paulwoodsfan

Would love to know what evidence you have that Moore "embellished his 'symptoms'".

Tnx for the info, ami and mules.

Many thanks!

Can anyone in the U.S. who gets Center Ice pls confirm afterwards whether the full game was in fact available on Center Ice? I'm a Canadian subscriber to Centre Ice and every year when the playoffs start there is at least one Wings game that does not get shown up here, which is utterly ridiculous -- I can get every single regular-season game but when the games matter most, I sometimes get shut out entirely. This year it was Game 1 of Round 1 -- it was not shown on Centre Ice even though there was a CBC HD feed for Windsor and Western Canada. I had to buy a new cable service (time-shifting) just to see that game, and it was not available to me at all in HD. I have had enough of the contempt for fans that Centre/Center Ice demonstrates each playoffs and I am planning to write a formal letter of complaint. If tomorrow's game is not on Center Ice in the U.S. I will add it to the litany of problems. (It is available up here on TSN2, as another posted already noted.) Thanks for the help.

TSN covers the NHL -- every team, every nationality -- in depth. If they had info that Z would miss the entire first round of the playoffs, it would not be the "lead" story on the late-night Sportcentre but it would almost certainly be played very prominently, right after they got through NHL game highlights and Masters coverage. The Wings are en elite team and injury to Z could have a huge impact on the entire playoff picture, and TSN knows that.

There's no way the team will have five goalies hanging around during the playoffs, and four seems like a stretch. There are only two nets in practice. If Osgood is healthy, Macdonald will still be up as insurance. If Osgood is still hurt or iffy, one of the two minor league guys will likely be brought up just in case. But both of them? Only way I see that happening is if two of the top three are hurt.

I disagree. Regardless of the market size and the arena size, they have one of the world's richest individuals (David Thomson) bankrolling the behind-the-scenes bid for a team. Given how crazy Canada is about hockey, the team will be able to make enough money to be viable (and will make WAY more money than the Coyotes). Take it to the bank -- a team will be in Winnipeg within two years. Players may not like it but it will happen. As for the discussion about whether Wings will or won't move to the East, I would guess they will but I can't see them ending up in a different conference than Columbus. CBJ need the geographic proximity/rivalry to succeed. I bet either both move to the East or both stay in the West.

I have tons of highlights edited on to DVDs, dating back to 1986 (but the vast majority of them from around 2000 and on). They are not catalogued but are in chronological order by year, so it's possible to find specific highlights only if I can pinpoint a specific time frame. Also have a lot of games on VHS, slowly converting them to DVD and have posted a few segments on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/pxw13?feature=mhum).

Thanks, I will need a more precise idea before I can try to track it down. Maybe someone can remember some other details that will pinpoint a time frame narrower than 2003 or earlier?

I think I have it but don't know where it is. If someone can pinpoint what season it was, I will scour my archives for it. I am thinking it was around 2001 or so but that's purely a guess.

I love his offensive potential (and playoff production) as a power forward, but I also think something was lost from his game when his role changed four years ago. He used to be a great penalty killer, but when his offensive explosion happened he was moved to PP duty and taken off PK. I'd like to see Babs work him back into the PK rotation and cut back his PP minutes -- that might light a fire under him. I'd also like them to consider using him at centre matched up against big centres in the playoffs, especially Thornton and Getzlaf.

Zetterberg signed a 12-year contract in 2009. Someone with more expertise on the cap can say if this is right, but I am under the impression that if he retires before the contract expires, the team still has to carry the cap hit on the books until 2021. So I certainly hope he is still playing in 10 years (when he will definitely be well past his prime but could still be an excellent contributor). Franzen has a similar contract.

I'll take boring celebration and a winning team over hot-dogging any day. One of the reasons the Wings have been so successful is that they are a "team-first" organization. It started with Stevie and has been passed on through the lineup for the past 20 years. I'm not saying one celebration indicates he's a selfish player, but I hope he learns quickly that when you score, you celebrate with your teammates and don't make a point of showing everyone that you got the goal.

I have nothing against celebrating a goal. However, it looked to me as if he was not celebrating that "we scored," he was celebrating that "I scored." I realize I'm a lone wolf on this.

I'm hoping Tatar has a long, productive career with the Wings, but I didn't like that celebration st all. It was a "me" display on a team that wins by playing a "we" game. I have never seen any of the current Wings try to draw attention to themselves the way he did last night.

It's been done like that forever, who knows why but one possible reason is that when the NHL was a small league, games were mostly played on the same nights each week (Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday) so instances of games-played discrepancy were rare.

Because there is always a discrepancy in games played, the points column is not completely meaningful. I always look at how many games over .500 (in the win-loss column) a team is to figure our relative strength. For instance, both Pit and Det have 50 points but Det is 14 games over .500 (23-9) while Pit is 13 games over (24-11). Pit has played one more game. Even though they are tied atop the standings, Det has the league's best points-attained percentage, which projected over a full season would have them at No. 1. The NHL uses points actually attained rather than percentage of possible points attained, which would provide a more accurate picture of teams' relative strength. This was especially noticeable early in the season, when Det had three or four teams ahead of them in points. They had earned a higher percentage of possible points than the other teams but had played fewer games so were ranked lower even though their actual success rate was higher.

If he does have that game and you are able to digitize it, I would love to get a copy and would happily offer in trade something from my own collection of digitized Wings games and highlights. The other game that is the Holy Grail for me is a game from early in the 1983-84 season: Wings were at home against Buffalo and rookie Steve Yzerman not only scored the GWG in OT (getting high-fived afterwards by "the Winger," earlier in the game he had an unbelievably great goal where he put the puck through Mike Ramsey's legs and busted in alone on Barasso. I had that game on tape (the Buffalo broadcast) but it was lost in a move a few years later. I would give a lot for that one.

Excellent memory, BigWillieStyle. I was at that game as well. It was probably the most fight-filled game since the Broad Street Bullies era; in fact I think that game was the last bench-clearing brawl in the NHL. I will never forget the look of agony on the face of Gary Nylund (a huge Leafs defenceman) while Probie or Kocur wailed away on him. If memory serves, both Kocur and Probert also scored nifty goals in that game. I would love to find a tape of it but I think the game might not have been shown on any network or channel in either country.

Fixed it.

Actually, the fans now pick two starting lineups, 12 players. Under the new format they will pick top six only, and Hockey Ops will pick 36 more. So there was a change. But you are right, that is not the right question to ask. Back on topic, I second those who like Webber/Crisp in Nashville and Thorne/Clement. Thorne has a fantastic voice and knew how to raise it when it mattered the most. I also liked Sam Rosen when he used to do the national radio feed during the finals. His call when Stevie Y handed the Cup to Vladdie in 1998 (Just a simple but very emotional, "Oh, my.") was really memorable.

Really tough call. The hockey has been better in the west for two decades, so there are likely many more entertaining games now than there would be if they moved. But having to play two or even three playoff series with west coast travel to get to the final is brutal on the team. And of course there's the issue of late games on TV. Plus there's the Colorado rivalry, which may be dormant now but will probably be revived at some point. I guess I vote for Wings in the East but a 1-through-16 playoff format so anyone can play in any time zone in the playoffs. If that had been in place before, some of the fantastic Detroit-Colorado series might have been for the Stanley Cup rather than the Western Conference title.

Has anyone ever found any video of the knitting lady on Youtube?

An impressive debut, but I think I'll wait until he has played at least two exhibition games before awarding him the Calder. A hat trick in his first game could be the worst thing that happens to him because expectations are now going to be sky high.

These are awesome pix. On a slightly related note, does anyone know where I could get copies of the official posed team pictures taken a day or two after each of the four recent Cup wins? I don't mean the informal shots taken on the ice right after the game, I mean the ones where the team and execs all pose on benches, with the Cup. I have black-and-white team photographs of each of the Wings' first seven Cup teams and would love to add the four most recent teams to that collection. I have searched around the web for these but have never seen them for sale anywhere.