unsaddleddonald

 

Cleary created Cleary's goal.  

Lol, gimme a break....

 

White should be replacing him already.  

 

But White is gone after this season, while Smith appears to be the future according to Holland and Babcock.  

 

Personally, I think winning now is more important than worrying about a single player's development.  White gives us a better chance to win now.

You guys know that Smith helped create Cleary's goal.......right?

I think to win, we will need Fil or Mule to do something here.

Ok game from each of them so far.

Absolutely.  Look, any direct comparison to Datsyuk is going to sound ridiculous because they will NEVER be another player quite like #13.  But if you watched Datsyuk play in that first rookie season (2001-02), Nyquist reminds me a lot of what I saw from Datysuk in those early years.  Datsyuk had obvious creativity and puckhandling skills, but he'd string about 2 or 3 ideas together and then would either run out of ideas, run out of time, or get planted on his butt.  What made Datsyuk into a world-class star was his work effort, added upper body strength, his dedication to the 2-way game, and the added experience of what he could do with the puck in the NHL.  Logic tells you that a 34-year-old Datsyuk can't be as explosive as he was 10 years ago, but his game (like Larionov before him) is so cerebral that I swear there are times he's playing better hockey now than he ever has.

 

Before this year, Tatar was the player that I thought was most "Datsyuk"-like.  Over the past month or so, I've become a huge Nyquist fan.  That stick check he does is so similar to Datsyuk's, it's almost as if he taught it to him one-on-one.  Time will tell if Nyquist has the additional tools to put it all together, but could you think of a better mentoring situation than playing around 13 and 40?

 

The idea that we have Nyquist, Tatar, and Jurco, and if two out of those three could become even 70% of what Datsyuk and Zetterberg are, this team could be in better shape than most people predicted.

This

Ray Ferraro on Vancouver's team 1040 this morning talking about Nyquist. He says unfortunately Filppula will have a market value of 5 million and Detroit will not be able to keep him. Nyquist will be his replacement.

 

 

I'm thinking maybe not as good on defense but definitely a more potent offense of threat.

Tatar replaces Nyquist on the third line. i hate to see Filppula go, but I think we can live with it.

I agree he is not at Fil's defensive ability YET, but he definitely has the potential.

That shift last night where he stole the puck from Kane TWICE was awesome!!!!