Drew Doughty

that's because some posters are terrible and should be banned

Wideman sucks a lot. I mean it's nitpicking, but he's not good. I also don't think that second line is any good. They really need Johansson to take the next step. I think Tampa is better than them. But...I like Tampa and I've really soured on Washington in the last year. I know I'm biased, but I'll take the Kings 6 defensemen over anyone's. Love our mix. Our defense, especially a real 2nd line center, is not going to allow many goals. Even fewer than last year I think. Hope Bernier takes the next step and steals starts from Quick.

54 and 62 points on offensively challenged teams. 73 and 78 games played. give him a real top line center and i think he'll be explosive again. no one talks about minnesota either. even though they're in a huge hockey market, they're a terribly uninteresting team.

havlat is A LOT more dynamic than heatley. heatley is just a finisher. he has some other skills, but he mostly just hawks around the net and in the circles looking for garbage and one-timers. havlat does a lot more than that. i like it for SJ. havlat had 62 points on a team that lacks top end talent. he could be great in SJ. really a good trade for both teams. minny needed a finisher. havlat lead them with 22 goals last year. sad.

I still like Nashville more than Columbus and St. Louis both. I don't believe in what Columbus is doing at all, but I'm not the biggest Carter fan. Especially since, IMO, they need a play making center with Nash. Carter is much more of a goal scoring center. Wisniewski is a decent signing, although obviously overpaid. They still don't have a goalie (why weren't they in on Vokoun???), and I don't care for Scott Arniel at all. Of course as I say that about Nashville, they trade Cody Franson for Brett Freaking Lebda. What a stupid trade, I don't care if they need to clear salary or whatever.

God I love our off-season. Would have loved BRichards but Gagne makes us a little more flexible going forward/gives us no reason to not re-sign Doughty, Martinez, Richardson, and Trevor Lewis. All very necessary moves. I'm also pretty sure Detroit is still a playoff team. Hard to argue against Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Franzen, and Lidstrom. Also reasonably sure Phoenix will slide out of the picture and Dallas will miss again. Mike Smith/Jason Labarbera might be the worst goaltending duo in the NHL next year. Smith could pan out but it's a huge risk. NOt really a believer in Colorado, that defense is still porous. Not a big fan of St. Louis but they should compete for the 8th spot at least. Same for Columbus. Washington had a pretty great couple of days.

on the other hand, we really don't care because colin fraser was going to play like 12 games for us anyway. the point was to get smyth off the books. the oilers lying or even not knowing about his injury history is just lame. but we really don't care either way.

guess my username for next season is Mike Richards

I'm having a lot of trouble remembering a team that was more hated than this Vancouver squad.

punchin judy lmao

best of all time by far. best game winning goal i've seen since dan boyle's last year against san jose.

of ****ing course this series gets ot in game 7 with a ridiculous scenario to even get us there. this rivalry is freaking insane. i hope they meet in the playoffs every damn year.

If I didn't know better, I'd start to suspect we aren't world beaters. Obviously not world beaters, but when you have 2/5 of your rotation as non ML-starters the results are pretty predictable. Eliminate the 12-2 and the 11-2 blowouts started by Coleman and Russell and you have a -14 run differential in 18 games. which is still ****ing terrible.

snip i assume you watched the game, correct? oh this was kind of funny/dirty: http://yfrog.com/47hycvz I have seen both sequences in full, several times. And watched it again as I am typing this. Carcillo took a little shove near the crease, and Miller gave him a shove/swing. He didn't get hit in the face, Carcillo faked it, and then pretended to be knocked out/flopped, before collapsing into the crease. As for Richards, you cannot seriously think popping an elbow that high is simply "bracing" himself. he got hit in the face by miller and the other guy also grabbed him about the head. carcillo was called for roughing; he didn't do anything during that play that would justify a roughing call. if you think he was faking it, then you call him for diving. you can't call a player for something he didn't do. i should clarify on richards that he did peek over his shoulder and get his elbow up, and he hit kaleta in the face, so a penalty was justified there. but 5 minutes was a terrible call. if that's 5 minutes then every elbowing penalty should be automatic 5 minutes. and part of the frustration is the fact that kunitz' flying elbow, an attempt to injure if there ever was one, is assessed as a two minute minor while richards gets 5. you might as well just not have rules if you're going to apply them so arbitrarily. every referee is perfect and calls the game ideally and sees exactly what we see without replay. kunitz got suspended, richards won't. carcillo got 2 minutes for being dan carcillo. you have players like him on your team and you take the good with the bad. he draws calls, he takes bad calls, and he gets calls against him that perhaps don't exist. as for game 3 of the kings' series, i'm inclined to believe that it didn't actually happen and was all a dream. right? please?

this is just revenge for all of the goats cub fans have killed over the years

well i can think of at least one other person on here that seriously enjoys pancakes at night.

Absolutely. He was doing nothing more than showing them up. You can't be serious. He's stolen 4 bases in his entire career when the margin was greater than 4 runs. 2 of them came that inning. He knew exactly what he was doing and knew he was probably going to get thrown at again. he's played his entire career on pittsburgh and washington. this was only like the 5th time in his entire career he was even in a game that his team was leading by that much.

the devils knew the contract was going to be rejected and still held the press conference. weird.

pretty easy to close that loophole i think. one suggestion is to limit contracts to 5 or 7 years but i don't like that as much. i would limit the amount of years that you can sign after 35 or 40. like, you can't be under contract for more than two seasons at a time past the age of 35. i think the long contracts, in general, are good for the nhl and good for marketing players. these are ridiculous though. perhaps they could implement a rule that limits a vast decrease in salary from year to year or from the peak years of the contract. the kovalchuk deal...17 years is too many, until 44 is too long, and the years that he's making >1m in salary are almost entirely in his 40's. 40 is a pretty reasonable cutoff age for retirement i think. at least hossa has 2 seasons in his 30s there. i don't think their rejection is going to hold up when the PA takes them to court, but i understand why they did it in the first place. if nothing else, it sends a message to the rest of the nhl to not do this stuff in the last year before the CBA is renegotiated.

olympic hockey would be decided by a shootout if it went that far. seems like a pretty fair point to make. i don't know a lot about soccer, but the reasoning behind having PKs makes sense. they can't have continuous OT like in hockey. in hockey you get a 15 minute break between periods and you have constant line changes to keep players somewhat fresh. short of adding extra substitutions, i don't see a way around that in soccer. even then, you're going to bench players and guys that aren't nearly as good or used to playing with that team. there wouldn't be an end in sight for most of these games, and in a tournament format like the WC's, you need the games to end.

i saw lots of people reporting it yesterday, but it's a pretty tough sell. olimb hurt his shoulder in a fight with kyle beach at the development camp yesterday. he's out for 4 months. my expectation is for the hawks to fight with the red wings for the central division title. they would probably be between 4 and 6 if they failed to win it, barring something unforeseen. i still have lots of trouble seeing them miss the playoffs, though.

the latest that's being used by a 4th grade math whiz near you

campbell's not just dead weight like huet, he's a very good blue-liner. someone trying to make the floor should have taken him by now. i thought the islanders might take him. they need big contracts. if you tacked on a prospect, they would probably go for it later in summer if they still haven't signed anyone.

sulley says the same stuff to me. it's his thing. he's lovable. the hawks are still a good team. it's not like the wings or blues or predators are making huge steps forward. i would probably still bet on them to win the division...they haven't lost one seriously crucial piece yet. hjalmarsson is close if they do lose him. ladd is close, but when the best player you're losing in a semi-firesale is a 3rd line winger or a decent 2nd pairing dman, you're doing pretty well for yourself. the red wings went much further backwards after their finals loss than the hawks did (hossa + hudler + old team) and they still managed to put together a pretty solid team. i wonder if they'd keep hammer and niemi and let someone else go instead. letting niemi go might be a tougher sell than any other they've had, because it would be much tougher to justify ditching huet. turco is basically the same goalie at a cheaper price. hjalmarsson is tough to replace with the limited cap space they have. you can probably get a couple of veterans to fill out the 3rd pairing, or even just one veteran and one decent prospect and do pretty well for yourself. hell, the flyers made it to the finals on the back of chris pronger and the withering corpse of kimmo timonen. you can survive with 4 good d-men, especially in the playoffs.

i'm not 100% sure, but the hawks would get a 1st rounder and a 3rd rounder for hjalmarsson if they don't match. that's a pretty good deal really. i'd probably go with hjalmarsson over niemi, but i imagine my opinion is slightly different from hawks fans who have watched huet.