chrisdetroit

Exactly. The sport doesn't "need" Crosby and the sport isn't "better" when he's playing. This is the crux of the problem. Crosby is 1 player. Certainly one of the more talented players, but the league is over-marketing him to the extreme. They need to market some of their other stars like Ovechkin, Datsyuk, the Sedins, etc. But that is never going to happen because they are not Canadian.

My link They have Carolina over Chicago in the Finals. And it gets even more ridiculous. The Wings don't make the playoffs but Oil does? Just incredible.

Oh no, now you did it. Somebody is going to get all serious and say that you are "disrespecting" handicap people. Boy I hate that word..

It is NOT ok to be fat. It is unhealthy. It has nothing to do with bias. If you are fat you are not healthy and in 99% of the cases it is preventable. None of the things you mentioned above are preventable. Your comparison is not valid. This is exactly the problem. Society wants to compare being fat with a disability. Granted that there are a small % of people that because of medical reasons are pre-destined to be fat but they are in a small minority. Most of the people just don't eat right and exercise enough and that should be discouraged.

In case you haven't been paying attention...It is now socially acceptable to be fat. THAT is the real problem.

Why do you think the Hawks will make the playoffs? They snuck in the backdoor this year and since then lost their best offensive defenseman in Campbell. AND they lost Kopy. ANd they gained a bunch of goons. I just don't see that they improved. With Crosby yes, without Crosby doubtful. You obviously came on here to call people names, not to talk hockey.

Agreed. A lot of the top Western teams have taken hits: Vancouver showed that they don't have the toughness/grit and have unreliable goaltending San Jose lost a couple of key pieces and Niemi was not good in the playoffs (0.891 save %) Detroit lost Rafalski but he was ineffective last year anyway Anaheim probably will lose Selanne to retirement and are only a shell of the team that won the Cup a few years ago Chicago sold off their team after the Cup win and lost another of their key guys in Campbell It will be an interesting year and most likely the last year that the Wings will be in the West

I think that this is the year that Toronto sneaks in as #8. They almost did it last year and this year, they don't have Lebda to help them lose. I think that Philly could be out with the loss of Carter and Richards and the uncertainty about Pronger. I think that Hawks are going to just miss the playoffs. They got in through the back door this year and the Campbell loss is huge. San Jose will make it but losing Setoguchi and Heatly is going to hurt them.

There is good news and bad news. There will be almost twice as many games on Versus/NBC as last year so that we can actually watch hockey games on national tv most nights all season long. The bad news is that they are on Versus/NBC.

Wait a minute. Are you serious? They purposely designed the rink to have a capacity to end in an individual players' number? If that is true that is just stupid. It sends the message that 1 player is more important than the others? Ok. So I looked it up and you are correct. This is just stupid. But then again, it is the Pittsburgh Penguins...

That is some twisted logic. Your logic would only make sense if all teams were relatively equal. Hudler may be a top six forward on Edmonton but not even close on the Wings. I'll give him that he is a top six forward on a crappy team but you can't average all 30 teams together and draw a conclusion like you did. Secondly you are only looking at his offensive performance which is only half the game. He finished with a +/- of -7 which ranks him 479th among forwards and dead last on the Wings. There are 587 forwards that played last year in the league 479/587 = 0.81 which means that he is in the bottom 19%. Lack of scoring was not his biggest issue. It was lack of defensive play. I'm not a Hudler hater and I expect him to have a much better season this year, but let's not sugar coat it.

Maltby won Cups. So what. And what the hell does his age have to do with it. 1 Cup and he's in. Are you kidding? He's played what 3 years and people are talking about the HOF. Get a grip.

I'm with you. This just stupid. Kronwall or Helm for Hemsky. WTF. Neither Kronwall or Helm are going anywhere. And for Hemsky. How bout Hudler for Weber? Unbelievable

The Jennings trophy is given to the goalie whose team has the fewest goals against. It is not something that is voted on. I think that you mean the Vezina.

Nick wins his 8th Norris with numbers similar to this year but with a positive +/- Erricsson has a bounce back year and establishes himself as a second pairing with Stuart Kronwall elevates his game and becomes the #1 D-man Lids retires at the end of the year Commodore loses his spot to Kindl Dats has a career year and wins the Conn Smyth Z has a mediocre year due to back trouble Franzen has a mediocre regular season but an outstanding playoffs Helm scores 20+ goals Abby has a mediocre year but an outstanding playoff Howard establishes himself as one of the top goalies in the league Mursak has an outstanding season Hudler has a bounce back season, scoring 20 goals and an outstanding playoff Fil has another mediocre season but an outstanding playoff Ty Conklin has a sub-par season and Mac is brought up as the back-up goalie Wings win the the Division and finish #2 in the West. Vancouver finishes #1 Wings beat Chicago in round #1, LA in round #2, Vancouver in the Conference Finals and Washington in the SCF San Jose loses in the first round as Niemi is pulled twice and finishes with an .896 save percentage in the playoffs (the same as in 2011)

Sammy? You lost me on that one. Also the '08 and '09 players did not have Abby or Bert - both gritty players. Chelios was a shell of his former self by then. Mac wasn't on the team in '09 or at least not in the playoffs. And Downey never saw the ice in the playoffs in either year. If the '08 and '09 team had more "grit" it wasn't by a lot. Equating a supposed lack of grit with injuries is a stretch. If there was a correlation, that would imply that "soft" teams have more injuries not only on the Wings but league wide. Maybe that was true in the 1970's but the game has changed...

So you are saying that the better team always wins in hockey? I guess if you want to believe that, it's your prerogative. Sometimes, the better team loses and it is because of bounces that go one way or another. This is true in hockey more than almost all other major sports. San Jose and Detroit were pretty much evenly matched last year and the series could have gone either way. We lost, but IMO they did not have a superior team. And with the loss of Heatly and Setoguchi, I think that they got worse. I prefer to not play them in 2012 because even if we beat them, it will take to much out of us.

If that were true, how did we win the Cup in '08 and come within one goal of winning it in '09? There is no substance to your argument. San Jose didn't beat us because they out hit us. If fact, we outhit them in several of the games.

Franzen is one of the top playoff performers in the league and you want to move him? Because in your opinion he is injury prone? Really?

There are MANY factors that determine who wins the Cup each year. Only one of those factors is who looks best on paper. How many people predicted Boston would win this year? It's really more about who has a chance to win the Cup. In order to actually win, they have to have luck, intangibles, etc. So really, it comes down to who has a chance. IMO it's: Detroit Vancouver San Jose Los Angeles Philly Boston Tampa Washington Years ago, you could predict who would win but now not so much. Just last year, we saw 2 different teams come from a 0-3 hole to force a game 7. This is almost unheard of. The year before, we saw a team come from an 0-3 hole and win in game seven for the first time in 35 years. Last year Boston came back in the finals from being down 0-2 and then 2-3 to win the Cup as the visiting team. Pittsburgh did the same thing in 2009. AND Boston won the Cup by winning 3 series in game 7. This never happened before. Forget about predicting who will win the Cup. You will be wrong.

The people on here complaining that we overpaid for Big E are probably the same that were bitching about overpaying for Kronwall a couple of years ago. And Mursak could become a top six forward. It's far to early to tell. Dats wasn't great in his first year and Mursak hasn't even played his first full year...

There is a great deal of luck involved in winning the Cup. Consider these scenarios: 1. Z does not get injured the last week of the season and is ready to go against Phoenix and at full stride against San Jose. This could easily have made the difference in a series in which we lost 4 1 goal games, 2 in OT. 2. Mule doesn't get injured and is able to play at full strength against the Sharks. 3. Hudler and Cleary don't run into each other in game 7. 4. Vancouver loses the game 7 OT against Chicago. This means we play Nashville in round 2 and not San Jose and don't see San Jose until round 3 when Z is back to full strength. I'm not making excuses but luck is definitely part of it. We lost this year because we had several "weak links". Hudler basically let San Jose score the tying goal in game 3, Ralfi was playing hurt, Franzen was hurt, Z wasn't up to speed until the middle of round 2... Huh? The Wings absolutely dominated in game 2. Niemi stole the game.

How do you know? Smith may in fact be the real deal. The top 3 D-men in the league (the Norris finalists) were all picked after the first round. And what about Thomas Jurco?

This is a load of crap. The article is filled with a bunch of generalizations. Here are the problems that I have with their logic: 1. The Wings are not getting high first round picks so they will decline. But the same applies to all the winning teams not just Detroit. 2. They are getting old. Well I think they had the oldest team in the league in 2008 when they won the Cup. In fact they usually have one of the oldest teams and they still keep winning so it seams that age is irrelevant. 3.There is an implication that high draft pick = success. But that ignore the perennial losers. There must be more to it than that. 4. The Wings got lucky with Dats and Z, and Lids, and Howard, and Helm, and Abby, and Homer and Franzen. None of these guys were high draft picks. That's alot of getting lucky. 5. It ignores free agents and trades which can still be had if you can sign them cheaply. Guys like Cleary, and Stuart. 6. The article also ignores that fact that the Wings, unlike other clubs, send their draft picks to GR instead of directly to the NHL. They have been successful at taking mid level draft picks and spending the time to develop them. This is an advantage that other teams don't have or aren't patient enough to utilize. This is just a poor article. It ignores to many factors.

My guess is that they are going with Ozzie. Mac is an insurance policy. I'm ok with this. If Oz doesn't work out they can trade for a back-up goalie. Mac can fill the spot until they can work out a trade. They have the cap room and back-up goalies aren't that hard to come by. By Thanksgiving, there will be teams wanting to make changes.