gehringer_2

terrible short handed goal for the Flames. Helberg mishandled the puck and Wings were late getting back to help. Wings have been on their heels most of this game already.

I know we've been burned pulling the plug on young guys that blossomed after we traded them, but man it's hard for me to see Killian having a role on a good NBA team.

Maybe he was trying to turn the logical tables on Haley's call for age tests - I guess on the basis of 'be careful what criteria you want to judge people by because they might want to judge you by one you'll fail" but even if there was a germ a good argument in there the rhetorical execution was abyssmal.

oooohhh. I like that one. Perfect for Trout.

Larkin isn't the great physical talent a McDavid is on the ice, but he is a great passer and superlative shooter who can put the puck past a goalie much better than most and he elevates the play of his teammates. I don't know where that puts him in any kind of ranking, but he's a hockey player you want on a winning team and if they let him go for a difference of 1M/yr they are idiots. And so far I have no reason to believe SY is an idiot. But he is a hard nose competitive guy himself so I'm also not surprised he's OK letting negotiations drag to put the max pressure on Larkin's side he can.

WTF? When I saw this I thought it had to Fox and Friends or something. CNN? I guess that's another one circling the drain. Of course we knew that the new management was going to be a disaster, and it's proving it.

My guess is that Yzerman is will not be easily deterred from his long term view. If he isn't going to try to sign Bertuzzi, I don't think he will hold him to zero value for the sake of this year's final record.

also notice whose vision all that was. A dead guy's. How obligated is Chris Ilitch and the ongoing corporate entity to be bound by his father's ambitions? Corporations are never particularly reliable partners. How many venues have signed big endorsement deals with companies that went belly up and they get squat? Show me who is knocking at the door to do the devlopment that Ilitch isn't? Again, I'm not trying to defend Ilitch, just trying to inject a more realisitic take that expecting a bunch of pie in the sky ambitions to all come up roses - especially after the singular personality driving them leaves the scene, is, well, pie in the sky.

and just to finish on the topic. In a city with literally thousands of acres of total wasteland abadoned property, the existence of clean parking lots that generate revenue (and mostly suburban dollars at that) on a regular basis is not the biggest land use worry.

and how much have even they slowed down. The Hudson's bldg has been on a slow walk and the Book bullding also took years longer than planned. And there is also a big difference in that Gilbert was rehabbing landmark structures - the parking lots around the ball parks were not filled with structures that had class A potential. I'm not trying to give the Ilitch group a pass on having oversold their plans, but almost every developer does that - its part of the poltical dance to get the funding to do the job you actually want to do - which in this case was build the two sports venues. The truth is that if they had promised nothing other than the arenas in the 1st place we still should have been glad of the effort but it more likely would have been shot down. I will definitely knock them for the block north of LCA though - the city needed to push them way harder on that. The parking lots I can live with until the market decides they are uneconomic.

LOL - yeah it seems like everyone everywhere always wants to trade down so maybe being the partner willing to trade up is the new market efficiency.

The parking lots are just the reflection of commercial sq footage demand. We rag on the Ilitches but if parking lots are more profitable than what they can build on them that's because of the broader economic conditions in that area of the city. This is one situation where the market really will solve the problem for you. When the property becomes valuable enough to be demanded for some other use, the parking lots will disappear. The city is still having trouble filling the commercial spaces South of Grand Circus Park. Until there is higher occupancy pressure there, commercial development going North is going to continue to be slow. If/when the work at home shift from the pandemic ebbs, that will help. If it becomes more permanent, it won't.

Right. In America, con Joe six pack out of more money than your product is worth and they pat you on the back for being a good business man. But bilk people in the investment class and they make sure the guv'met has your asz.

this is a fair point and it goes back to Casimir's complaint. It's a whole different ball game from gettin to the 10th having used 2 or 3 pitchers and everyone in your BP can give you three more (circa 1970), than entering the 10th having already used 6 and nobody left out there can pitch more than one. So sure, while cutting off extra innings is billed as part of the general 'pace of play' effort, it's much more directly the result of the way the modern game chews up pitching.

yeah - they 'should' have lost that game, and even the game the night before was not played nearly as lopsided as the score. Still - as Ozzie points out - the Wings defensive philosophy is to more or less give the other team the boards keep but keep the center clear, which they do better than they used to. Sometimes the shot numbers they allow are not high quality. What does seem clear is that Lalonde has been pretty good so far - in the sense that this team does seem to win more than the sum of its parts - which I think is just another way to put your 'fools gold' observation. But the other obvious 'big' change is that Yzerman has increased the size of the team a lot and as a result even when they lose you don't see the Wings physically dominated by many teams anymore and just that greater size and strength has a background level positive effect on their ability to increase the work load on the other team and stay in games themselves.

and without Walman and Raymond. I think Bertuzzi has now pretty well shifted to the plus side of the ledger - he was forechecking like his old self tonight. If no-one else gets hurt the rest of the way they've got a decent shot.

Seider getting a lot of post game love - and fully deserved, but Hronek with some strong play tonight also.

Seider shuts down McDavid on a break. No goals in OT. I hate shoot-outs.

Wings really on their heels in the 2nd so far. Veleno puts the puck over the glass for a penalty. I don't imagine either Vrana or Raymond coming back will be the occasion to bump Veleno out of his spot, but I wouldn't mind if it was.

Betuzzi with one of his classic stick in the lane pass break ups during one of his shifts. He's showing signs.... There was also a nice play by Ras where he erased an Oiler rushing down the boards. OTOH, Veleno, continues to get rubbed out himself with his constant failed attempts to pass to himself along the boards past a defender. Wise up Joe, everyone has seen the move at this point, add something to your repertoire.

Larkin on fire.

Maybe the Finns should make them worry by staging a feint to retake Karelia. Or maybe just go ahead and do it......🤔

I wonder if back discomfort was part of the reason his velo seems to be dropping even before the forearm failed. After TJ a guy may be throwing in a year, but 18mo isn't unusual to get reasonable command back. Maybe he'll be lucky.

In McCosky's column about Faedo the boy says right out he believes that his TJ was the result of the Tigers asking him to change his delivery from one that didn't hurt to one that did. He's gone back to his old one with the blessing of the new bio-mechanics regime. EDIt; Chasfh quotes an Atheltic story up thread that covers similar ground.

journalism at the Freep has been circling the drain for a while now.... really pretty much ever since Gannett took over.