Red Wings

[gjdodger]

I should know better than to offer a video game link to a bunch of wastrels like yourselves. ;)

[DanO]

291.3 on about my 15th try.

GO LIONS "08" !!!!!!!!

[THE STEE]

320.4 -320.3 - 320.4 hit dat bird outta da park

[Sharkbait]

315.0

[Tom]

319.1 was my highest score this morning.

[Malto Marko]

298.4

[bimmer84]

319.9

[Drew]

DNP

[Malto Marko]

Had to play again. 317.4

[bimmer84]

320.8 with a bunch around 200 with beak impaled in the snow....

[OR Lion]

301.3 after 10 tries

[chemiclord]

322.9 was my best effort.

[King Cole]

best i could do in like 50-70 shots was 321 something

[Rocky Bleier]

New NHL, same old Red Wings


DAVID NAYLOR
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
May 23, 2008 at 10:21 PM EDT

In the decade leading up to the NHL's lost season of 2004-05, no team enjoyed more success than the Detroit Red Wings.
Over those 10 seasons, the Wings made the playoffs every year, won eight divisional titles, reached the Stanley Cup final four times and skated away with hockey's top prize three times. They won more regular-season games than any team during that span and more playoff games as well.
They also had one of the NHL's largest payrolls.
So when the NHL and the National Hockey League Players' Association drastically reformed their collective labour agreement in the summer of 2005, taking away the economic advantage clubs such as Detroit had enjoyed, it was fair to ponder what might become of the great Red Wings dynasty.

Well, with nearly three full seasons of postlockout hockey in the books, the answer to that question is clear. As they get set to open the Stanley Cup final at home tonight against the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Red Wings are trying to put the finishing touches not just on a stellar season, but also on the most successful start for any team in the NHL's three-year-old postlockout era.
A lot has changed in the past three seasons, but the same principles Detroit employed in the old NHL seem to work just fine in the new world, too.
"When we were in the old world, when you had a $70-million [U.S.] payroll, we still had to put a team together," general manager Ken Holland said. "We had six or seven or eight guys who had the majority of the payroll and we had to have some young kids. I guess it's the same kind of philosophy in putting a team together now for us as it was before. The numbers change a little bit. We've got a philosophy, puck possession. We try to find players that fit our philosophy.
"We haven't changed our philosophy."
The reasons for Detroit's amazing success the past three seasons aren't so much found in what the Red Wings have started doing differently since the lockout ended, but in what they've always done.
While the salary cap put Detroit on more even ground with its fellow franchises from a payroll standpoint, it also put a greater importance on things the Red Wings already did better than most teams. Scouting, both at the amateur and professional levels, became more important than ever since teams couldn't cover mistakes with money. The NHL's new rules, which allowed more freedom for skill players, also played to Detroit's advantage since the Red Wings already had been building teams around puck handlers since the early 1990s.
So, while former big spenders such as the Toronto Maple Leafs were crippled by the new world, Detroit has just kept on rolling.
"That's a tribute to [assistant general manager] Jim Nill and Ken Holland," said Scotty Bowman, the former Detroit head coach who acts now as a team consultant. "They have good scouts, pro and amateur, and they lean on them to give them good ideas. They bought out some players to get [the payroll] down in a hurry and then started looking for players who could come in and make a difference, like Mikael Samuelsson, Dan Cleary and Dallas Drake.
"The main thrust is they don't stand pat," Bowman added. "They keep trying to add players. They talked about it and said we have to look everywhere for players. If anyone has an idea, they want you to bring it forward."
The Red Wings may no longer be able to outspend their competitors on players, but it appears they've broken the bank when it comes to brain trust.
With Holland, Nill, senior vice-president Jim Devallano, vice-president Steve Yzerman and Bowman, Detroit has five top hockey minds who've been part of the organization since at least 1995.
Conventional wisdom suggests a talented collection of executives like that is either sure to conflict or be split apart by individuals wanting to spread their wings elsewhere. In Detroit's case, that hasn't happened.
"We really believe in each other and have a lot of fun together," Nill said. "We all have different roles and we respect them. And in the end, we all like to win. The Ilitch family [who have owned the team since 1982] has looked after us all and that's just carried over. It's funny, we tell the players, you need to look in the mirror and know who you are and what you are … and we work with that as a management style."
The Red Wings' management style works because everyone in the organization is on the same page when it comes to understanding the style of game Detroit will play and the kind of players needed to play it. Detroit's scouting staff, like its management team, is mostly made up of individuals who've been with the organization for more than a decade.
Those scouts, led by European superscout Hakan Andersson, aren't just good at finding talent, but also who fits Detroit's style of play, the style born more than a decade ago under Bowman when the five-man Russian unit of Igor Larionov, Slava Fetisov, Sergei Fedorov, Slava Kozlov and Vladimir Konstantinov christened the term "puck possession."
None of those players have played for Detroit in years, and today the Red Wings have far more of a Swedish flavour than Russian. But the puck-possession game developed under Bowman remains as much a part of Detroit's DNA as ever.
"Ever since Scotty brought that in, that became our style," Nill said. "So when we drafted players, they had to be that style. We wouldn't draft someone who couldn't handle the puck. And we've stayed with it. When we've lost, people would say: 'They're not tough enough. Puck possession looks nice, but it's not working.' But we've stuck with it."
Indeed, the Red Wings have avoided the common practice of teams overreacting to defeat by deconstructing much of what was working well.
Just last spring, Detroit lost the Western Conference final to the rough-and-tumble Anaheim Ducks, the league's top fighting team. But instead of reacting by stocking up on pugilists and grit, Detroit's big free-agent signing was Brian Rafalski, a small, puck-moving defenceman. Then they went on to the best regular-season record in the NHL while finishing last in fighting majors for the fourth consecutive season.
Other teams might have tried to chase the style of last year's champion. The Red Wings just became more like themselves.
"All the drafting and the trading and all the moves that we make, there's a continuity going from year to year," Holland said. "And even when we lose in the first round … we've continued with the same philosophy, and I think that's been a real advantage."
Despite their success, it is only recently that Detroit has begun to get the respect it deserves. In the old world, the Red Wings often felt unfairly labelled as team that wrote cheques for what they achieved. Anyone paying attention would know it was hockey smarts that earned Detroit its three most recent Stanley Cups.
"It was kind of a goal of ours after the lockout to show it wasn't money," Nill said. "We're showing we can do it the other way, that it's about drafting and developing and treating people right

[DanO]

You mean the best team in hockey for the last 15 years actually has a system and they draft players that fit their system. Hogwash I say. Total Hogwash. You can't win by having a system and drafting players that fit that style. Simply bullshit.

GO LIONS "08" !!!!!!!!