Habs vs. Leafs, the best match up in NHL! That is to say...the most fun for me....
Posted on 09/09/2005 11:33:57 AM PDT by airborne
PENGUINS BUILDING STANLEY CUP CONTENDER by Joe Sager pittsburghpenguins.com 09/09/2005
Are you ready for some hockey?
The Pittsburgh Penguins hit the ice Wednesday in the most-anticipated training camp in recent memory. Following a 310-day work stoppage that wiped out the 2003-04 season, the NHL and the Penguins are back and better than ever.
“Everywhere we go, it’s very exciting. People can’t wait for the season to start,” said Penguins captain Mario Lemieux. “It’s a very exciting time for Pittsburgh and the fans.”
The mere fact that hockey is back is enough to fire up Penguins fans. Add in an unprecedented star-studded free-agent bounty that brought Mark Recchi, Sergei Gonchar, Ziggy Palffy, John LeClair, Ryan VandenBussche, Steve Poapst, Andre Roy and Lyle Odelein to Pittsburgh as well as a trade for goalie Jocelyn Thibault and the selection of super prospect Sidney Crosby in the NHL Entry Draft, and Pittsburgh is the place to be in the hockey world again.
“It’s very exciting for the organization to be able to bring in all these great players and put a great team on the ice so we have a chance to compete,” Lemieux said. “It’s great for the city and our fans.”
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghpenguins.com ...
Habs vs. Leafs, the best match up in NHL! That is to say...the most fun for me....
If I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the next Stanley Cup banner, OR a new arena.........
Just how "OLD" is the Igloo???? 30 something, isn't it??? I was there in the 80's and it seemed old then.
You got the story wrong. My kid told me he was talking about the Pens...........
LET'S GO F L Y E R S !!!
It's easy to dislike the "yotes anyway.
When I lived in Phoenix, I went to a Coyotes/Flyers game, and the Coyote fans were outnumbered in their own arena.
I laughed so hard, I peed my pants. :-)
LET'S GO F L Y E R S !!!
No, we didn't "lose" one of the UFA signings. The poor guy had a "sprain", not a broken leg!!
Better BEFORE the season, than during it!!
LET'S GO F L Y E R S !!!
I remember that one well. I was in Jersey visiting friends in Philly when Lindbergh crashed his car not far from where I was staying.
At the time I posted that, they didn't know (waiting for an MRI). Considering he played only a few games for Detroit before busting up his knee, that injury sends up a lot of red flags. If I were a Flyers fan.
Which I'm not, but I do enjoy watching them play. More so probably than any other East Coast team. But you guys got Slothje so that ought to help on the blue line. Esp in the playoffs when he makes some bonehead mistake and coughs up the puck to someone like Milan Hejduk...
And at 5-11 and 193 pounds, I'd hardly expect him to be a dominating physical presence on the ice (though the rule changes should help players like him).
My prediction is that Crosby is going to develop into a player along the lines of Philadelphia's Simon Gagne. A highly-skilled player with good offensive numbers (25-35 goals, with perhaps 100 points in a good year), but not quite a franchise player.
As for the Flyers, I can think of no other team that may (may, mind you) be hurt by the new rules.
I agree with you. I said this to myself as soon as I saw some of their off-season moves. They're building a team that might have been a Stanley Cup contender in 2002, but not anymore.
My pick for the Stanley Cup this year is New Jersey (again). They've been rather quiet in the off-season and have lost two of the best defensemen in the NHL in the last few decades (Scott Niedermayer and Scott Stevens), but they have several key points in their favor that will help them surprise a lot of people.
For one thing, Lou Lamoriello basically wrote the league's salary cap rules himself in the league's collective bargaining process, so he knows exactly how it works and probably began putting his 2005-06 roster together 18 months ago. Another advantage for that team is that the new rules will likely favor the kinds of players Lamoriello has always coveted over the years even when they're overlooked by other NHL teams -- small, quick forwards (mostly NCAA products) like Mark Johnson, Brendan Morrison, Petr Sykora, John Madden, Scott Gomez, Sergei Brylin, Brian Gionta, etc.
You seem hung up on his height and weight. Let's talk about his head. This guy has the smarts, vision, heart, work ethic, leadership qualities, and character that all great players have. Gagne? Yeah, right, I'm sure...
I don't wish to be be contentious here, but you seem to be contradicting yourself on one point. I think Lamoriello is really smart, too. And you praise him for going with, how did you put it, "small, quick forwards". If that doesn't describe Sid, well...
I think we're all going to be amazed at what a difference the rule changes are going to make. Provided, of course, they're serious this time...
Speaking of the greatest players of all time, who do you think is the greatest? There is only one answer, you know...
If I have any bias against Crosby, it's because he was drafted out of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League -- a junior league with a long-standing reputation for inflated offensive statistics and a long-standing reputation for producing underachieving players to one degree or another (Vincent Lecavalier, Martin Gelinas, Jimmy Carson, Alexandre Daigle, etc.). This is one reason why QMJHL players have become increasingly rare over the years at the top of the NHL draft board.
I think Lamoriello is really smart, too. And you praise him for going with, how did you put it, "small, quick forwards". If that doesn't describe Sid, well . . .
Yes, but one thing you'll notice about "his" type of players over the years is that none of them have been real superstars -- they've been overachieving players who come out of nowhere to play solid hockey, score 20-30 goals per season, and play key roles on contending teams. Of all the players on the New Jersey Devils over the years who have fit this mold, I can think of only one (Neal Broten) who could be called a "franchise player"-- and he came to the Devils in the twilight of his career after he had already played a potential Hall of Fame career in Minnesota.
Speaking of the greatest players of all time, who do you think is the greatest?
That's a very difficult question to answer, since I have some admittedly peculiar ideas about "my" type of players. If I focus on players who I've seen over the years (players who have entered the NHL from roughly the late 1970s onward), you might be surprised at who I'd pick. Lemieux was probably the most talented offensive player of all time, and Gretzky put up the most impressive offensive numbers and had the best on-ice presence of any player I've seen, but I don't think either one of them was even the best player of his generation, let alone all-time. I am somewhat biased against them because they were primarily one-dimensional stars who were adequate (at best) defensive players.
For an interesting topic of conversation, just consider five players who I think were the best all-around players in the NHL over the last 25 years (in the order I think they should be ranked):
1. Ray Bourque
2. Jari Kurri
3. Mark Messier
4. Peter Stastny
5. Niklas Lidstrom
It's just a coincidence that there are three forwards and two defensemen in that group. But as I think about it, I'm convinced that if you wanted to put together a team to play a single game of hockey with no line changes, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better group of players in recent NHL history who could beat these five.
Any thoughts on this?
I would add Stevie Yzerman to the best all-around list especially when factoring his quality leadership -- a marvelous captain.
Of the four QMJHL players you site, Daigle is soft, Carson, well, I don't know what his problem was, the other two turned out to be damn fine players. You don't like Lecavalier? Hey, I'd take him. Frankly, I think that a lot of N. American players are being displaced by Europeans and Russians at the top of the draft. Been happening increasingly in the past 10-15 years.
You didn't mention my Crosby=Forsberg analogy. You think it's off base? I don't. And Broten, I'd forgotten about him. Not bad either, but I'd still say Forsberg.
Now let me see if I've just got this right: you'd rather have Kurri or Stastny than Lemieux? C'mon, let's get serious. Sure, Mario would float a bit during the regular season (who could blame him, bad back and all), but in the playoffs he was an animal. I remember one time in the Finals against the Hawks. He shouldered the defenseman along the endboards (thumped him, really; could have been charging), takes the puck away, centers to Stevens who buried it. Hey, I watched a lot of Pens playoff hockey, and Lemieux worked like a dog.
Ya know, when thinking about alltime greats, you really shouldn't confine yourself just to players that you've seen. Hell, that's what liberals do. You know, the whole "the world began on the day I was born" thing. Sheesh, I figured the question I asked you was a gimme, but you start throwing all these qualifiers in there.
Why, as nearly everyone knows, the greatest player ever to lace up a pair of skates was
BOBBY ORR
GO PENS GO!
. . . the other two turned out to be damn fine players.
They turned out to be very good players. Both of them were selected near the top of their respective drafts (Lecavalier was a #1 overall pick), but neither of them has become a "franchise player." Lecavalier still might do that, but remember that before Tampa Bay won the Cup in 2004 he was damn near traded from that team because he turned in so many marginal playoff performances.
I stand by my comments on Kurri and Stastny. Like I said -- Lemieux has been far and away a superior offensive player than either of them, but they were both better all-around players. Kurri was one of the most underrated players in the NHL in recent decades -- a consistent 50+ goal scorer who played a fantastic two-way game and yet rarely spent more than 20-30 minutes in the penalty box in any given season. Maybe the fastest player ever to strap on a pair of skates in the NHL, too.
Stastny will go down as one of the most underrated players of all time -- I'd say he's one of the best players that never shows up on typical "Greatest of All Time" lists. He's also the curious answer to an interesting trivia question (Which player scored the most points in the 1980s after Wayne Gretzky). Again -- a fantastic two-way center, and one of the best faceoff centers of all time. His career numbers are somewhat supressed because he came to the NHL as a 25 year-old rookie after defecting from Czechoslovakia.
Ya know, when thinking about alltime greats, you really shouldn't confine yourself just to players that you've seen. Hell, that's what liberals do. You know, the whole "the world began on the day I was born" thing.
There's a reason why I included that qualifier about old-timers. It's because hockey isn't a sport like baseball where you can make reasonable statistical comparisons from one era to another. It's a sport that incorporates a lot of intangibles that don't necessarily show up on the score sheets. I have no idea, for example, if Wayne Gretzky was a better defensive player than Montreal legend (circa 1920s) Odie Cleghorn.
Bobby Orr? I don't know about that. Definitely one of the all-time greats, but I put players like that into a separate category whose biggest impact on the game is in the way they revolutionized it. Someone like Lawrence Taylor, for example -- who was such a tremendous athlete and was so exceptional in several key aspects of football that his limited all-around impact (he was a marginal linebacker in pass coverage, for example) is overlooked. Was Bobby Orr a better all-around defenseman than Doug Harvey? Ray Bourque? Guy Lapointe? I have no idea.
If I throw old-timers into the mix, I'd have a hard time picking Bobby Orr over Gordie Howe -- a guy who was among the league's top scorer for most of his career, was a dominant force for almost three decades, and whose physical presence on the ice made him one of the league's most feared players of all time.
BREAKING NEWS !!!!!!!!!!
PITTSBURGH - The Pittsburgh Penguins have re-signed center Mario Lemieux, it was announced today by General Manager Craig Patrick. In accordance with club policy, terms of the contract were not released.
old news to me..You find out lots of great news on the Pens messageboard!!!!!Thanks anyways..Go Pens!!!!
Then you already know about the Kris Beech deal.
Yep.......With all the new talent it was only a matter of time....
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