chrisdetroit

It's early yet. Quincy would never have the opportunity to play 20 minutes a night in Detroit. Obviously even if he had Lebda or Meech's minutes, it would be a lot less than 20 per night and because of that he wouldn't have 9 points.

always the pessimist

Thank you. Finally somebody that understands the Hossa vs Franzen debate.

Agreed. The $4 million is used to retain some of the other guys Huds, Sammy, Kopy and Conks. Now Kenny could let them all go and bring up some youngsters but that's 3 forwards and a goaltender. That would be quite a gamble to have 3 rookies forwards and a rookie back-up goalie in the line-up even if they are named Leino, Helm, Abdelkader and Howard.

He's 28 now so he's only playing for about 12 more years...

Ok lets stop with the apples and oranges comparison. Hossa will cost around $8mil and Mule will go for around $4mil. This is all "ballpark" numbers. So to chose 1 over the other straight up is meaninless. You have to compare Hossa vs Mule + $4mil to spend on other players. When you do that its a much harder choice. IMO I'll take Mule and the additional $4 mil to spend on other players...

He's also good friends with Thomas Kopecky...

Based just on numbers - yes. He has 8 goals in 11 games 0.727 goals/game Take the top 24 goal scores (24 guys have 8 goals or more) and calculate the goals/ game and here's the results: games goals goals/game 1 Alexander Semin WAS 16 13 0.813 2 Thomas Vanek BUF 16 12 0.750 3 Johan Franzen DET 11 8 0.727 4 Simon Gagne PHI 14 10 0.714 5 Henrik Zetterberg DET 14 10 0.714 6 Zach Parise NJD 16 11 0.688 7 Jeff Carter PHI 15 10 0.667 8 Marian Hossa DET 16 10 0.625 9 Shane Doan PHO 15 9 0.600 10 Keith Tkachuk STL 15 9 0.600 11 Patrick Sharp CHI 15 9 0.600 12 Slava Kozlov ATL 16 9 0.563 13 Dany Heatley OTT 16 9 0.563 14 Jarome Iginla CGY 18 10 0.556 15 Brad Boyes STL 15 8 0.533 16 Milan Hejduk COL 15 8 0.533 17 Teemu Selanne ANA 18 9 0.500 18 Ryane Clowe SAN 18 9 0.500 19 Devin Setoguchi SAN 18 9 0.500 20 Derick Brassard COB 16 8 0.500 21 Bryan Little ATL 16 8 0.500 22 Miroslav Satan PIT 16 8 0.500 23 Mikhail Grabovski TOR 17 8 0.471 24 Patrick Marleau SAN 18 8 0.444 Mule is #3. Now you could argue that there are more important things than goal scoring but I don't know how anybody could argue that the #3 goal scorer in the league isn't in the top 20 forwards.

He's not going anywhere. Kenny will sign him long term for $4mil or so instead on $8mil or so for Hoss.

1. Pronger 2. Tootoo 3. Giguere 4. Turco 5. Avery ..just kidding

With 1 year still on his contract? Not likely.

Really? Then why is he only -3? People have to stop focusing on a gaffe here and there and long at it over the long haul. Pavs was -3 in the game against the Penguins. You want to trade him to? Ralfie will be fine. He has had a few games in which he hasn't been good but there are 66 games left

You're kidding right? Ralfie was one of the reasons that we won the cup last year. He had a career year. Now after 16 games you want to trade him becasue he is -3 with 13 points in 16 games? And you want to take a guy that has 11 games of NHL experience and put him in the lineup on the best team in the league as a top 4 defenseman? Ralfie isn't going anywhere...

Thank you. Finaly somebody pointed that out. Franzen is a big guy that crashes the net and has great hands. A lot like Homer. Hossa plays a similar game as Pav and Z. Homer is 36. Franzen has to be his replacement. We have 3 similar guys in Hoss, Z and Pav. So logically, Hoss goes. And NO I don't think Mule is more talented than Hoss, but he brings something that we only have in Homer.

None of the 3 - Huds, Flip, Sammy or Dan have "clicked" on the second line. Part of that has been Mule was gone for 5 games and Babs hasn't left any of them up there long enough. My bet is that they each get a chance to try it for a longer period of time until one of them wins the position. It looks like Flip will get the first shot at it and IMO he is the better playmaker. Huds has great hands but he doesn't have the confidence. He defers to Hank and Mule instead of playing on equal terms with them. He is certainly talented enough but I think he is lacking confidence.

Alot of people forgot that we just came off a great defensive game against Vancouver followed by a very good defensive showing against New Jersey. We followed that with 2 1/2 periods of completely dominating Pittsburgh both offensively and defensively. We then stopped skating in the last 1/2 of the 3rd and blew the 3 goal lead. All is not lost. I think we have begun to turn the corner defensively but had a 1/2 of a period of a set back. My prediction is that we get back on track tonight and continue the trend tomorrow night against a crappy Florida team. Don't forget we also have a monster 33% sucess rate on the PP.... The glass is definitely more than 1/2 full.......

Are you ever optimistic about anything?

Oh for fu$% sake this same old tired argument again. Yea cause Staurt and Kronwall are to old and not agressive , Lids and his 6 Norris trophys suck. right.....

Maltby is still under contract and has almost no trade value. Also, the Wings will not trade him out of loyalty. Unfortunately, we are stuck with him until his contract runs out or he retires.

It still doesn't work and with the economy the way it is, league revenues (and thus the cap) are not likely to increase much if at all...

You lost me when you said that. There are at least 4 teams that have a shot IMO. Detroit, San Jose, Dallas, and Aneheim. It's early, don't get too excited yet...

What are the odds of a rookie head coach taking a team of talented perenial second round losers to the SCF? I would say not very good. Todd is a very good Assistant coach but lets be realistic here, he's never been an NHL Head coach and he is faced with the task of getting a team that has 3 years in a row underachieved to somehow get past their demons. I wouldn't bet on it.

Ideally, we re-sign Z, Hossa and Mule. That would be something like 8mil, 8mil and 5 mil. 21mil. or in terms of this years numbers; +5.1, +0.55mil, +3.85 which is +9.5. This means that there has to be a combination of the cap going up and us shedding salaries of 9.5mil. It's unlikely the cap is going to go up more than 6 mil best case so we need to drop 3.5 mil in salaries. Lilja 1.125 Rex 1.15 Sammy 1.2 Cheli 0.75 Lebda 0.65 And you have to replace these guys with guys making around 0.5 each. I think that it's just not going to be possible unless there is a monster cap increase. Or all 3 agree to take less money.

These are all generalizations. SOME American cars are better or equal in quality to SOME Asia cars. Detroit still makes come garbage cars (Chryslers are the worst) and the Asians make some crap too (stay away from Suzukis) but if you average everything out, more Asian cars are btter than American nameplates. Check out Consumers Reports. Lastly, many "American" cars are loaded with Chinese made parts. In fact the Detroit 3 have goals to use more imported parts because they are cheaper so before we fall for the "Buy American" slogans, make sure you understand that those "American" companies are hypocritical. I'd rather by a high quality Honda car made in Ohio that is made by American workers and made with 50% American parts than a piece of crap Chrysler made in Michigan that is also made with only 50% American parts.

Good idea. Can we do that retroactively to dickhead (oops I mean pronger)...