Red Wings

[gjdodger]

Detroit defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom is headed to the NHL All-Star game for the 10th straight season. He and Red Wings teammate Pavel Datsyuk (dat-SOOK') are among 15 players chosen to fill out the Western Conference roster for the midseason classic to be played Jan. 25 in Montreal.

Detroit had no players elected to the starting lineup in fan balloting despite having the second-best record in the conference. The rest of the roster was picked by the NHL's hockey operations department, after consultation with general managers.

The NHL-leading Sharks will send two players to the All-Star game after being shut out of the starting lineup. San Jose will be represented by center Joe Thornton and defenseman Dan Boyle. Thornton is an All-Star for the sixth straight time and Boyle will make his debut in his first season with the Sharks after being traded in the offseason by Tampa Bay.

[jaadam4]

Boyle is killing it. Def deserves to be a starter.

[gjdodger]

There was clearly something wrong with the voting procedure. Bettman probably looked at what the other three leagues do, and said, "How can I assemble the worst elements of each?" He's good at that.

[FCRhodes]

All Star games are a waste. We should vote in players from other teams who have bonuses tied to the game. Drive up the salaries of other teams.

[jaadam4]

There was clearly something wrong with the voting procedure. Bettman probably looked at what the other three leagues do, and said, "How can I assemble the worst elements of each?" He's good at that.

lol....oh so true

[jaadam4]

Great comeback win tonight against the quacks.

[Malto Marko]

Great game overall. I believe they said the Wings were the only ones to beat the quackers in their house this year. Nice to have them on the first game of the Western swing instead of the middle or end. However, that may exact a price when it comes to San Jose.

........about the voting for the All Star Game. I believe there was a Media push in Chicago for some time to get their fans voting so they could knock out the frontrunning Wings. The difference is when one metropolis votes early and often and another is somewhat indifferent.

[gjdodger]

What were the NHL's voting rules? I believe the NBA, for instance, lets you vote up to 25 times a day, but they have a mechanism in there to defeat computerized voting; you have to type in a different five digit number for each vote. If they don't have that, people could just write programs to autovote every day.

[jaadam4]

The NHL can have its All Star game and their little festivities as long as they realize that Lord Stanley cant be voted on.

REPEAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[DanO]

"........about the voting for the All Star Game. I believe there was a Media push in Chicago for some time to get their fans voting so they could knock out the frontrunning Wings. The difference is when one metropolis votes early and often and another is somewhat indifferent."
-----------------------I heard on the radio that the Penquins had something on their webpage to vote for the Hawks so their fans would vote the Wings out. Apparently several WIngs were leading in votes until this was posted to the Penquins board. That's actually pretty funny. You can have your allstars but you ain't getting the CUP!!

GO LIONS "09" !!!!!!!!!

[gjdodger]

We can laugh about the pettiness of it, but I think this bears out one of the NHL's problems--a lot of players whose names look like "zxglkckz." In the other leagues, you have recognizable names all over the league, and when a popular player is traded he gets votes from both fans of his current team and those who saw him play elsewhere, so someone like Shaq gets big All Star votes even when his skills have severely diminished. Maybe it's a function of my not getting Versus, but most NHL stars are not household names, and that lets fans of a couple teams load up the All-Star balloting.

[Panoptes]

As I stated moments ago in the BN: Schwartz hired thread:

I'm in a hurry here as I am on a lunch break from a 3 day CE seminar that I need to get back to but wanted to chime in on the DET v ANA game the other night.

I passed out early that night in prep for this course I'm taking so I missed the game but just reading the box score, looks like ANA was competitive again but as usual, they need more offense on their team.

Looks like SJ and DET (and CAL) are headed for a showdown.

There is still alot of time left for change so I have that going for me in ANA.

[Lionsloser07]

Well. Let's just pray they make it to the Stanley Cup Finals again!

[jaadam4]

Tough road trip for the boys in red. You'd think they'd look a little slower with those Stanley Cup Champion rings holding them down.

[Rocky Bleier]

Defensive breakdowns are too frequent this year. Think of losses to Pittsburgh, Dallas, and last night at San Jose.