Game Thread: Red Wings @ Lightning - Game 7

[Bloody Brian Burke]

Weiss on the bench is all babcock. Once your in the doghouse its your hoe, See weiss legwand now pulknin,

I get that, but Weiss earned it. The problem isn't Babcock sending him to the press box, the problem is Weiss is a $2 million player (if that) earning elite second line money, and his performance in the season before he went to Detroit indicated as much and yet Holland still plunked a big money, long-term deal in front of him.

 

[RP-29]

If the Leafs give Bernier $5m/yr, Shanahan should just re-hire Nonis because nothing would have changed.

So if Bernier wants nothing short of $5M/y and Shanny says "F-off", where does that leave the Leafs?

 

[Bloody Brian Burke]

So if Bernier wants nothing short of $5M/y and Shanny says "F-off", where does that leave the Leafs?

With an RFA to trade and another year for Reimer to prove himself.

Doesn't really matter right now - Leafs aren't contending for anything this season regardless of what happens from this point and they would benefit from another lottery pick.

Either way, I don't think Bernier is getting more than $4m from even the most generous and desperate GM, and he has better numbers than Howard did when he signed his deal. It was a poor move from Holland. If he needed a stop gap keeper, why not just sign Nabokov when he hit the market in 2013? They had already tried claiming him once before...

 

[dash]

The Oilers need a goalie, I repeat the Oilers need a goalie...

 

[Cobiemonster]

More on this story...

A Detroit-area woman set fire to a huge Tampa Bay Lightning flag as it was passed through the sold-out crowd at Wednesday night’s NHL playoff game at Amalie Arena, authorities said.

Lena Sinishtaj, 35, of Sterling Heights, Michigan, was booked on a charge of first-degree arson of an occupied structure. She was being held without bond, according to Hillsborough County Jail records.

About 200 people were under the flag when Sinishtaj held a lit lighter to it, Tampa police said. She was able to cause a small burn to the flag, police said.

Pretty lucky something didn't go horribly wrong, what is with some people?

 

[RP-29]

With an RFA to trade and another year for Reimer to prove himself.

Doesn't really matter right now - Leafs aren't contending for anything this season regardless of what happens from this point and they would benefit from another lottery pick.

Either way, I don't think Bernier is getting more than $4m from even the most generous and desperate GM, and he has better numbers than Howard did when he signed his deal. It was a poor move from Holland. If he needed a stop gap keeper, why not just sign Nabokov when he hit the market in 2013? They had already tried claiming him once before...

Nobody saw Howard as a stopgap. Gustavsson was a stopgap. It was impossible to know at the time of signing when or if Mrazek would be ready for the NHL. Again, I wish Holland would've signed Howard to a shorter term, but I'm not mad at the $/y he got. There's been a lot worse.

 

[Cobiemonster]

With an RFA to trade and another year for Reimer to prove himself.

Doesn't really matter right now - Leafs aren't contending for anything this season regardless of what happens from this point and they would benefit from another lottery pick.

Either way, I don't think Bernier is getting more than $4m from even the most generous and desperate GM, and he has better numbers than Howard did when he signed his deal. It was a poor move from Holland. If he needed a stop gap keeper, why not just sign Nabokov when he hit the market in 2013? They had already tried claiming him once before...

That would have been a disaster, end of story

 

[RP-29]

The Oilers need a goalie, I repeat the Oilers need a goalie...

I'm not so sure I hate Howard enough to wish him to Edmonton.

 

[dash]

I'm not so sure I hate Howard enough to wish him to Edmonton.

Could fetch a pretty nice return though - I think RNH and Hall will be retained by Chiarelli, but Eberle or Yak should be available.

 

[RP-29]

Could fetch a pretty nice return though - I think RNH and Hall will be retained by Chiarelli, but Eberle or Yak should be available.

Don't get me wrong, if I could get a nice return for Howard I'd pull the trigger. It's just that sending your goalie to Edmonton is like sending your cousin into Detroit to collect on overdue water bills. I wouldn't wish that job on my worst enemy.

 

[sherbert1421]

unless holland gets an offer he can't refuse, i doubt howard gets traded this offseason. my guess is they will want to make sure mrazek can handle full time duties next year and will go into next season with a 1a/1b scenario

 

[RP-29]

unless holland gets an offer he can't refuse, i doubt howard gets traded this offseason. my guess is they will want to make sure mrazek can handle full time duties next year and will go into next season with a 1a/1b scenario

I agree.

And I don't think anyone is drooling over Howard enough to give Holland an offer he can't refuse either. It's much more likely teams would ante up for Mrazek.

 

[Bloody Brian Burke]

Nobody saw Howard as a stopgap. Gustavsson was a stopgap. It was impossible to know at the time of signing when or if Mrazek would be ready for the NHL. Again, I wish Holland would've signed Howard to a shorter term, but I'm not mad at the $/y he got. There's been a lot worse.

The fact there's been a lot worse doesn't make the contract any better. $ and term, it's bad. Detroit's a cap team that can't get out of the first round and they're paying a goalie $5m+ to warm the bench. I don't know what part of that you could possibly be okay with.

 

[Bloody Brian Burke]

unless holland gets an offer he can't refuse, i doubt howard gets traded this offseason. my guess is they will want to make sure mrazek can handle full time duties next year and will go into next season with a 1a/1b scenario

Big goalie deals don't happen much. Rarely does a GM give up a major asset for one.

 

[Bloody Brian Burke]

That would have been a disaster, end of story

Probably, but given Detroit's high standards hasn't the past 2 years been one anyway? At least 8% of the cap wouldn't be tied up in a bad goalie for another 3 years.

 

[RP-29]

The fact there's been a lot worse doesn't make the contract any better. $ and term, it's bad. Detroit's a cap team that can't get out of the first round and they're paying a goalie $5m+ to warm the bench. I don't know what part of that you could possibly be okay with.

1) Mrazek is not the unquestioned starter going forward. He won the job recently, but it will be an open competition in October. We'll see.
2) Howard and Mrazek together make about $6M. Bernier and Reimer right now combine for $5.2M and that's before Bernier gets his "starter" pay raise.

I'll be more concerned when Howard is the unquestioned backup making $5M/y and Mrazek is the unquestioned starter making $6M/y.

 

[Winged_Wheel88]

unless holland gets an offer he can't refuse, i doubt howard gets traded this offseason. my guess is they will want to make sure mrazek can handle full time duties next year and will go into next season with a 1a/1b scenario

That might actually be beneficial for Howard since he seems to get injured every year.

 

[detroit_schlegs]

That might actually be beneficial for Howard since he seems to get injured every year.

When Howard had the second go-around with his groan issue, to me that's something that just wasn't going to fully heal, particularly for a goalie that must continually stretch to maintain the range of motion for those specific muscles involved in order to be prepared to make the quick separation the legs in game situations. This issue gets compounded even further when a goalie's soft tissue becomes involved in this area, when forcing the quick initiation in the elasticity of those connective tissues whenever one does a 'splits' which may be required during a game. It's obvious to me that he has been having an issue for a while now "pushing off" significantly enough in order to make the necessary movements going East/West so that he can sufficiently cover the post to make the saves needed in games. I truly believe that this will remain to be an ongoing issue with him in the coming years. Groan issues are some of the worst that an athlete could succumb to, and at times this unbearable discomfort returns at the slightest out of the ordinary positioning of the legs.

As far as my comment about the 'cleaning house' on the back end goes, there is a definite problem with one particular aspect of some of them that is increasing the opposition's scoring chances, that being,their lack of speed. With the design of several teams in this league focusing on speed upfront and, in some cases, even with speed on the backend, any team that has an imbalance in their core of dmen that lack being fleet-a-foot, there will not be success in both make the playoffs as well as moving well into them. The days of being 'okay' with your back line players no longer gets much done. This "loyalty thing" that perseveres throughout the ownership of this organization must go into the recycling barrel rather quickly, if this team is going to move forward, since, without replacing the 'slow-trackers' that we rely on to defend our zone, there will remain to be a status quo in Detroit. With this group that we have on the backend, we have struggled to 'make' the playoffs for the last two seasons, and that struggle is getting to be even more difficult to overcome each season. Many of our fans seem to be satisfied with the honor of the many consecutive seasons in which we've made the playoffs; but, for an old-timer like myself, who has seen this organization 'grind it out' for so many past seasons since 1952, I, personally, am never satisfied with a team playing 'a bit above the norm'.

 

[Winged_Wheel88]

Many of our fans seem to be satisfied with the honor of the many consecutive seasons in which we've made the playoffs; but, for an old-timer like myself, who has seen this organization 'grind it out' for so many past seasons since 1952, I, personally, am never satisfied with a team playing 'a bit above the norm'.

About this last part: I think many of us realized what an uphill struggle it would be to make the playoffs with a ton of talented, true, but unproven talent. That talent has had 2-3 years to develop now, and soon Red Wing fans won't be happy just making the playoffs...they, like me, will be expecting much more in the seasons to come.



Dammit....I just noticed that reading your post altered my usual posting style and made my response come out more in "Schlegs-mode".

 

[detroit_schlegs]

About this last part: I think many of us realized what an uphill struggle it would be to make the playoffs with a ton of talented, true, but unproven talent. That talent has had 2-3 years to develop now, and soon Red Wing fans won't be happy just making the playoffs...they, like me, will be expecting much more in the seasons to come.



Dammit....I just noticed that reading your post altered my usual posting style and made my response come out more in "Schlegs-mode".

Here's some of the rare "Schlegs-mode" language to further make my point. "Somebody, please, do something to ring shithead Holland's bell, in order to convince that man that doing his processing mainly via the draft isn't going to cut it. Open at least one of your fuckin' blind eyes, look at what many of the successful teams around the league have done to become successful, then send of some of those worthless fucking excuses for dmen you have in this organization packing".