RyanBarnes!

Mattias was a member of the gold winning Swedish WJCH team in 2012! Potential top four defenseman I would say.

"You hated him 364 days a year and on the 365th day you got your Stanley Cup ring"

-Steve Shutt, Montreal Canadiens, on Scotty Bowman.

Always liked that qoute. I imagine Babcock being somewhat similar.

Players being able to police themselves. That is what I really miss.

I'll trade that potential number one pick for the playoffs without hesitation.

I am totally OK with trading him. I don't want him back here. He is a fairly good player but everyone loves to think about Flip's "upside". That's it, you're seeing it. What you see is the fully formed Flip. It's not like he is going to go to another team and start going to the dirty areas to score, shoot first, and show toughness.

Me too. Even if he would improve, I dont ever think he is going to be a $5M player. I'm tired of seeing him trying to deke three players and spin around inside the offensive blueline. Trade him at the draft and spend the money elsewhere. Jarnkrok or Nyqvist can have his spot.

I watched a tape of top 10 highlight goals back in the early 90s and some guy with a cool sounding name scored the # 3 and # 1 highlight goals on the list so I became a fan of him and the team. The player's name was Steve Yzerman.

List of expendable players: 
 
Bertuzzi
Abdelkader
Cleary
Miller
Eaves
Emmerton
White
Cola
Samuelsson

You cannot be serious about putting Abdelkader on this list! That is just silly.

I'd be happy to get rid of some of the veteran depth, but the streak must not end.

Sproul is 6'4, 200 lbs, 18 goals, 40 assissts for 58 points in 39 games.  That's just nasty on D.  Probably our future top Offensive Dman.
 
Ouellet is 6'0, 187 lbs, 9 goals, 27 assists for 36 points in 40 games.  He's one hell of a 2-way Dman that was even better than Dougie Hamilton on our terrible Canadian WJC blueline.  
 
Those 2 will hopefully make the best D pairing in the league in a few years, as Keith and Seabrook were when the Hawks won the Cup in 2010.

Even if they make it to the NHL, it will take several years before they will be regulars. Let alone top pairing defensemen. Meech also made the Canadien WJC squad once.

This is good. I'm OK with Howard at $5M. Not so fine with Filppula at that price though. He is more like a $4M at best IMO.

I like Dubinsky.

Huskins did a good job, but Howard really kept us in the game.Too bad, the Red Wings didn't get much offense going until the third period. Babcock must split Zetterberg and Datsyuk because it is obvious that Filppula/Franzen is not much of a threat together. It looked much better when Franzen was paired with Zetterberg/Brunner and Datsyuk was put with Filppula. When Helm gets back I would like to see him with Tootoo and Cleary on the third line. I think the offense must improve to lessen the pressure on our defense. On a good note, not that many penalties yesterday. White must definitely be brought back next year or else there will be trouble.

I thought Lashoff was great, but he made mistakes the same as Smith did.  They just didn't cost us much.  Both look to be great additions and this experience will just improve them.  

It is always like that. People only tend to remember the mistakes leading to a goal or the mistakes by the whipping boy. Kronwall made a terrible pass that was picked up by a Blue Jacket right in the crease in the third that could easily have cost us the game but Howard bailed him out and then people forget about it.

Agreed. This should be the year for Kronwall. He is definetely  capable #1.

Kronwall for breaking the 70 point barrier and Howard for winning the Vezina.