Michael J Gorman

I wake up this morning and browse around the blogs. I see the recap of the twitter/comment fight between 2 blogs i read and enjoy, that was a silly situation that just proves Hockey needs a more exciting off season to prevent us from turning on our own. Then i stroll over to Snapshots where I see this link:

http://gfx.aftonbladet-cdn.se/multimedia/archive/01245/1_1245786w.jpg

It is really the most bizarre thing ever. Apparently its a callback to the old school swim wear required for the baths in Emma's home town. Even still... looking around that picture and seeing Z, Datsyuk, Flip, Lids and the others in those outfits almost put me in my grave laughing. 

My Take on Modano

So here is my opinion on the whole Modano thing since everyone else has weighed in. I'd prefer a quicker answer, but it doesn't much hurt us to wait. Holland already was set to wait to scrape the bottom of the barrel in August for a cheap veteran d-man... and that this rate it probably would just be Lilja.  He could still do that just fine. The only thing it really does is push off Helm and Abby's signing, which also isn't that large of a deal really.

They both understand the situation. Abbs understood perfectly well when he went down last year after we started getting healthy that it was for the good of the team. As far as it moving their position, I'm not sure if it affects Helm at all. Do they put him on the Wing if they move Abby down to 4th center? Or does Helm stay and Abby goes Wing? This could be seen by some as giving them a lesser role and taking away development time. At the same time, Babcock has been lowering the top lines minutes pretty consistently over the past few seasons any chance he can. Last year we had 2 checking lines... which didn't do our scoring any favors.

This season we should have 3 solid scoring lines, and 1 extremely stacked checking line. That doesn't mean the checking line will only get 4 minutes a game. I would think that the 4th line will get some decent minutes, not too terribly less than the 3rd, along with having the competition of those bottom 5 players to get ice time, that could create a better player in both Helm and Abby. 

Now, Ritola back to the Minors. This already seemed like Holland's plan. He signed him to a 2 way before the Modano stuff started. We all know this organization likes their players well seasoned, which as far as I can tell builds for good consistency.

Do I think Abby won't chip in as well as Modano could? I don't know for sure. Some bloggers have talked about Abby only putting up a few points all season when he was up. Babcock told him to check, so the kid checked. He was not in a goal scoring role, even in the injury plagued state we were in. Babcock relied on other people on the top 2 lines. When Abby went back down I've been told he was a very consistent scorer. We'll have to wait to pass judgement on his scoring ability until we see him put in that position. Especially with Hudler on his wing. I have a feeling Babcock will at least give him a shot here. If Modano comes on board he will likely not play every game of the season. 

So I got to meet the one and only Jimmy Howard. He was a VERY nice guy. I brought a large copy of his maskless save to get signed, and a smaller action shot for my girlfriend to get signed for herself(Jimmy is her favorite player) and were off to Monkey Sports in Santa Anna.  When we arrived there was a line already formed a little before show time. It was a Vaughn event so they had cleared off the entire wall of goalie equipment to showcase only Vaughn pads/blockers/mits. 

Jimmy came out a few later, signed stuff, chatted and took pictures with everyone. I told him i thought he got robbed in the Calder votes... he replied, "Yeah... but the guy who won was very deserving as well." Very humble of him. 

He also gave us the promo pictures that Vaughn had for him to give out, along with signing the posted i brought and the 8x10 we printed at Albertson's for the girlfriend. It was all in a all a very cool experience that I am very glad i stumbled upon. 

Girls hold on to your panties. 

We have another golden haired boy in the house.  I was alerted of this from one of my favorite Blogs, Nightmare On Helm Street. 

Since they already handeled the gist of it, and there is only 1 picture of the 28 year old elder Fillpula that I could find, I instead ventured over to youtube to see if there were any tasty bits of his Finnish Elite magic. Lets hope he sticks it out unlike the last Finish star we signed.  Here is one of the first videos I located of Ilari in action.

So there you have it. The report is in from Kahn, and it is that Lidstrom has signed a 1 year deal for slightly more than 6 million dollars. I would rather die than see him make less than Rafalski, so I am okay with this number. Now that the stress has been relieved I can go ahead and resume my normal healthy hockey thoughts. My first thought was after i myself brought up that he needed to make more than Rafi, or any other defensemen was that we need to get rid of Rafi. 

Don't get me wrong, I like Brian Rafalski. He has done good work here. My reasoning for wanting him gone is for a long term goal of getting ready for Lidstrom's departure, likely at the end of the next season. We have to get Kronwall to a new level. Under that tier we need Johnny E to play like he's been in the NHL. How do we do this when he is playing on the bottom line all the time?

I say trade away Rafi and give our rookies some top 4 time in rotation. We have more defensemen in the wings so i think we need to move one now before we are ditching underdeveloped players who succeed for other teams. I think either Kronwall or Stuart could step up for top PP line time, though Babcock could also opt to play a forward as he has been known to do on occasion. Or even Johnny E on the right side with Lids if he can harness that blast now that the Williams experiment was a failure.

Being a player myself and still in my developmental stages(I could be drafted at the age of like 28 at this rate lol) I know how a larger responsibility and more playing time really make for a better developed player. I know how much better I get after a few games my team has had when we were short on people and I ate up the ice time. We need to throw our rookies into the fire and see if they really are Red Wings. Most have been cooking plenty of time, they need to be given a real opportunity.