number9

I generally agree with you Fourth Line Grinder but for Weber it would be worth it, he is exactly what we need on our defense (he suits our needs much more than Suter does because he is mean , a right handed shot and a better hockey player than Suter).  A dominant Norris Trophy defenseman is easily worth 3 lesser players which the drat choices will certainly be, Nashville would probably match the offer though

Say you have 3 average apples, each worth 25 cents....Then you see a really kick ass tasty apple valued at 50 cents (whoa that's double the value of just one of my average apples!!! it must be a helluva good apple!!!) So you trade your three average apples for that 1 awesome apple that you just had to have....You now have a great apple but you paid 75 cents for something that is worth 50 cents....That's a bad business decision and Holland doesn't make bad business decisions.

Having a Norris caliber D-man on your roster does not equal a championship

Offer sheets are dooshy.... We are classy

Weber will be UFA after next season, so why waste picks?

Also, they will match any offer....and if they didn't the contract would be inflated (another bad thing for business)

Since neither of you have any knowledge about business, let me explain. If a team has 100 million in revenue, which is what the Jets have, they may repeat may have 45-55 million to spend on payroll. Out of the 100 million they have to: pay taxes, pay for their front office, pay for their minor league teams, give the ownership some form of profit, pay the vendors for the beers, dogs, brats, popcorn, etc.... Pay the rent to the arena, and so one. This is the high water mark. They will never sell as much mer. etc.... because they are not the hot new thing anymore. Everyone has a jersey already. The arena they play in lacks the lux. suites needed to rake in the money needed. They may be allowed to spend 70 million in payroll, but they will never have the money to do it untill: they get a wealthy owner that only cares about winning.  Maybe then they will be able to. Untill such time they will have to operate like a small market baseball team does. Go wathc the movie moneyball. That is what the jets will have to do, and make zero mistakes along the way to win.
That being said, I hope they do make it. It is good for the league.

WTF?

No on EMF because it's not 1990 and the song sucked back then too & no on Gary Glitter because it's not 1972 & personally, I think it would be a good thing to keep all association with kiddie porn out of the new arena.  Parents, keep this guy away from the young 'uns:



I say keep the personalized goal songs for players but just update them a bit. I've always been disappointed they never busted out Tool's song 'Hooker with a Penis' as Hudler's goal song.

+1

1. But that was because they were the hot new thing. The question that no one knows the answer to is: will it last. I would bet no. Win. is just to small of a market to keep them going. That is why the jets-now yotes moved in the first place.

2. Now you can spew whatever you want about me untill your fingers hurt. i really couldn't care less. But at least try to have any proof or evidence in anything you say when you do it. Which to date you do not. have a good day.

1. Well all the evidence suggests you are wrong. Plus, I was under the impression that the league very much regretted moving out of Winnipeg the first time around.

2. I thought he did pretty good. He provided more evidence than your opinion and article did. Doesn't that article kind of hurt your case? Not to hate on the writer of it, but that wasn't a bombshell....And Winnipeg may be a small market but Canadian markets always do wayyyy better than American ones, I'd throw my hat in Winnipeg's ring before most of the southern U.S. teams.

have a good night.

Nick continues to leave me speechless....what an amazing athlete and human being

Congratulations. You have been awarded "arrogant statement of the year". This one is even spewing with entitlement too! The verbal vomit you're spitting up isn't worth the Red Wings toilet paper you wipe your homer ass with. I've been around a lot of years and seen a lot of ignorant fans, but you sir take the cake. Let's review your statements.

1: Ken Holland is a hockey god and because of his "track record", we are going to be just fine and soon we'll be dominating the league once again because we are the Red Wings and we just will cuz I said so.

2: Our prospects are the best in the league and can do no wrong. It's only a matter of time before the next Datsyuk, Zetterberg and Lidstrom arrive at training camp. We're totally set! It's actually a good thing we have no first round pick this year. Then we'd have way too many blue chip prospects!

3: Detroit is the only place FA's want to sign. Even though we have had 3 consecutive early exits in the playoffs thanks to an aging core of players who are slow and losing production, we're still the best! Ken Holland actually has to beat FA's away with a stick in July. He actually has to have 8 different cell phones ready on July 1 because every single FA is calling HIM just BEGGING to be signed by the Wings. Zach Parise and Ryan Suter are so desperate to sign here that they've actually agreed to play for free.

Wow....that, THAT (maybe u need to go read it again), is the most arrogant statement you ever seen? Apparently you havn't seen many ignorant fans as you so claim...I sir deserve no such prestigious awards I am but a loyal fan lol. But you may have claimed the overreaction of the year award haha.

1. Lol nobody said Holland was the god of hockey dude, exaggerate much? His track record has shown time and time again that we will be fine, he gets the job done. History and evidence points to this, and not the contrary. Saying Holland is going to have an epic fail and screw the team up this year is like saying Lidstrom is going to come out and play terrible defense all season. If there is one thing we can say for certain about Holland it's that he thinks 10 steps ahead into the future....he's no Holmgren....you really think he didn't anticipate and plan for the loss of Lidstrom? Guy's going to have multiple plans and tricks up his sleeve....which one he uses we have yet to see.

2. More exaggeration eh? I said we have one of the best prospect pools, not THE best. Shaman knows this and made fair evaluation of them. I also didn't say any of them will be a D, Z, or L.....And you don't need 3 of the best players in the league to win cups anyway. 1st round picks really don't matter, many 1st round picks and even top 10s never pan out.....plus the Wings are notorious for taking 1st round caliber players in the 2nd 3rd 4th and 5th. Half the players on our team right now would have gone in the top 20 of their draft classes if their was a redraft of their years.

3. Your hyperbole is amazing....of course Detroit is not the ONLY place FA's want to sign, don't be silly. However, we were voted by the players themselves as the team most desirable to play for. We are on the tops of lists for many FA's.

I want to end this with saying I am not saying that the Red Wings are screwed, because I know about as well as anyone on here what the prospect situation is, the Wings do have a great farm system, the only issues is that the best players are a couple years away from being NHL ready. It is my personal belief that replacing Lidstrom with Suter will make the transitional period the wings are in a lot smoother, and keep them as contenders.

Holland will do what needs to be done. His track record shows he's conservative, but he gets the job done. After all the great work he's done here it's alarming how little faith people have in him. He always has something up his sleeve.

IMO I think Kronwall can play the #1 spot...White can play #2, Quincey can play #3, Smith is likely capable of playing the #4 spot, Ericsson can play #5, and Kindl can play #6. Adding Suter to me is adding another #1 capable defender, and everyone would get pushed down a spot. Would we be OK without Suter? Yeah...but it'd just be "OK".....If we don't get Suter we will likely sign another #2 or #3 capable defender, which I think is fine as well, would just mean Kronners would be the undisputed #1 D-man

Green: health issues and inconsistent
Laich: were already deep at center
Helm: will never be traded

First preparing for the future usually implies that you don't have to throw big money at free agents to fill huge holes in the line up to stay competitive. Next you seemed to have implied that its myth or a conspiracy that the Wings may not be as good as we have come to expect of them next season. I sarcastically pointed out all the reasons why not filling the holes in the line up could come back and bite the Wings.

Well, I tend to follow the Red Wings prospects pretty closely. So here's a quick rundown:

Possible pure Goal scorers (high end projections of 30+ goals):
Teemu Pulkkinen
Tomas Jurco
Marek Tvrdon

Possible top D-men:
Brendan Smith

The rest of Detroit's prospect pool are full of boom or bust pass first forwards and borderline NHL energy guys, and second and third pairing D men. Of their last few first round selections only Smith is going to be a good NHL player, McCollum is trash, Riley Sheahan seems to have peaked as a borderline 3-4 liner.

Now lets be really really optimistic and say that players like Jurco, Pulkkinen, Jarnkrok, Sproul, and Marchenko all make it to the NHL. Know when this is likely to happen? More than likely 2015-2016. So between then and now there's not much in Grand Rapids besides players like Nyquist and Tatar and Smith to fill the holes the wings have. Now lets take a look at them: Neither Nyquist nor Tatar are goal scorers, they are puck movers, so they don't fill the needs of the top 6 for a legit goal scorer. Now Brendan Smith: hes a blue chip D prospect, but his biggest hole is he is young and he has the offense first attitude. He has the abilities to become a really good top pairing D-man but he needs time to learn the NHL game and mature abit. So does he fill Lidstroms shoes? or even give Detroit a top 20 D man? The answer is no. So now this leaves one option to fill the glaring holes in the line up: Go outside the organization.

There are two routes for this #1 Free agency, and their are 2 players on the market July first that fill the needs of the Wings' line up, Suter and Parise. If Detroit doesn't land these two players they can either pick up filler players like Semin and Wideman who both are not nearly as good as Suter and Parise or they can trade. The biggest problem with trading is other teams will want players back, the first players on the list will be Pulkkinen, Jarnkrok, Smith and Filppula, and on top of that they will probably also want some picks. This is bad for obvious reasons first Detroit's farm system is good but its not deep with blue chip talent, there is a lot of boom or bust guys, so trading the players who are most likely to make it in the NHL hurts the Wings in the future (short sighted).



There is nothing in Abdelkader's past that points to him being 1/2 as good a goal scorer as Jokinen was. Remember kiddo that Jokinen has been close to 40 goals 3 different times with the Panthers.

Sorry but this is the same doom n gloom garbage people spewed when Yzerman retired. Holland and Co's track record shows that we will be just fine. We have one of the top prospect pools in the league and are still the top FA destination in the league. Many of our prospects are pass first players because that's the system we run, thus it's only natural we have as many as we do. And we don't need to fill Lidstrom's shoes, we need to fill a number 1 D spot, which most likely Kronwall will do unless Suter comes here. We will continue to have great players trickle through and we will sign the Rafalski's and Hossa's as needed.

Komisarek, Phaneuf, Schenn and Liles>>>>>Gardiner. And McDonagh is part of a very young defense on the Rangers which is carried by King Henrik. So they are poor examples, and I know some Ranger fans who think McDonagh was rushed to the NHL.

This is personal opinion, but to me McDonagh looks amazingggg for a young D man. So much skill, poise, and sense. I believe defense is learned as well, but damn he must be a fast learner or something. Definitely my favorite D man not on our team. Very jealous of the Rangers. If Smith is anywhere near his caliber i will be extremely happy.

Because the Red Wings can't suffer from the loss of a great defenseman and they will always be good no matter what Holland and Co do. And a team should never prepare for a future when their stars retire because that never happens ever. And when that never happens its okay because the Wings are incapable of not making the playoffs so they can just insert any player in to the #1 D position and they will magically become Lidstrom. And its not like their are 3 very good teams in the Central not to mention the good teams on the west coast, and the separation between playoff teams and non-playoff teams is over the last few season only 2-3 points. Nope it's nothing like this, its just like those internet myths, Y2k, Mayan Calender and the Detroit Red Wings missing the playoffs due to short sighted management and NHL parity.

Yeah the wings dont have a Lidstrom anymore....but no other team has a Lidstrom either lol

who said were not preparing for the future? who said stars never retire? who said were gonna put a random d-man in the #1 spot? who said the central division/western conference was bad?
you confuse me sir, and your doom/gloom disturbs me.

Why is it, when we talk about "floaters" in the NHL, it always seems to be European players? Do these Euro's just don't care when it comes down to it? Is the NHL not as important to them? Do they get their money and just mail it in for the rest of their careers? Are there any North American floaters? I am not singling out the Euro's, but it just always seems when the word "floater" is brought up, it seems it is always referring to a European player...More times than not...What about the term "locker room cancer" I hear this thrown around alot and that seems to have been said more so of Euro's too, but at least I have heard it about a few NA's...strange if you ask me...wonder what is behind this...coincidence?

Communism

This is the doomsday scenario that Holland has seemed to never planned for. The writing has been on the wall for the last 4 seasons that Lidstrom would be gone, and it's become painfully obvious none of Kindl, Kronwall, or Ericsson were going to be the next top D-man they were thought to be. In the mean time Detroit has also been deficient in the natural goal scorer area. Holland took a chance on Franzen, but he seems to have chosen wrong and Franzen has been nowhere near what hes been before his contract. Now Detroit has been bounced early in the playoffs, the holes in the line up are mounting and players like Carle and Widemann/Semin and Doan will not fill the holes to make this team as competitive that a team needs to be to be real contenders.

The point of this is that Holland could have done a better job of transitioning the team so that they wouldn't be dependent on getting two top tier players thought FA in one offseason to stay where they have been the last 20 years.

And then Y2K will happen and the Mayans will start the apocalypse

Remember when everyone hit the panic button and wanted to see this kid rot in prison for all eternity lol? Good for him.

First of all I think the long-term outlook of a team always matters to potential FA's. Second, there is reason to think it might be now.

1. The numbers: The numbers of all our 'core' or 'star' players are and have been falling in past years save for Filpulla.
2. IMO, there are no prospects with real star potential to replace these guys that are getting older and watching their production fall. I think Smith is the closest thing to that and even he could be a bust. And even if he makes something of himself, is it going to be Nik Lidstrom something? Not likely.
3. It all starts and stops with Lidstrom for me. I think his retirement (be it this year or the next) is going to be the beginning of the end of our twenty year run. It always seems to me that when Nik goes, we go. He's the leader of this team without question and it's going to be hard to compensate for the loss of him.

1. The numbers: The numbers of all our 'core' or 'star' players (including Yzerman/Shanahan/Chelios/Hull/Hasek/ect.) are and have been falling in past years save for Zetterberg.
2. IMO, there are no prospects with real star potential to replace these guys that are getting older and watching their production fall. I think Datsyuk is the closest thing to that and even he could be a bust. And even if he makes something of himself, is it going to be Sergei Fedorov something? Not likely.
3. It all starts and stops with Yzerman for me. I think his retirement (be it this year or the next) is going to be the beginning of the end of our ten year run. It always seems to me that when Stevie goes, we go. He's the leader of this team without question and it's going to be hard to compensate for the loss of him.

no, I said experiment all you want, but get your job done this summer.  Without using the name Suter, I would think that most people would understand that means do what you need to do then look for depth experiments. But by the looks of it, I guess they don't.

"Please Mr. Holland, make this team better than last year by getting the best available player on D and O.  I like that you are looking at depth signings too! Please don't make them you first priority..."

I just think it's a silly that you think that might be his top priority.....of course its not lol its just all he can do until July 1st. Be patient.

Nyquist - ? - ?
Tatar - Jarnkrok - Jurco
? - Sheahan - ?
? - ? - ?

? - Smith
? - Ouellet
? - ?

?
Mrazek


Pulkkinen gets traded for not working hard enough