. People shouldn't expect Helm to be a scorer in the future, though, as the key factors in his goals are hustle, forcing mistakes with his speed and being willing to go hard to the net. Another year in the league won't change those much since he doesn't have much in the way of offensive talent. It sucks that he doesn't have hands because he'd be a force out there if he did.

This. With an injured meniscus the knee has reduced mobility, is painful to use (under load, if you're not putting weight on it it shouldn't hurt to hold still), is inherently less stable given the functional purpose of the meniscus and is generally s***canned. Having a torn meniscus would make skating painful and difficult to put it mildly. Having your top speed, acceleration and stability affected makes playing hockey at an elite level pretty damn tough. Edit: affected, effected, whatever.

Toews is American? He was our (Canada) best forward at the Olympics so this is news to me.

Add up the yearly salaries for the duration of the contract. Divide that sum by the number of years he's signed for. So if this is the contract (numbers here are just made up for illustration's sake): 2010-11: 6mil 2011-12: 6mil 2012-13: 5mil 2013-14: 5mil 2014-15: 4mil 2015-16: 3mil 2016-17: 3mil 2017-18: 2.5mil 2018-19: 2mill 2019-20: 1.5mil that means you're paying $38,000,000 over a 10 year period. That means his cap hit is 3.8 million.

Ryan will take big bucks ($5,500,000 a season minimum unless you sell him on an ultra long term contract) to sign. If you get him to a contract Anaheim can't match you can expect the compensation in picks to be crippling. Now if Holland has magic hands and somehow works out a sub $4,500,000 contract that the Ducks can't match I'd have to mail him my first born. And if he does take that number there's even less than zero chance the Ducks don't match it.

Philly victimized Hjmarlsson a few times in the finals but you can't beat all those blocks he made... Hilarious, eh? Dale Tallon's got one summer to hear praises sung about his managment skills. Then the hammer will fall in Chicago and his team will dissolve under the weight of Huet and Campbell's brutal contacts. Hossa's contract was foolish too, but at least it wasn't an overpayment (on a per year basis).