Z Winged Dangler

As promised, here's the link to an article for Keith Primeau's idea for equipment made from the material that Crocks are made from.

http://www.thestar.c...less_gamey.html

The article is from 2007, but it should be brought back up to the NHL and presented at player safety meetings.  Hockey's a fast game, and sometimes things happen where guys get hit in the head.  If the equipment still protected the players, but made it less impactful when someone got hit hard there would be a lot less injured players, and the duration of injuries would be minimized.

Datsyuk's 3 assists last game put him to 499 for his career.  In a season where we have no idea what team is gonna show up on a gamely basis, at least Dats has been consistently the man. 

Here's your place to celebrate when he get's # 500

This milestone is deserving of its own thread.

With all the recent talk about going after UFA's this summer and the $$$ amounts that are being thrown around here, it got me thinking about the worth of players as a dollar amount and how the cap going down will affect the money players get moving forward as UFA's with a 50/50 split instead of the 57% they've been used to since the cap came in.

The shortened NHL season has the cap at 60 million, can spend to a pro-rated 70.2 million.  However, it doesn't state that teams can spend pro-rated amounts next season and the cap will be 64.3 million.  With a lot of UFA's coming up this summer, Holland can try and get a couple good players, but the days of handing out 7.5 mil for Parise/Suter types are probably over for now.  Guys stating that Perry and Getzlaf or even Semin should get signed for 8 million per year better take a good look at the upcoming cap and consider the fact that it's revenue based on when/if the cap goes up.  The lockout screwed the momentum and while most of us fans came back, a lot didn't.  Cap management will be difficult for the next few years for GM's and they won't be able to throw monster offers at guys or they won't have any depth whatsoever (see the Wild) and they won't have enough roster players.

We can all to capgeek, but Wikipedia also gives some good information http://en.wikipedia..../NHL_salary_cap.  Realistically, if the NHL wants to limit the crazy overpayments to players, it starts with the GM's and keeping guys like Perry and Getzlaf under 7 million cause the cap likely won't be anywhere near 70 million in the near future.  Don't be surprised to see Perry sign for 6.7ish and Getzlaf at about 5.8.  The lower cap, GM's can't afford to be idiots with their money like the Wild's GM and winners like Garth Snow.

The cap being lowered ultimately dropped the value of each player by 10% regarding their cap hit.

I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed, but Ian White has been complete garbage this year.  He's decent on the PP, but Smith can take his spot when he gets back.  The biggest complaint I have about White is that he can't make the first pass to save his life.  Every time he gets the puck in the defensive zone he blindly throws it up the boards and 90% of the time it gets stopped at the blue line by the other team.  It's about time to put Huskins back in the line up and put White in the press box with tapes to watch illustrating how you make a break out pass.

After laughing with my dad for a while about the Wings 6-0 loss and the fact that we have 1 player under 25, it's time to start the Ken Holland quote thread.  

"I like our team"

"We may miss the playoffs this year"

"The power play is our enforcer"

I'm gonna go ahead and join my dad in hoping the Wings tank this season cause i'd love to see them get not only McKinnon but find a way to get Ryan Pulock from the Brandon Wheat Kings.  Here's a quote for Kenny after last nights game where none of our guys sharpened their skates...."it's time to get younger and draft a guy in the top 5 for the first time since Yzerman, and not give Yzerman our 1st rounder to make Tampa better."