NHL Draft 2010

I really wanted to update my blog for the draft, but I really don't have much of anything to say.

That's all.

HATE

This is the blog I've been putting off writing for a while because I know it's going to alienate some of my friends and readers on here, but it's something that I feel very strongly about, so I have to get it off of my chest.

That having been said, if you were rooting for the Chicago Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Finals, you might want to go to another blog and not read mine right now.


I've seen the back and forth between Red Wings fans and who they were supporting in the Finals. It looked pretty even down the middle, 50% Chicago and 50% Philadelphia. I've seen everyone try to justify their choices with this reason and that reason.
Personally, I don't see any justification for rooting for the Blackhawks while claiming to be a Red Wings fan.
I'm sorry. I just don't.

Chicago is the probably the cockiest group of players, fans and management that I've ever seen in the NHL.
 How do you think you're a good team when you've sucked for so long that the league basically had to hand you good players to make you at least competitive and then subsequently hand you the Cup? How can you see that as a legitimate reason to be so cocky?

Chicago has been one of the biggest rivals/thorns in the side of the Red Wings since there were only 6 teams playing.
The intense hatred we all used to have over the Avalanche just fizzled out and faded away over the years. Colorado seems to have returned the favor. We don't hate each other anymore, and there's no real reason to. Chicago, on the other hand, has consistently chanted "Detroit sucks" at games that the Wings weren't even playing in throughout the past however many seasons. Which was a pretty lofty claim from a fanbase who's team was finishing last in the division and the conference. So now that they've won that big, shiny, silver trophy, I'm sure it's about prime time to change their tune and just embrace their success, right?
NOPE.

There's just something that stirs the doubt in my mind if you can jump ship from the classiest, best run organization in the league to the cockiest, clusterfuckiest organization.

So, yes. If you rooted for the Chicago Blackhawks in the Finals, I believe that you are less of a Red Wings fan.

Resurrected Blog (AKA Rivals?)

I'm resurrecting this old blog post from January 10th of this year, so some of the references may be a little outdated. But I feel like this is a decent prequel to a blog I might write in the upcoming days that will probably alienate half of my readers, all 8 of you.

There Are More Important Controversies Within The Red Wings…

Lately, with the (impressive, unexpected, heaven-sent, over-achieving, amazing, whatever adjective you feel like throwing in yourself) play of Jimmy Howard, there’s been a lot of talk about a brewing number one goalie controversy in Detroit. Nobody within the organization has come out and admitted Jimmy’s taking the number one spot from Chris Osgood, and Jimmy still won’t talk about it like he should (as in, “Oh, yeah, I’m the man, I rule, I’m so awesome, suck on THAT, naysayers.”) But when he’s putting up stats where he’s only in the bottom of the NHL pile in PIMs (0 for 31st place) and OTLs (2/30th), and beating big-name goalies like Luongo, Kipprusoff and Nabokov and, well, Osgood in stats like GAA and SV%, I think it’s safe to assume he’s the man to beat on the Red Wings’ depth chart.

Let’s put it this way… he’s top 10 in those stats even when compared to any NHL player who’s played a game as a goalie this season. That means adding Ottawa’s Mike Brodeur’s 1 game, 1 goal against average to the list and New Jersey’s Yann Denis’ 4 game .929 save percentage. Top 10. In the entire league. In the entire position.

So now that that’s been put to bed, I think it’s time we turn our eyes to a more pressing controversy for the Red Wings and their fans.

Which team out there deserves the title of being our number one rivalry?
Which team is the one that the players and the fans circle on their calendars the day the NHL season schedule comes out and says “That’s our big game!” Which team is the team that, no matter what the standings, no matter the time of the year, you just want to see them get pummeled on the ice and on the scoreboard. Which team is going to give the Red Wings that little extra spark to their game because it’s a personal game?

Many people make a case for the usual suspects: the Ducks, the Blackhawks, the Blue Jackets, the Predators, and the Penguins of the world. My school of thought is that if there are that many viable options out there for a fan such as myself, then really, none of them are options at all.

Think back from the mid-90s to the early 2000s. Who was it then? Hands down, the Colorado Avalanche. Anyone who said otherwise was just wrong. It was such a brutal rivalry that it still lingers to this day in the hearts and the minds of the Wings faithful. Any time you see that goofy maroon and teal color combination, admit it, you still get that tightening in your stomach that makes you long for the better, bloodier days. (Oh, and according to a little research, the official team colors are “burgundy and steel blue, black, silver and white”. Whatever.)

I don’t know any team in the league right now that does that to me, or to other fans. I can’t pinpoint a team that is just so hated, that even if their nicest, most charitable, most talented player was up for free agency or on the trading block, we’d still not like him in the Winged Wheel. I can’t think of a team that when a Wings player leaves in the off-season and signs with them, it’s considered a personal slight and grounds for death or at the very least the sacrifice of their first born to make amends.

The problem with today’s Wings -and today’s NHL, actually- is that the league got exactly what it wanted when it went to the new(er) schedule format. The 6 games against inter-division teams certainly did a lot to manufacture rivalries, but the passion just isn’t there.

Yes, it’s easy to get physical when you’re playing a team that you just played last week, and now’s your opportunity to get back at their 4th liner goon for that slash on your star player near the end of the 3rd period when the game was already settled. And yes, it’s easy to build up the pressure and the atmosphere when you’re playing the team that’s just 5 points ahead of you in the standings in a home-at-home weekend series with little less than a month left in the season.

But it’s not easy to just force two teams together to the point where just the mere sight of their jersey makes you see red, where you change the channel when Sportscenter plays the highlights of that team’s latest win (HA! Like that ever happens anymore, but bear with me…), where you turn on your NHL video games and turn injuries all the way up and difficulty all the way down so you can embarrass them just the way you like it.

Calgary has Vancouver.
Boston has Montreal.
New York has… New York, I guess.

Detroit has, ummmm…


I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t go up to a fellow Red Wings fan and mention [Team X], and know that I’ll soon get a front row seat to their dark side’s emergence.

2 Years, 4 Teams, 82 Picks

The past two years, the NHL has seen 4 different teams in the Stanley Cup Finals. I made the comment on Twitter the other day about sucking until you're good. I wanted to back up that statement, so all morning, I've been sifting through 10 years of drafts, analyzing and comparing. I'm only looking at the first and second round right now.

To help you read this chart, I've listed the draft year, followed by 1st round picks, then 2nd round picks, then a cumulative total of picks listed.

Detroit	Chicago	Pittsburgh	Philadelphia
1999= 0/1 0/2 (0) 2000= 1/1 1/2 (2) 2001= 0/1 1/2 (1) 2002= 0/1 2/2 (2) 2003= 0/1 1/2 (1) 2004= 0/1 0/2 (0) 2005= 1/1 1/2 (2) 2006= 0/1 3/2 (3) 2007=  1/1 0/2 (1) 2008=  1/1 0/2 (1) 2009= 0/1 2/2 (2)	1999= 1/1 2/2 (3) 2000= 2/1 1/2 (3) 2001= 2/1 1/2 (3) 2002= 1/1 1/2 (2) 2003= 1/1 2/2 (3) 2004= 1/1 4/2 (5) 2005= 1/1 2/2 (3) 2006= 1/1 2/2 (3) 2007= 1/1 2/2 (3) 2008= 1/1 0/2 (1) 2009= 1/1 1/2 (2)	1999= 1/1 2/2 (3) 2000= 1/1 1/2 (2) 2001= 1/1 1/2 (2) 2002= 1/1 1/2 (2) 2003= 1/1 1/2 (2) 2004= 1/1 2/2 (3) 2005= 1/1 1/2 (2) 2006= 1/1 1/2 (2) 2007= 1/1 1/2 (2) 2008= 0/1 0/2 (0) 2009= 1/1 1/2 (2)	1999= 1/1 0/2 (1) 2000= 1/1 0/2 (1) 2001= 1/1 0/2 (1) 2002= 1/1 0/2 (1) 2003= 2/1 0/2 (2) 2004= 0/1 0/2 (0) 2005= 1/1 0/2 (1) 2006= 1/1 3/2 (4) 2007= 1/1 1/1 (2) 2008= 1/1 0/2 (1) 2009= 0/1 0/2 (0)

Here's a quick text style breakdown:
Detroit has had 15 early round picks since 1999, only 4 in the first, and 11 in the second. (One interesting thing to note is that Kopecky, our 2nd round pick in 2000, is now on Chicago.)
Chicago has had 31 (THIRTY-ONE?!) early round picks in the same time span, including 13 first round picks. They have had nearly the same amount of first round picks as the Red Wings have had first and second round picks combined, on top of 18 second round picks.
Pittsburgh picked 22 players in the first and second rounds, 10 in the first rounds and 12 in the second.
Philadelphia rounds out the list with having only 14 first and second round picks, which is the lowest amount for any team here. But it's a very front loaded draft, with 10 picks being in the first round and only 4 picks coming in the second round.

So what does that mean?

In my eyes, it means they've been drafting Cup teams, unlike the Wings, who develop Cup winning teams.