Echolalia

Just tuned in to see Jimmy carted off. What happened?

+1 for futurama

Lol probably someone who's a ringer on a D league hockey squad.

I can tell you what didn't happen.Hockey.

A moment of silence for the fall of our protector, and for truculence everywhere.

WONT SOMEBODY THINK OF JONNY HOCKEY???

He'd absolutely destroy any rats creeping around, but he only gets like 1 doughnut and 3 coffees every 40 shifts.

2 years @ 1.5M? How is that even possible

If thats the case then I see no reason why Pulkkinen won't be given a chance on the PP.

If I recall, Pulkkinen had PP time last year during his call-up. However with how hot our power play has been this year I actually wouldn't be suprised to see Babcock hold steady on power play personelle. The good news for Pulkinnen is that I also don't think Babcock will slot him into the fourth line for the same reason, and our top 9 is pretty balanced in terms of skill, so I don't think Pulkkinen will be handicapped by his linemates, wherever he ends up.

haha I forgot about that! Crosby's comments only made that shift better.

Last time Pulkkinen was called up he had trouble finding/generating the time and space to get his shot off (and to the net). I'm looking forward to seeing how he adapts this time around.

If Zetterberg didn't have that 5-on-3 shift against the Pens, the Conn Smyth may very well have ended up in Osgood's possession.

what is this the NFL? We need 20 minutes to play the last two minutes of game time

I can see why Calgary has scored so often with the empty net.

sigh, Nyquist has one move...

I could see how this would be a valid complaint last year, but this year Smith has been very steady. Still not the offensive defensman that I was anticipating, but he has been the best defender we've had at moving the puck up ice under pressure, and I include Kronwall in that list. That's something we should be welcoming considering how badly the Wings have struggled escaping their zone under pressure in the recent past. He's playing much smarter hockey than he was last year, much more consistent, much more reliable in his own end. He's also our toughest defender. Just a side question: how far did you expect Smith to develop at this point? Collectively he has played less than two NHL seasons' worth of games (currently at 154). That's not a whole lot of time to adapt, especially for a defensman, and especially for a defensman who plays under Babcock. Give him some time, he's trending up. And its not like he's hurting the team out there in the mean time.

OH MAN GOALIE FIGHT!!

Well, they don't have Jiri "muscles" Hudler tonight.

If his rebound control was better he would have been fine. I think its easy to point the blame at Mrazek being too aggressive on this play, afterall they scored on an essentially empty net. But if Mrazek is able to absorb the puck, or deflect it out of play, or into the corner, or even the weakside where he had defenders covering for him, then the puck never goes in. The agressiveness was exploited only because Mrazek spat the puck back out right onto a speeding (and undefended) Raymond's stick. If I had to pick one of the two to blame and Mrazek work to correct, its his rebound control, not his positioning, at least for this particular goal.

Ehh I can't criticize Mrazek on his positioning. He's an aggressive goalie, and the Wings have the personelle and awareness to eat up rebounds or tie up players in front of the net to compensate for that. If his rebound control was better on that goal, we'd all be praising how confident Mrazek is to challenge the shooter like he does. Unfortunately he spit the puck back out onto Raymond's stick while all our defenders were covering the weak side. You're gonna get exploited if you give rebounds up to open shooters. Nice goal Sheahan.

I'm just now tuning into the game so I don't know if these have been the lines all night long, but Babs opened the second period with Weiss on a line with Datsyuk and Helm

Not when the team loses every shootout.

Mantha still has his hands full adjusting to the AHL. Pulkkinen has paid his dues in the AHL, is tearing it up down there, and is most likely not only to not be a liability on an NHL team, but potentially contribute. I can't possibly see Holland bring up Mantha over Pulkkinen given how the two have performed so far this year.

I disagree with this to a point (although I wouldn't mind swapping a left handed shooter for a right handed shooter). Adding 20 goal scorers is nice, but I don't think the issue with scoring comes down to who we have on forward, how our forwards are playing, or even the coaching schemes that they're playing under. The way I'm seeing our games play out, it all comes down to the fact that we don't have any real offensive threat aside from Kronwall from our defense. If you look at goals scored (or even points) from the blue line, the Wings are close to the bottom of the league, especially for a playoff team. Other teams know this and they're playing more aggressively down low in the defensive end instead of playing more tightly to our defenders, which gives our forwards less time and space to work with. (For the record I think this is more of the causative agent why the Wings are labeled as a perimeter offense team, and not the notion that we need more power forwards). And if we play it back to the blueline, they know as well as we do the puck likely isn't getting to the net. They can afford to give our defenders that extra second with the puck. I even think that our coaching staff has tried to adapt to this weakness by using our defense more as an outlet to get the puck from one side of the zone to the other, instead of forcing a shot through (I have no solid data or quotes to back this up, I've just noticed a lot more winger->defender->opposite winger/opposite defender plays than winger->defender-> shot on net plays this season. I could be entirely wrong on this). Anyway, if we spend the assets to get Perron, we're down those assets, we're down the roster player that Perron is replacing, we're down that chemistry the players have established until Perron gets comfortable, and there's no guarantee that Perron even gets comfortable in our system. And in light of how other teams defend against us, I'm not even confident saying that Perron is a 20 goal scorer here. Acquiring him certainly won't change how other teams defend against us, although it might make it easier to rip a one-timer from the half wall on the left side, or break out of our zone under pressure from the left side, which does have its values. On the other hand, if we can somehow acquire someone who can, at the very least, put pucks on the net from the blue line with some consistency, I think we will see production go up throughout the entire team, because in addition to what the defender can make happen (goals, shots that are tipped in, etc) I think it will open up some space for our forwards as opposing wingers will have more to worry about from our blueline for them to cheat on their coverage. So I guess my main beef is that I don't think acquiring Perron will make much of a difference in the trajectory of this team, and I'd rather see our assets go towards an offensive defensman, whom I do think can be a real difference maker.