Echolalia

At the very worst, we paid 7 million bucks to keep Hossa from being a pest on the other team. If he can't play for us, he won't be playing for anyone

The Wings system is flawless so long as everyone buys into it. "You pat our back, we'll pat yours" kinda thing. Downey knows whats up. I can't wait to see him pound on some guys this year. Mark him down for a game winner this year too.

Sens vs Rangers: But the real qwestin is who can help me with my math?

Intramural at WMU for the win

Its good that he's tending to his weaknesses. It shows that he knows full and well where he's at right now, and that's only for the enforcer role. He also obviously knows that being just an enforcer on a team with cap issues isn't going to cut it, so he's going the extra mile to try to improve his offensive ability. Heck, if he can tie up a guy or knock a puck loose to create a scoring chance for someone else, I'd be happy with the progress and call it a day. By the way, Downey's getting a game winner this year

How about instead of buying a $150 dollar ticket, plus $20 bucks for food, plus $20 bucks for parking, plus $10-50 bucks for gas depending on where you live, you throw it towards an HDTV, and refuse to go to a single game this year. Four or five games would just about cover the cost completely, and you would be boycotting high prices and force the Wings' into a financial loss (assuming enough people can't afford tickets or boycott), hopefully lowering prices for next year. I can only afford one game a year, and I'm sure as hell not dishing out the extra bucks this year. I'll treat my girlfriend to a night on the town instead. I'll get more bang for my buck that way. Pun intended.

My comment was more a joke of me roasting Maltby.

I'm all for getting fans across the world, however extending the league into Europe is full of mess. If they were to do a sister-league EHL that worked under the same rules and regulations as the nhl, so long as there are no inter-league games played besides maybe an interleague rivalry game or all star game or whatever, I think it could work, but then you're essentially saying goodbye to all the prospects in Europe/Asia that normally would die to play in America. They'd rather stay closer to home than come here, which consequently will make ratings suffer in America. Bad idea all around.

Wow you saw Maltby?? You should've asked for a signature... I mean Draper's or Datsyuk's or someone....

There's an article over at nhl.com sucking up to Datsyuk about how dominant of a player he was, especially when it comes to takeaways. Although the article was a nice feel-good read, the last three or four paragraphs refer to Valterri Filppulla following Dats around the ice before and after practices (free time to hone their own skills), and practicing all the stuff that Datsyuk is great at. Here's the excerpt, and if you're interested in the rest of the article, its one of the headlines over at nhl.com. “The (other players) know there's opportunity there, but the number one thing is it shows you're a workaholic and you never give up on any 50/50 pucks. That's a direct message to the rest of the team that they better get to work, and that's what leadership is,” [babcock] said. In fact, Before and after Red Wing practices, the players are allowed to skate around and work on their own skills, and Babcock has noticed that one of his younger players, Valtteri Filppula, has been following Datsyuk around the ice during these sessions while the veteran skater runs mini-clinics in stick, puck, and hand-eye skills. “He and Filppula work together every day, pulling pucks off the wall, knocking down pucks, stealing pucks off each other: they play keep-away like you can't believe,” Babcock said. I think I heard something about Datsyuk mentoring Filppula in the past, but its stuff like this that reiterate my hopes that Filpulla can be a solid second liner at the very least, and maybe take away some of the stuff that makes Datsyuk so awesome. Anyway, this year is a big year for him, so we'll see what happens.

While I'll agree with you that each of these goalies had some remarkable saves, the vast majority of our loosing games I remember as the Wings taking weak shots from the perimeter and creating few quality scoring opportunities (especially when compared to our overall shot total, which is always skewed high), as opposed to being robbed game in and game out. These were the consecutive years that the Wings were facing the trap, as well as mighty Dave Lewis who couldn't solve it behind the bench, so there were much more problems going on besides a hot goalie. Also, you can't win a playoff game on saves alone. At some point there was some offense that beat our team's and eventually scored.

Refresh my memory. When did an opposing team's goalie outplay our entire team to single-handedly eliminate us from the playoffs?

The only times I can recall the Wings "getting bounced" is when their team is clearly outplayed by the opposing team.

See that makes no sense to me. I understand going for a goalie in maybe pick 3, or 4 or so, but definitely not top pick, and possibly not even 2nd round. Forwards and defensmen have greater opportunities to influence the game as they get the puck much more, and are directly involved with many plays. Not to undermine goalies, but they're a bail-out card on the occasion that the other team is outplaying yours. If you have flawless defense, its possible your goalie will be facing less than 20 shots a game, and few of those will be quality scoring opportunities. I understand the logic of wanting a strong goalie and all that, but a strong defensmen not only will prevent the other team from scoring, but will also directly contribute to your team scoring, whether that be by assists or goals or what have you. Look at Vancouver. They have the best goalie in the league, but are hardly a playoff contending team, due to numerous offensive and defensive weaknesses. Detroit is on the other end of the spectrum. Our defense is impeccable, our goalie is average imo, at the very least not a top 5 goalie in the league, and we won the cup last year. If I were making a team today and had 1st pick out of everyone in the league, it would be a tossup between Crosby Ovechkin and Zetterberg. I'd pick Crosby because of his massive playmaking talent and ability to read the ice, as well as his youth (he'll only get better). I wouldn't pick him because he seems like a one way player with little defensive awareness, and a hot head. Ovechkin is much the same as Crosby, instead replace playmaking talent with pure goalscoring talent. He's also average defensively. Zetterberg I like because he brings offensive talent (though not to the caliber that Crosby and Ovechkin do, but still easily offensive franchise numbers), as well as an impeccable responsibility defensively. His weakness would be the fact that he's at or near his prime right now, so there isn't much futuristic upside to him, and his back problems make him a possible injury liability. I didn't pick any defensmen because right now I don't think there are any stellar defensmen on the market that are still relatively young (and especially not the degree that Lidstrom is). That and the immense amount of talent these three possess is something you cannot pass up. If Lids and/or Konstantinov were being drafted today I would jump on either of them, though.

I disagree. Having Luongo on a team built like Detroit would be a waste of capspace. In terms of goalies out there right now, I would rate Osgood in the middle of the pack; solid, yet nothing special, and that skill is adequate to win a cup. I would start with a solid defensman personally

It will take an incredible amount of opposition to stop us from winning the cup. 2006-07 we were injury-plagued and almost completely depleted defensively, and we had the Stanley Cup winning team, Anaheim, in a killing position, and at our mercy for the first half of that series. They barely scraped by that series. Just barely. Last year, being considerably healthier and more imporved roster-wise, we practically steamrolled through everyone in the playoffs. Now looking at this year, and our only changes are no more Hasek (who can account for our greatest difficulty in the playoffs in Nashville), and the addition of the Penguins' finals lifeforce, Hossa. Every other playoff contending team got worse. Some considerably. Babcock is about as passionate as they come, and Hossa is still cupless, so motivation will certainly not be a factor should the Wings lose. We have arguably the best offensive lineup in the league, with our second line boasting more skill than 15 other teams' first lines. We have arguably the best defensive lineup in the leauge, with our second pairing boasting more skill than 15 other teams' first pairings. So motivation and skill will not be problems. The only problem I see is injury, and only if it absolutely plagues us (because we have such a deep team (think of all the nhl ready prospects we have in Grand Rapids right now)), or hits our goaltending. Otherwise, I think we're sitting soundly, and I don't mean for this to sound overtly cocky about this year, its just simply how it looks.

He doesn't need to be stand-on-your-head good like many of the other goalies in the league. As long as he keeps his cool he should be fine. Our defense will be able to filter out most of the quality scoring chances other teams may generate. Osgood just needs to be there.

I'm kinda surprised Homer and LIds decided to participate in the optional skate. I would think that they would want to spend more time in Sweden.

They need to match that offer. With Redden gone, he will be shouldering a heap of defensive responsibility, and he's the type of player to be able to handle it. He was my diamond in the rough last fantasy season.

I think these lines will only be together for the first couple weeks of the season. Everything's fresh and new right now, and we already know that our team is a capable cup winner, so now is the time to experiment with lines and whatnot. I am fairly confident that before the season is over we will also see a number of other line combos just for the heck of it, and come playoff time, of course the best chemistry will win. But in all honesty, this season's Wings are just Babs' new toy that he gets to play with for 8 months.

I will never play for Chicago.

I was never overly impressed with Osgood's skills as of late. I think he's an average, yet solid number one goalie in today's league, and normally that would have me worried, because the rest of our team is anything but average. However, Osgood should never have to stand on his head like we expected from Hasek, Cujo, Legace, and Vernon. Our defense does a spectacular job of filtering out 90% of the quality scoring chances the opposition tries to make. All he needs to do is stay healthy, and solid positionally and should be fine. If he were to get injured, though, then I'll start worrying. I don't know enough about Conklin (sp?) or Howard to have faith in a cup run with either of them.

You're also the last. And the Lions will end the season with 8 wins. Johnson will break out this year. I don't know if the Wings will have more than 8 five game winning streaks. Thats 40 points in itself, but who knows. I've never paid attention to how many five+ game win streaks the Wings have in a season.

If you want to keep Lilja because he was the team's greatest shot-blocker and top "enforcer" on defense, then you need to find a new argument, because these are joke reasons to keep him. Anyone can throw their body in front of a puck to block it, its just a matter of driving it into players' heads to do so. It requires no talent outside of basic coordination,and if thats the difference maker in whether Quincey Erikkson or Meech get in, I have little doubt that they will be willing to throw their body into every puck they see come training camp. In fact, blocking shots is becoming quite common, and as far as I know, our team isn't particularly high on the list of blocked shots, so this is something the rest of our team should probably start working on anyway. Lilja is tough, that I will give you. But he isn't game-decider tough. His decent hit on player A or his draw-to-win fight against player B won't win us games. Granted, none of our other defensemen have anything special to their games either. Meech? Quincey? They have zero proven skill on the nhl level. However, considering there's so little that the Wings are risking in loosing Lilja's talent to gain something potentially bigger, its worth the possible reward that one of our many overaged prospects is actually better than a top 6 defensman. In the end, trading Lilja will make our team either better or worse, but we can't get worse by much, because he's a number 6 defenseman, and thats not asking a lot to begin with. However, if we get better, then we're improving our team in addition to cutting dead weight on the salary cap. But lets get serious. We're talking about top six defensmen. Whatever Kenny ends up doing, I'm not going to fret about. Our team will still be the greatest defensive team in the league with any of Lilja, Lebda, Quncey, Meech, Erikson, or Chelios in the last two spots.

Doesn't Florida have one of our top prospects right now for practically cleaning up their garbage?