1394 replies to this topic

[Oyaji]

Fat Spanish Waiter, on Apr 25 2012, 10:08 AM, said:

8

lol, I don't think it'll go seven games for them to score that many! But yeah, per game, my man.

[odessasteps]

Tabe, on Apr 25 2012, 12:13 PM, said:

BigFresh, on Apr 24 2012, 07:37 PM, said:

The Blues and the Kings had 4 games against each other this year. There were over 200 hits in those games. COME ON! HOW CAN YOU NOT BE LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS????

I heard somewhere that the average in an NHL game during the regular season was 48.  So 200+ in 4 games isn't THAT much more.  However, I also heard the average in the playoffs is something like 63 or 65 or something - concrete evidence of just how much more intense the playoffs are vs the regular season.

Obviously, StL/LA will be low-scoring but it should be exciting.  There's plenty of talent on both sides and it's not like it's just "sit back and grab hold of the other guys" for their defenses.  I'm definitely intrigued.

Tabe

I've heard in a number of places (such as MvsW) that the recording of hit stats is dubious in some areas, heavily skewed towards the home team.

[El Daniel]

Tabe, on Apr 24 2012, 07:02 PM, said:

Novacain, on Apr 24 2012, 11:22 AM, said:

If we can get past the Blues/Wings bickering, I'd be curious as to what FSW thinks are the Wings potential holes.

I'll give you my take as I'm also a huge Wings fan:

I expect Lidstrom to be back.  That said:

- the Wings need a lot of offensive help.  Their guys outside of Pavel Datsyuk have become incredibly soft offensively.  The puck control style has devolved into "skate diagonally across the zone, pass up a good scoring opportunity, take the puck to the boards, pass - probably unsuccessfully - through 3 guys to somebody 50 feet from the net and flip a wrist shot on goal".  The Wings have long had a history of overpassing and missing many good scoring chances instead of just shooting but the problem has gotten worse.  Datsyuk spent much of the year carrying dead weight for wingers.  On the top two lines, you've got 2 guys that belong - Pavel and Hank Z - and one guy (Franzen) who sometimes belongs.  The other three - Filppula, Hudler, and Bertuzzi - are so incredibly soft that they don't belong.  Bertuzzi skated a regular shift on the top two lines and scored 12 goals.  That's horrible.  The Wings haven't had a 30-goal scorer since 2009.  That's REALLY horrible.  They need guys who will actually go to the net and guys who can score.  I know they didn't have the money to sign him at the time but, man, this team misses Marian Hossa.  

- Their defensemen got exposed a lot by Nashville.  Any little bit of pressure and Brad Stuart coughed up the puck.  He gets a lot of leeway from me because he was amazingly good in 2008 but that was a long time ago.  He's gone anyway so no problem there.  The other guys were constantly out of position.  Ian White's positioning on the Nashville 2nd goal in game 4 (the one where everybody went after the same guy) was just horrible.  Lidstrom and Kronwall are forced to constantly cover for partners who think nothing of being 30 feet out of position and vacate the front of the net at every whim.  Lidstrom is still excellent but is so slow he simply can't recover fast enough to constantly cover for other guys.  Kronwall is outstanding but can't do it all.  Ericsson is a fine #5 or #6.  

- Goaltending is fine.  No concerns here when Howard and McDonald are healthy.  Before he got hurt, Howard was playing elite-level goalie.  He put up a 2.12 GAA this season while facing an incredibly high quality of scoring chances against him.  Detroit gives up more breakaways and 2-on-1s than any "good" defensive team I've ever seen.

- The third and fourth lines, long a strength of Detroit, are simply not as good as before.  Gone are the days of Kris Draper scoring 15 goals while killing people on faceoffs, or Dan Cleary scoring 20+ goals or Darren McCarty pounding on people.  Now you've got Darren Helm and Justin Abdelkader, both of whom are OK but who don't score quite enough and aren't big enough to pound on people.

- Tomas Holmstrom is finished.  He scored 1 even strength goal all year.  I don't know that he'll be as tough to replace as people seem to think.  He's great at screening but contributes nothing else on the power play anymore (despite his 10 PPGs this year).  2 years ago, he scored 25 goals, this year he was invisible and scored 11.


I think Detroit needs to change at least 2 guys on the top 2 lines and 2 defensemen.  I think swapping out 6 guys is not unreasonable.  

Tabe

Thanks for this post, it's a damn good read. My only question is how do you pull that many moves off. Pulling of Suter and Parise is reasonable, and I can certainly see you guys pulling it off, but how do you fill the other needs? Signing those 2 will probably be at least 6 mill a season a piece, and that gives you small money to find another top 6 and 4. I am not sure if you guys have the pieces to go out and find suitable replacements. Noy saying it isn't feasable, I just think in a league that I feel depth is starting to win out (yeah, I know, one year), would it be better to just get one of the big 2 and spread the money spared to fill out the holes in a more well rounded way?

As for FSW, I agree with you in the need to get younger, but it's really hard to do that in free agency. Players rights are held by teams till their, what, 8 years out of their first eligible draft in this system? (I'm not positive on that, people can correct if needed). That's usually age 26. And signing an RFA is hard. The opposing team has the right to match your contract, and if they don't you have to give up draft picks in exchange. Usually, very high draft picks.

I think the Wings need to reload, and they have to be crafty doing it. If the Blues do get new ownership that can even go close to the max cap, I don't think there core is going to get worse for a while.

[Death From Above]

odessasteps, on Apr 25 2012, 11:31 AM, said:

I've heard in a number of places (such as MvsW) that the recording of hit stats is dubious in some areas, heavily skewed towards the home team.

I don't put any stock in either official hits, or faceoff stats, as tracked by the NHL.

[Oyaji]

Death From Above, on Apr 25 2012, 11:19 AM, said:

odessasteps, on Apr 25 2012, 11:31 AM, said:

I've heard in a number of places (such as MvsW) that the recording of hit stats is dubious in some areas, heavily skewed towards the home team.

I don't put any stock in either official hits, or faceoff stats, as tracked by the NHL.

Shooting statistics and even secondary assists are also notoriously influenced by home cooking.

[Tabe]

odessasteps, on Apr 25 2012, 10:31 AM, said:

I've heard in a number of places (such as MvsW) that the recording of hit stats is dubious in some areas, heavily skewed towards the home team.

Definitely true.  I remember watching a Wings road game earlier this year where they were clearly outhitting the other guys - and the home arena had the stat as something like 14-3 in favor of the home guys.  It was laughable to the point that the announcers made fun of it.

Tabe

[Tabe]

Novacain, on Apr 25 2012, 10:39 AM, said:

Thanks for this post, it's a damn good read.

Thank you for the kind words.

Novacain, on Apr 25 2012, 10:39 AM, said:

My only question is how do you pull that many moves off. Pulling of Suter and Parise is reasonable, and I can certainly see you guys pulling it off, but how do you fill the other needs?

That's why Ken Holland is the GM and I'm some goof on the internet :)

I'm not sure it's feasible to swap out 6 guys.  Maybe simply shuffling is all that needs to be done.  Sign Parise, put him with Datsyuk and somebody.  Put Franzen with Zetterberg and Nyquist.  Now you've completely swapped around the top two lines, de-emphasized Bertuzzi and added (a little) scoring punch to your 3rd line with Filppula and Hudler.  That leaves you guys like Eaves, Abdelkader, and Helm for the 4th line.  Suddenly your depth is a lot better.

As for the d-men, you put Suter in there with Kronwall, those guys will eat 28+ minutes a night.  Lidstrom and partner are another 20+.  And who cares who the other 2 guys are.

Tabe

[Oyaji]

How far off is Tomas Tatar from making the squad? He and Nyquist are just about the only top six wingers in the system and Detroit's famed pipeline hasn't really promoted any very good talents in a long while.

[odessasteps]

I don't know if he has any inside intel, but Bob McCowen has been pushing for days the idea that Detroit could be a destination for Luongo, comparing it to when they signed Hasek.

I can see the parallel, but Hasek did not have 10 years left on a contract.

[Oyaji]

odessasteps, on Apr 25 2012, 01:25 PM, said:

I don't know if he has any inside intel, but Bob McCowen has been pushing for days the idea that Detroit could be a destination for Luongo, comparing it to when they signed Hasek.

I can see the parallel, but Hasek did not have 10 years left on a contract.

He's pretty much done at age 39, when most top tier goalies retire. His salary drops from $6.7m to $3.38m for one year and then $1.6m for another, and two final years at $1m. When the salary begins to drop and Luongo is either still performing well, then good on him - no problem, but if his play has declined to the point where he's no longer wanted, waive him or trade him to a team that needs to meet the cap floor. The way his contract was structured wasn't bad at all, just the general idea of giving a goalie a career contract is not good practice. Doug MacLean and his fellow SportsNet blowhards are awful and don't really understand the structure of the deal. Currently employed NHL GMs ought to have an idea.

I'd be pretty shocked if Detroit gave up on Howard. He wasn't great against Nashville but the blame can hardly be put on his shoulders for Detroit's failures. Chicago, on the other hand, I can certainly see having interest. Crawford is a below average goalie. Same thing with Niemi but his contract is awful and San Jose would have to Huet him to the KHL. I don't know if their owner is willing to do that.

[Death From Above]

What's Detroit going to give up in a trade though? Vancouver have no real reason to make a move without addressing some of their other issues. The Tampa Bay idea still kind of works for me because they've got like 20 forwards.

[Oyaji]

Death From Above, on Apr 25 2012, 01:35 PM, said:

What's Detroit going to give up in a trade though? Vancouver have no real reason to make a move without addressing some of their other issues. The Tampa Bay idea still kind of works for me because they've got like 20 forwards.

And thankfully Malone, whom everybody sticks in as the guy with the big contract going back to Vancouver, has a NMC for another year before it turns into a NTC. Purcell or Connolly would be ideal but I doubt we get anything of such value back.

[Death From Above]

So, this is totally going to be one of those "no penalties called all game, then 1 penalty out of the blue in the third period against the grain of everything else that happened all game that changes the outcome" games, right?

[Oyaji]

Death From Above, on Apr 25 2012, 05:43 PM, said:

So, this is totally going to be one of those "no penalties called all game, then 1 penalty out of the blue in the third period against the grain of everything else that happened all game that changes the outcome" games, right?

It's Stephen Walkom. Guess who called game 7 of the Lightning series. Guess who called game 7 of the SCF last year. Guess who is good friends with Gregory Campbell's father.

[Death From Above]

Yeah Walkom isn't exactly my favourite. Though no one will ever replace Mick McGeough in my heart as the referee doing the business in hell. And in his case with seizure-tastic "look at me I'm on TV" gesturing too.

[mco543]

Speaking of refs that may or may not be crooked, it's still amazing how under-reported and swept under the rug the whole Andy Van Hellemond-gambling scandal was. So much so that a lot of major, serious hockey fans have no idea.

[Death From Above]

I dunno. The NBA had that match fixing scandal where they busted all of one referee and life just went on as normal afterwards. And don't even get me started on baseball umpires doing their own interpretation of the entire baseball sequence from The Naked Gun. People really don't give a shit as long as they are entertained.

[Reggie20x6]

Paul Stewart was the biggest a-hole of a ref I ever had to deal with. It also didn't help matters that he reffed the game like people paid to see him.

[mco543]

Death From Above, on Apr 25 2012, 08:43 PM, said:

So, this is totally going to be one of those "no penalties called all game, then 1 penalty out of the blue in the third period against the grain of everything else that happened all game that changes the outcome" games, right?

I think you might have called this one.

[Oyaji]

Let everything go for 58 minutes and call a hold on that with two minutes to go. That gets a D-Wade head shake of disapproval.

Edit: Yeah, DFA nailed it.