chrisdetroit

All reports say he wants to play for a contender and Detroit isn't one with their current defense.

But Pittsburgh is with their defense?

Well, his agent has contacted 12 teams including the Wings, so I believe he is trying to drive his value up for negotiations with Phx. His offensive production has been dropping over the last 5 years, and he projects to be a 3rd line winger based upon production, age, and skill set. Do the Wings need another 3rd line winger? The answer is no. And to leftwinger, 3 years at 5.5 million is a joke, that would make him paid in the same ball park of Zetterberg, and hes no Zetterberg.

Doan would bring an intangible that is worth gold.  He is older and desperately wants to win a Cup. This is EXACTLY what the Wings need.  Remember Dallas Drake.  He was the spark plug.  I want Doan on this team at almost any cost.  The one element that the Wings are missing is the passion and will to want a Cup.  Doan brings these.

PLEASE sign Doan...

I can't believe that people are trying to blame the Wings because their offer was 0.5M less than Minny's.  They went to Minny to play for their hometown team.  It had nothing to do with the 0.5M or the fact the the Wings lost in the first round.

To try and spin this into being Kenny's fault is ridiculous.

It's kinda shocking how close this is to what I was going to post. Plan B, Semin, Wideman, Hudler and youth. Bring in Josh Harding and potentially a grinder/goon like Prust that has some small level of hockey talent on top of the physical play. For this reason I'd pass on Konopka who i've seen mentioned before.

Good news is that it's now June 17th and we only have about two more weeks of this agonizing anticipation until we actually see what this team does/doesn't do to structure for the future.

My bet is that he gets Suter but not Parise then signs somebody like Semin and makes a big trade later in the summer.  Huds is not going to be back because he can get $4M+ elsewhere and Kenny has already hinted that he isn't going to offer him that kind of money.  IF Hudler accepts Kenny's offer which will be only a little more than he makes now, Huds will stay but I don't see that happening.

I also expect 1 or 2 FA signings for middle of the road guys.

Made this handy little spread sheet. it covers the 5 of our top 6 forwards that are signed for next season. has the names, ages, and 3 stats for each year from 2008 through 2012. Those stats are: GP=games played, PTS=points, and shts=shoots on goal. Black numbers are no change or improved, red numbers are declines.
Name----Age--------------------2008             2009              2010              2011              2012              
--------------------------------GP  PTS  shts  GP  PTS  shts  GP  PTS  shts  GP  PTS  shts  GP  PTS  shts  

Zetterberg--32-------------75  92  358  77  73  309  74  70  309  80  80  306  82  69  267  

Datsyk----34---------------- 82  97  264  81  97  248  80  70  203  56  59  137  70  67  164    

Franzen----33---------------72  38  199  71  59  246  27  21  91  76  55  248  77  56  211    

Burtuzzi----37---------------68  40  121  66  44  127  82  44  216  81  45  138  71  38  118    

Cleary---34------------------63  42  177  74  40  163  64  34  140  68  46  192  75  33  199

Now for some follow up. Of the 15 numbers for each player, dat has 9 reds. meaning he is declinging just about every year, in just about every catagory. it would be worse but his numbers this year are improved over 2011 when he was hurt. But his 2012 numbers are worse than his 2010 numbers. Second in red numbers is Z. he has 7 out of 15 in red. Cleary has 6 out 15 in red. Burt also has 6 out of 15 in red. franzen has declined the fewest times. Only 5 red numbers. The number that stands out to me the most, is dat's decline in shots. In 2008 he took 264 shots. Then followed by 248, 203, 137, and finally 164 this past year. Granted he played 12 fewer games, but he had 103 fewer shots! That is a 38% drop!

None of us want to se a bad RW team. We all want to win Cups every year. But we also have to face facts. The fact is we need to find our next pair of great forwards that can lead us for the next 10 years. We started this run with Yzerman and federov, then continued it with dat and Z. No where in our organization do we have 2 guys that are potential 80 point per year guys. This is Holland's big challenge. Do we trade? Sign FA's? move up in the draft somewhere?
My personnel opinion is they need to be C's. A wing by himself can't do it. A good sniper-like parise is, can't score if no one can get him the puck. One last thing. Please understand the difference between good and great. dat and Z are still good players. They are not great players anymore. They will continue to work hard, provide leadership, and score 60 to 75 points for a few more years. But they are not guys that can carry a team anymore. help carry yes, but we have to find the next pair to do the heavy lifting.


Chart was fixed, loaded poorly.....

So you have proven that you flunked statistics 101.  What a load of crap.  All of your number are totals i.e. total points, total goals, etc.  So lets's look at Datsyuk.  He missed alot of games this year due to injury.  As a result he gets a "red" mark in points, shots, goals, etc. because his totals are down and all of his totals are down for the year because of injury.  From this you conclude that he is declining.  And who cares about having individual players that put up great numbers.  It's a team sport and the Wings were once again near the top of the league in scoring.

Fail.

No.  According to Hockeysfuture.com, the Rangers prospects are ranked #13 in the league, the Wings are #15. - not much difference.

looks like we have a new whipping boy.  As happened with Hudler, I'm expecting a bounce-back season from Mule.  Sure he looked un-motivated this year and did nothing in the playoffs but everybody can have a bad year.  And before anybody says it, Franzen was playing hurt in last years playoffs.  Go back and look at his numbers in playoffs prior to last year.

I'll give the man a pass.  

By the way, you guys do realize that he lead the team in scoring this year don't you.

But don't let that fact get in the way of the whipping....

I'll never root for another team to beat us, I'll never stop hoping we win games.  That doesn't mean if I think we're over-matched, I'm going to lie and say we're not just to keep people from s***ting their pants and then throwing the contents at me.  I love the Red Wings, and I have for a long, long time.  However, when you're in a relationship with something (or someone) as long as I've been in this "relationship" with the Red Wings, it has evolved well past the honeymoon phase, when they can do no wrong and anyone who thinks different is just a meanie poopy-head hater.  I'm solidly into the "I can love you but still be objective" phase, and if other people don't like that, I don't really care.

Fair enough.  But as a fan of the Wings, why would you come on the fan website like LGW and proclaim that your team is going to lose.  What is the point of that?  There's nothing wrong with constructive criticism but what is the point of non-constructive criticism?  Internet forums are being over-run with haters and name callers.

I'm all in.  Wings in six.  None of this whiny bs "I hope they win, but I don't know".  They WILL win.  And as far as the posters that come on hear to piss in our cherios - don't come back here to jump on the bandwagon later.  You are either a fan of the team or not, and fans root for their team.

Phoenix in 6.  Playoff hockey is about defense and goaltending.   Chicago finished 22nd in GAA and Crawford had a .902 save percentage.

I'm not disagreeing with you guys, obviously it sucks that we didn't finish the season stronger and I do hate relying on some sort of a playoff switch but if I can't hope for that, then there's not a lot to hope for.   I believe that Rhinne is going to be all the difference in the series.  If we can figure him out (no easy task) then we'll be ok.  I don't think they've really got enough offense to be too afraid of and Weber and Suter can't be on the ice ALL the time.  Matchups will be key, but I'm looking for a big series out of whichever line doesn't have to deal with that top defensive pairing.  Wings in 6.

Anybody remember last year when we went into Phoenix in the first round against one of the top goalies from the regular season in Bryzgalov?  We lit him up like a Christmas tree and that was with Z siting in the press box.  Nashville doesn't scare me.  Rinne has played 18 playoff games and has a .908 save %.  The playoffs ARE different than the regular season

The BEST case for us would be to play Chicago in the first round AND have home ice.  Chicago sucks defensively and their goaltenders are not good.  Nashville is way better defensively AND has a great goaltender.  Chicago is 22nd in the league in GAA.  Here's a list of teams in the Western conference with a worse GAA - Edmonton, Columbus.  That's it.

Defense wins Cups and Chicago has no defense.  I'm worried about Renne stealing a game but Crawford or Emery, not so much.

The Wings need to finish 4th, Chicago 5th and Nashville 6th.

Plus, Chicago is a short flight and nothing would be more satisfying than to bounce them from the playoffs in the first round.

Based on this, Nashville needs to lose tonight.

Obama

Oh, wait wrong forum

Pittsburgh, Chicago, San Jose, and Nashville in that order.  Although Nashville seems to think that they are already "Stanley Cup Champions".

I just find it sad that minus 2 of our better players (Datsyuk and Nick), that with all the experience we have on this team...everybody else seems like they don't have the first clue on what to do without them...I mean...really?? Are they that incapable of doing things themselves and stepping up their play? It's bad enough that nobody other than Pavel can bring the puck into the zone on a power play to get things set up.

All the mistakes we saw today are prime examples on why Ken Holland needed to do something to improve this team before the deadline..and in a rare event...he failed us in doing so.

I don't know what game you watched.  The Wings outplayed the Hawks.  They hit 4 cross-bars and had two misses on wide open nets.  And yes, one was by Mule.  Any one of these goes in and it's a different game.  No puck luck today.  Sometimes it happens.  I'm ok with the effort.

St. Louis has just finished a long 6 game road trip (5 out west) and won FIVE of them.   Needless to say the Blues are hot and playing very well on the road.    First time since February 2009 that they had won 4 in a row on the road.  

The Wings are not playing well on the road and they have 8 games left on the road.   Blues have 9 games left on the road. Who has the advantage now?

So for those who thought the Wings were going to win the division because their schedule is easier..... think again.  IMHO, the Blues have the advantage simply because Detroit is hurting and still have not corrected the problems on the road.

Detroit's season is over, IMHO, if they don't win the division.  The Wings' trip out West coming up next week may be the turning point.... one way or the other... although the game against the Blues in St. Louis on April 4th will probably determine who wins the divsion and each team has won outright their home games against each other this year.

I hate to burst your bubble, but the Blues rank 21st in the league in GFA and have zero playoff experience.  We played them 3 times in 2 weeks in December and January after Hitchcock had them rolling and beat them 3-2, 3-0, and 3-1.  Yes they won 5 out of six.  They beat non-playoff teams Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg, Nashville in a shootout and a struggling Sharks team.  So who did they lose to?  The only good team that they played - Vancouver.  I'm not impressed.