Jocke

‘Twas The Night Before Playoffs

 

 ‘Twas the night before Playoffs and all through the Joe

Not a player was skating, not fast and not slow.

The jerseys were hung from the rafters with care

Stevie, Sid, Gordie, Terry, Ted, and Alex were there.

 

The fans in Detroit were all snug in their beds,

While Stanley Cup fever danced ‘round in their heads.

Val Filppula, Gustav Nyquist, Colaiacovo, you see

Would star in their dreams of what would soon be.

 

Next day on the ice there would be such a clatter,

That, for true fans of hockey, nothing else would matter.

Away to the arena, we fly like a flash,

(Unless we can’t get tickets, ‘cause we don’t have the cash).

 

The laser light show on the freshly groomed ice

Would light up the way as we welcome our guys!

Then, what to our wondering eyes should appear?

But the best of the NHL, at least so far this year.

 

Now Z is our Captain, a new forward named Brunner

It’s time to re-tool, it couldn’t have happened sooner.

More rapid than eagles, the players they came,

And we whistled and shouted, and called them by name.

 

“Now Kindl! Now Kronwall!  Now, go, Kyle Quincey!

On Datsyuk! On DeKeyser! And, now, Danny Cleary!

Into the Playoffs!  With the best of the League!

There’s no turning back!  There will be no fatigue!”

 

“There’s Bertuzzi!, Tomas Tatar, and Ian White!

Jan Mursak!  Riley Sheahan!  They’ll all show their might!

Thanks to Petr Mrazek and Brendan Smith!

We got to this point, this team knows no quit!”

 

No rest for the worry, surely we’ll whelm!

Here’s Franzen! And Ericsson! And now Darren Helm!!

There’s Tootoo! and Andersson! and Jimmy in net.

Drew Miller, Patrick Eaves, the best fourth line yet!

 

They say we’re getting old, we know that’s not true

We simply reload and reload, that’s what we do!

With Lashoff and Abby and don’t forget Cory

Our young guys can bring it, there’ll be no worry!

 

As the Blackhawks and the Ducks and Canucks all cry,

When they meet with the Wings, and their Stanley dreams die.

As the Penguins do crumble and Montreal meets with fate,

The Bruins and Capitals will just have to wait.

 

Then, dressed up so nicely, in the best they could find,

The coaches line up, with the trainers behind.

There’s Renny, and Bill Peters, and head coach Mike Babcock

And, on the bench, The Monster, our faithful back-up!

 

A lock-out shortened season

Caused some frustration and tears.

Would we keep the streak alive?

Yes!  Now it’s 22 years!!

 

Ken Daniels makes the calls, he’s in no hurry

And on a sad note, oh how we miss Larry Murphy!

Our eyes, how they twinkle!  Our hearts are so merry!

With Redmond to comment, or maybe Don Cherry.

 

With a wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Mike soon had assured us we had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word; these guys know how to win

To the Finals we go, we can do this again.

 

They spring to the ice, as the referees whistle,

In pursuit of the Cup they will fly like a missile.

And the fans will exclaim, whether they lose or they win,

“Go, Red Wings!  We Love You!  What a great year it’s been!”

 

GO WINGS!!!

SO SO happy ... cuz that means we didn't get him !!  

franzen blows the clear ends up in the back of the net ******

Didn't catch the first period, but how come Tootoo takes a fighting major and instigator when we're up 2-0? Columbus even scored on that PP..

Dorsett tried to start sumthin with Ericsson...Tootoo stepped in, and proceeded to smack Dorsett around (broken nose from the looks of it)...Hence the 2 min instigator added on for Tootoo.

Caring about the fans does not mean capitulating to the other side.

I would hope they love the game more than it's fans.
This deal also will affect hundreds of players not even in the league yet, there are more things to consider than "will fan X have something to do after work tonight?"

I want hockey back also, but in no way am I pretending I am the victim here.

The simple fact: The OWNERS locked out the PLAYERS, because the OWNERS saw a opportunity to take back guaranteed contract money and use it to subsidize teams in non-traditional markets.

I sign contracts with people all the time, never has anyone ever suggested that I take less money and do the same amount of work.
I don't know why people feel entitled to these players, they don't owe you anything, they owe their family for all the time they are gone and cutting their household income by 1/4 doesn't fly.

If Mario had to give back 1/4 of his money back in the day then there might not be a Penguins team today.
Yet now he has the balls to demand that of the people he inspired to join this profession.

Bottom Line: The league is not losing money, it is earning a profit. Some teams are winning, others losing.
The heaviest contributing factor to the losing of said teams is that they don't have a big enough fan base in their non-traditional market.
Taking money from the players allows owners to operate the flawed system longer, but does nothing to fix the problem.
If there is no problems then what will they point to next time they feel like changing all the rules because their team can not win the cup.

damn if he wore 69 it would be perfect.....so close

Back in the 80's, and even up to the late 90's Kronwall would've been forced to stand up for himself - clean hit, or not...Intimidation had it's role back then.

With that being said - today's game is much different, and with the rules in place he doesn't have to worry as much about retaliation - although getting jumped can still happen.

Not really, unless he went after a star player.  

Back in the 80s and into the 90s players actually accepted that a clean hard hit was part of the game.  They'd take a number and get him back later.  

Players jumping guys for throwing a clean hard hit is a relatively recent development.

Rick Nash scores about 32 goals per game and gets about 65 points per season on average.  The players that Howson got are younger and have some great upswing to them all.  Will any of them be a Rick Nash powerhouse player?  Its unknown.  Anisimov is still not in his prime and Dubinsky is younger but has had a 50 point season.  Plus, they get a promising young defender AND a 1st round pick.  I don't know if Howson got fleeced, but he could have gotten a little more.

Smith replaces Lidstrom?  Kindl replaces Stuart?  More like Kronwall replaces Lids, Quincey replaces Stuart and we still need a top 4 d-man.

esteef

I'm looking into the page navigation for the mobile version. It'll likely have to wait until after the craziness this week, however.

Is there a way to choose the page you would like to go to without hitting the next or previous button numerous times?  In the old version, there were page numbers before you clicked on the post.

While Lids is retired, Suter is no Lids and wanted too much money. Like Parise i'm glad he signed elsewhere.

Also, 13 years is bulls***.

Time to fire Holland

for not overpaying? these guys both got about 3 million more than they are worth.

Shanny deserves to be there, and will be.

Sundin lugged around dead weight for wingers for almost 13 years and still scored over 1,300 points. He took Jonas Hoglund, an absolute worthless sack of crap of a hockey player and got nearly 30 goals out of him.

Everyone on the list is a lock. Shanny is just the odd man out. But he will be there.