StormJH1

Is it wrong that after all the "world is ending" threads that would have plagued the forums, the thing that worried me most about missing the playoffs was the lack of Photoshop Wars?

 

I had the same thought.  Show me a person who said "we might as well miss the playoffs if we're not going to do anything" and I'll show you a person that hasn't thought about all of the fun, excitement, and traditions that go into the "2nd Season".  Photoshop wars are classic.  I even love it when fans of the other teams hop on an post an anti-Wings one here and there.

 

So far, loving both the "Boudreau as Butterbean" and especially the "Bertuzzi with Shotgun Firing Puck through Duck Wing".  But it's still early.  Great work!

That game was a disaster in Calgary, but ALL goalies have bad games, and when they do, your team generally loses.  The 2nd goal was arguably as much due to sloppy stick-handling by Ericsson.  The third one was all on Howard, but it is what it is.  If this were M-A Fleury or another goalie with a track record of being sloppy out of the net, maybe I'd get worked up about it.  The fact is that Howard doesn't have a history with that crap, so we need to get past this one VERY unfortunate loss and grab whatever points we can in the few remaining games.

I thought BEFORE the season and all the injuries that Sammy and Bert were already done being effective Top 6 players.  For all the unfair stuff this organization gets blamed for, the MOST fair criticism is their apparent reliance on "crutch" players they go back to (and usually overpay) when nothing else works out.  They did it with Bert, Jason Williams, and Kyle Quincey, and probably others. 

 

People say guys like Tatar aren't "ready" to be Top 6 forwards on a playoff team, but if their replacement is a guy who no longer belongs in the Top 6, that's even worse because you're riding declining players into their NHL grave, when you could be developing and evaluating young players on the way up.

I think we will have a Luongo/Schneider similar situation on our hands in 3 years when other teams try to rip us off if we try moving Howard to make room for Mrazek.

Wow.  Can everybody just calm down a little bit about Petr Mrazek?  Mrazek is 21 years old with virtually no track record.  He doesn't factor into a Jimmy Howard signing whatsoever.  Based on where he was drafted, anything with him is gravy.  If he ever becomes a passable NHL backup who could threaten for a starting job, that would be a terrific problem to have.  Not quite clear just how terrible the Luongo/Schneider situation is for Vancouver, given that they're leading their division and have tons more firepower than Detroit, even with Kesler in and out of the lineup.

 

I'm thrilled we got Howard re-signed.  All the people saying how much money we have under the cap, etc. were under some delusion that Jimmy Howard wasn't going to get paid like a #1 goalie.  There's really group of about 10-15 goalies in today's league that make up the "top" goalies in the league.  Will Howard ever win a Cup with us?  I don't know, but if he doesn't, I highly doubt he will be the largest reason for that. 

 

If the AAV is $5.3 million, that's about right for Howard.  It certainly isn't a "bargain", though there are plenty of goalies around the league that make $6 to $8 million per that play at or below Howard's level. 

 

The criticism about signing guys that "can't score" is fair, but also totally ridiculous to bring up in a discussion about a franchise goaltender.  For all the stuff Holland has arguably "screwed up" or "missed" on, let it be known be known that he drafted, developed, and retained a franchise-caliber goaltender without the aid of a Top 10 pick.

The Flyers freakin' love Couturier.  They may trade him for the right deal, and for Cap-related issues, but not unless the return is better than Jonathan Ericsson.

This isn't a thread about Jimmy Howard, but I really don't believe in "elite" goaltenders anymore.  There are guys like Kiprusoff, Giguere, and Cam Ward who have won Cups and were considered "elite-level" netminders at points in their career....and then look completely ordinary at other times.  Team defense and system certainly has a lot to do with that.

 

I think there's minimum level of competency and consistency you need to prove as a goaltender that places you in the first or second "tier" of goaltenders, and any one of those guys could be good enough to do the job in the right circumstance.  Problem is, I think there's literally 15 of those guys.  Lundquist, Rinne, Luongo, Niemi, Price, Ryan Miller....all those guys are capable of playing at at top level, and I think Jimmy Howard is somewhere in that group.  At the same time, I could easily see a guy like Rinne or Price not being nearly has well regarded in 3 years, if their performances tail off a bit.

 

I feel like in the "dead puck" era, the combination of a defensively-oriented game and no salary cap (which allowed teams like Detroit, Colorado, etc. to restock) helped breed these "super goalies" like Roy, Brodeur, Belfour, Hasek, etc.  All of them were greats, but I'm not sure you could have dropped them into this era and expected 10-15 year careers of sustained superstardom.  With those adjusted expectations in mind, we're damn lucky to have Jimmy Howard, and luckier still that he doesn't cost what Luongo costs (yet, anyway).

Absolutely and the proof is in the pudding. I'm sorry but there is zero percent chance Larry Murphy taped that Nashville intro while under the influence, yet he still was rambling, mumbling, and falling over his own words. He simply just had a little trouble getting what he wanted out sometimes. I can do the same thing time to time, I can understand this. Anyone does. He just did it at a more accelerated rate which makes me think he actually had a problem. I don't think awkwardness played a huge role, but it could have been influential. He did play professional hockey in front of millions, and has been on the air for over 10 years now, I can't say he still has the jitters being in-front of the camera.

 

I think the biggest thing is what VM just said. I would HATE for these rumors to get into the media and run rampant.  

 

I'm an out-of-market fan, so I don't always catch the cold opens on GameCenter.  For whatever reason, I caught that Nashvillle one.  It was creepy and weird, but I blamed 95% of that on a stupid idea by FSN staffers.  At no point did it even occur to me he might have been drinking.  Especially since they probably taped it a 1:30pm on a game day with a camera crew following him around.  (Was pretty funny when Ken Daniels was walking in the crowd of Wings fans - male and female - and you couldn't even find him because he's like 5'5"). 

 

I understand this is message board forum, that Murph got fired, and people are just going to toss out possible reasons why that happened.  There's just no evidence of it, and it doesn't do any good.

People are losing sight of the fact this was a MID-season firing.  If FSD has a meeting in August and decides, "Look, Murphy's just too akward on camera, we have better options for that job", I would have had zero problem with that.  Letting him go before a road trip in March in the midst of a truncated 99-day season is either indicitive of some type of misconduct, or is a HUGE slap in the face.

This is really sad and classless.  As an out-of-market Wings fan, it's pretty jarring to see how low-quality that broadcast has become.  Everything from the 80's era looking studio work to selling out the entire broadcast to an ambulance chaser law firm...and they blame Murph for the ratings.  Right.  Anyone with a GameCenter Live account who watches other broadcasts can see what i'm talking about.   What I hate most is that ex-players on the broadcast (like Mick and Verbeek also) is a way of keeping players "in the family". Murph actually WANTS to live in Detroit and wanted to keep covering the team, and FSD decided they don't need him. Sad. Sent on iPhone using Tapatalk

Going to a local bar with a couple of Wild bros. Busting out my Fedorov jersey OH YEAH!!

 

These two teams usually play each other tough.

 

Hopefully we can get the 2 points tonight. *fingers crossed*

 

My buddies at work are both pretty big Wild fans.  I happened to be visiting Detroit for a wedding on July 4th, but the taunting and absurd wave of optimism after they landed Parise/Suter that day was pretty rough.  Whereas the Wings/Wild game used to be a cute little novelty, now they seem like serious business.

 

Wild and Wings have also been almost identical in the standings all year, so there's a realistic chance that one of these teams makes the Top 8 at the other's expense.  Wild are see-sawing with VAN for the division league, but if they don't win the division, they're in a horse race with everyone else to get in.

 

Go Wings! 

This move infuriates me.  My rage was slightly reduced upon learning that they did it to call up Nyquist.  But Nyquist is 23, and probably should've been up here on Day 1. Tatar is 22 years old but he has a skill set that many NHL'ers will never have.  The fact that Abdelkader and Cleary continue to destroy Pavel Datsyuk on the top line while we drop two in a row to Columbus...and then send down Tatar?  Makes no sense to me.

 

The problem with "overripe" is that just as soon as these guys get established on the Wings, you look up and Valterri Filppula is turning 29 next week.  The longer you string these guys out, the more tempted you become to fill the roster with padding like Samuelsson, Cleary, and Tootoo that cost more than young players and have little to no hope of making us a better offensive team.

 

Hope he's back sooner than later, he felt like he was on the verge of becoming a difference maker.

The only thing that surprises me is how many people thought the lockout would translate to lower cap hits. I thought he could get around $10M as a UFA so this seems about right.

I almost spontaneously combuted when I read that AAC value.  I agree that there are players who could get $10 million per year, but the idea that Getzlaf is an upper-end trend-setter for that trend is borderline absurd.  This guy had 11 goals in 82 games last year.  His playmaking is unquestionably elite, but his numbers are basically Saku Koivu. 

 

I know the guy won a Cup, but you can't contribute that kind of money to a guy.  As was said above, how do you Corey Perry or Bobby Ryan for LESS than that now?  I'm pretty sure anyone who had to guess who would be the most productive out of those 3 in the next 8 years would have Getzlaf 3rd in that discussion (I would, anyway).

I remember Sami Salo saying in an interview that he wore a neck protector for a while but quit because he got tired of his teammates making fun of him. One would think that after what happened to Zednik the attitudes would've changed.

 

Maybe this has something to do with the body language of when you're facing someone with your nose up giving the impression that you're not afraid to the extent that you even keep your most vulnerable part visible and uncovered. This is just me thinking out loud because in reality I have no idea why hockey players talk about safety and wear some protection but at the same time aren't interested in wearing some very sginificant pieces of equipment. The idea of (male) players wearing full face masks would make most hockey fans laugh.

 

Great story.  Shows how hockey, as much as any other sport, really celebrates old school machismo, and is slow to adapt to modern realities.  I remember a similar story about Tony Granato in the 90's after he had some concussion problems, and players made fun of him for wearing a thicker helmet.  Guys like Gretzky wore those Jofa helmets that were basically a thin piece of plastic with only enough padding to make it comfortable.  They weren't even HECC certified.  A lot of players they asked about it basically said that "vanity" and not wanting to get made fun of were the primary reasons they didn't wear more equipment.

 

Occasionally, you'd hear a guy say that they couldn't see as well through them, but given that 61% of the league now wears some type of shield (including Crosby and some of the highest skill players), that's obviously mind over matter.  

 

I would mandate it to "save players from themselves", the same way helmets needed to be mandated, and even then, Craig MacTavish was still allowed to risk cracking his head open into the mid-90's.  People say it's overreaction to a freak accident, but that's absurd.  There's been SO many close calls.  Brendan Shanahan almost lost an eye when he was with the Devils.  Yzerman had the orbital bone fracture and started wearing one full-time afterwards.  And the Hossa/Berard incident wasn't a "near miss", that really did wreck Berard's career.

 

Will it prevent eye injuries from ever happening?  Probably not.  But I see no that it would harm the game in any other way, and I think it could only help.  Henrik Sedin got absolutely rocked in the face by a shot late last night, from almost the same angle as the M. Staal shot.  It stunned him and knocked him on his feet, but he got up and was perfectly fine afterwards, and I think the only difference was the visor.

The saying used to go..."where is the best place to get tickets to a Wings game"? answer..."United Center".

 

I love now that the Hawks have a good team that everyone forgets their history...no broadcast TV...the Eric Daze and Alexei Zhamnov years...they were named Worst Franchise in Sports by ESPN in 2004, they straight up sucked from 1998 to recently when they got all those great lottery draft picks. Like Pittsburgh as well.

 

Red Wing history is not always spectacular either, but that was late 70's, early 80's. And now they say. Oh, now that they aren't that good, they run to the other conference? I guess they are tired of being a doormat for the last 20 years. We helped them get those Top 3 picks. You're welcome.

I haven't forgotten Chicago's history (routinely bottom 10 in attendance pre-lockout), but that's an oversimplification.  They routinely have some of the best attendance in the league now.  Their old ownership was so bad people couldn't even get the games on TV (and the team sucked).  TV viewership and fan interest is one thing, but when it comes to putting butts in the seats and the prohibitive costs of ticket sales, I really don't blame "casual" fans for staying home when the product is terrible.

 

Also, I wonder how Detroit would rank if you measured ACTUAL attendance as a percentage of tickets sold.  JLA is embarrassing at times on TV, especially in the lower bowl - it looks like 15,000 to 17,000 out of 20k capacity actually show up for games.  Of course, those are terribly expensive tickets you see, but even they're corporate, somebody has that ticket and is sitting on it.

I want realignment badly, but (a) I'm not getting too excited about any one plan, given what happened to the 2011 plan; and (b) I'm not sure I like a lot of the proposals that put us in with a bunch of "Eastern" teams.

 

The argument that the Red Wings shouldn't be in the "West" has merit, but if you look at a map of the franchises, so do the arguments that would keep us there.  I'm also privy to another angle on this debate, living in Minnesota.  Wild fans here are convinced that they have it the worst in the league right now (well, except for Winnipeg's temporary arrangement) because they are a Central timezone team that exclusively plays teams in Pacific/Mountain timezones.  They also rack up a ton of travel heading out to Vancouver, and 3 of their 4 division opponents are Canadian, which probably causes more issues with customs, etc.

 

On the other hand, look at a map of the U.S., and Minnesota is basically dead in the middle of it.  Detroit, meanwhile has a ton of in-conference games with a three-hour time difference, and a large amount of travel.  Those games are as late as 10:30pm starts in the D, whereas the latest a Wild game can start is 9:30pm.  

 

I liked the original realignment proposal because kept us in with Midwest teams like Chicago and Minnesota, and would prevent us from ending up on the West Coast for the first two rounds of the playoffs.  Anybody over the age of 25 probably recalls all those playoff series against San Jose, Anaheim, and Los Angeles in the 90's/early 2000's, those late starts were pretty brutal (and they frequently went to overtime).

 

But as much tradition as Montreal, Toronto, and Boston have, I just don't feel a strong connection to playing those teams as a Wings fan.  Granted, nobody really wants to have a "rivalry" with towns like Columbus or Nashville, but that argument would apply to any team equally.  Long story short, I'm not so sure that I do want to trade CHI, MIN, and STL for BOS, TOR, and MTL

Since I'm an avowed Tootoo hater, I do feel obligated to check in and give him credit for the last few games.  For what Tootoo "is", he's been extremely effective the past few games.  I actually found myself wanting him more on the ice, though I'm not sure that's a testament to him or just how irrelevant guys like Abdelkader and Miller have been.

Still, given that we did LOSE the game, and have lost several where Tootoo has been "active" in this manner, I do think you have to put that in the context of the "end result" and ask if you like watching Tootoo because it makes you feel good, or if you truly believe he's making us a more effective team.  Tootoo stepped in to a fight between Dorsett and Ericsson, which was (a) kinda embarrassing to Ericsson given his size, and (b) borderline worthy of an additional penalty or suspension for 3rd man in (Ericsson hadn't really engaged yet, so it wasn't that bad).  Oh, and by the way, the Blue Jackets scored right after we fired up their whole bench, and held the momentum for much of the rest of the game.

 

Similar thing late in the game where Tootoo pretty blatantly dove and took that minor in the 3rd that put us on the power play.  Yes, it worked, so Tootoo deserves credit for that.  But he was also warned by the referee, and that very easily could have been called a dive, which might have been disastrous.  

 

The reason I dislike Tootoo so much isn't really about me disliking him as a person or even his game (though both of those are occasionally true).  I just fundamentally don't believe that crap "fits" on a team like this because in a 2-2 or 2-1 hockey game, I believe the Red Wings are better at actually playing hockey than the Columbus Blue Jackets.  Players like Tootoo have a target on their back with both opposing goons and referees.  Simply by putting him on the ice, the game becomes about Tootoo running around.  The game devolves into chaos, and in a chaotic game, the skill advantage of the Red Wings is dissipated.  Fans are stuck in the "Cold War" mentality of the Wings getting pulverized by the Devils and beat around the rink by the Avalanche before we won our Cups.  That's not what I see happening now (and it's also a different game than 15 years ago).  Tootoo isn't the "reason" the Wings are struggling - he doesn't play enough for that to be true.  But throwing him on the ice is always going to him, and that's not going to benefit the team long-term.

Correct but there is a point where they get too over-riped in the minors and need to come up to the majors.  

 

The Winner!

 

-Not having a post-Lidstrom sucession plan in place.

 

Honorable Mentions

-Franzen vs. Hossa

-Uwe Krupp debacle.

-Not getting more Defensive Depth when you knew Lidstrom was going to retire in a few years.

-The Jimmy Carson Trade.

Border Line (I couldn't decide if they should go)

-Robert Lang trade.   There are a lot of factors that went to this one including A. The Fact he was leading the league in scoring at the time B. The 2009 Cap mess etc.

 

You listed a lot there, and some of them go further back and are good examples.  I think the Krupp situation is a good example of a "mistake", at least in retrospect.  Of course, poaching a 6'6" right-handed defenseman from your bitter rival probably seemed like a great idea at the time.  He had missed a good amount of time previously due to injury, but predicting the whole thing with the dog sledding while he was supposed to be rehabbing (and the grievance) would have been hard to foresee.  http://blog.mlive.co...wings_no_9.html

 

But the "failing to have a Lidstrom succession plan" one, which you are far from the only person to suggest, just makes me chuckle because you CAN'T find another Lidstrom, and it's not like having 2 "good" defenseman is the same as having 1 "elite" one that logs 25 minutes a game and virtually never screws up (not to mention quarterbacking the power play).

 

Plus, unless you're talking about Chris Pronger, Scott Niedermayer, or Zdeno Chara, it's really pretty hard to find examples of defenseman that are so impactful you could basically plug them into any team and have an instant defensive powerhouse.  No better example of that right now than what is happening with Ryan Suter in Minnesota.  I was among the people who really wanted him here, but it turns out that when your partner is Tom Gilbert instead of Shea Weber, suddenly your defense doesn't look as stellar.  

 

The problem the Wings had with replacing the defensive corps is the same they have all over the team.  Other than Suter, there really was no "free agency" fix for a top-tier defenseman in the offseason.  You could argue that Holland should have traded for one, but since the Red Wings rarely have draft picks above the 20th pick, it's not like the Red Wings have elite caliber prospects like a Hodgson or Kassian that you see swapped around for considerable value before their careers have taken off (in that case, they were swapped for each other).  If the Wings are lucky enough to develop the next Datsyuk or Zetterberg, that won't be apparent to the league until they're already proven pros, at which point we'd probably want to keep that player.

 

And even though the Wings seem to trade their 1st rounder basically every other year, it's almost a guaranteed low first rounder, so the returns are more like Kyle Quincey than Jonas Brodin or Victor Hedman.  

Nobody doubts that the defense is a problem, but to call it a "mistake" seems a bit unfair, or unrealistic.