Detroit Red Wings – Page 3 – Faxes from Uncle Dale

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Game #56 – Red Wings vs. Hawks: I Make A Lot Of Graphs

By Sam Fels February 10, 2019 1241 0

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Game #56 – Red Wings vs. Hawks: Lineups & How Teams Were Built

By Sam Fels February 10, 2019 1446 0

Notes: Jimmy Howard started yesterday in Buffalo, so it’ll be Bernier today. He shut out the Sens the last time he started, but he had given up 16 goals in his last four starts before that…Larkin has five points in his last four…Kronwall is a free agent at season’s end but has said he does not want to go anywhere, so the Red Wings can’t cash in on him…Athanasiou doesn’t have a goal since January 6th…what the fuck kind of doofus spells his name “Cristoffer?”

Notes: Only changes should see Dalhstrom come back in for Koekkoek, who was not good against Vancouver…After his late-game penalty Perlini would normally be scratched but the Hawks aren’t carrying an extra forward…Ward’s turn in the net if they’re splitting starts…Saad continues to kick in skulls, and he did it without Kampf on Thursday. Was one of the few Hawks above water in possession…Caggiula had five shots at even-strength against Vancouver…

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: Detroit Red Wings

By Sam Fels September 6, 2018 1762 0

This isn’t even fun anymore.

Ever since I was a child, I longed for the day when the Detroit Red Wings would be a flaming shit heap sliding into that river that is also a flaming shit heap and could leave us the hell alone forever. It took close to 20 goddamn years, and for them to flee to the inferior conference at the time so they could hold onto their precious, meaningless playoff streak for two more years like some nine-year-old who still has a fucking binky, but it happened. Ever since their move to the Eastern Conference so their eight fans who actually live in Detroit and not here wouldn’t have to stay up past lights out at West Shoreline, they have been irrelevant. Their GM has been shown to be perhaps the luckiest fraud on the face of the Earth. No one wants to go to their shiny new arena that their supposed “hero” bilked them out of hundreds of millions of dollars they didn’t have to build and then not go to. They’re actively awful, and everyone knows it. They’ve become what they derided us for being for so long. The rebuild will go forever because they’ll never fire Ken Holland and he just keeps smiling that diluted, in-0ver-his-head grin at the press and everyone assumes everything is fine. It’s not. This team sucks and will for a very long time.

But now…we’ve all moved on. With Henrik Zetterberg likely to never play again, this might be the worst team in the league. They could seriously give the Senators a run for their money. Good God, Thomas Vanek is going to be on the top line, and Thomas Vanek stopped being able to move three years ago. They might get the #1 pick…no, scratch that, the NHL WILL rig it to give them the #1 pick to gift wrap them Jack Hughes because Bettman still thinks he needs the Red Wings for the league to be successful. And then Holland will trade it for the negotiating rights to Max Pacioretty two weeks before he hits the market. This is beyond taking candy from a baby. This is beating your toddler at Madden 142-0 and then punting him out the window without feeling one way or the other about it.

Let’s go through this and see if we still feel.

Goalies: Somehow, Jimmy Howard is still here, despite being in trade rumors since he was in the 3rd grade (the height of his education, like 75% of the players in the league). This is also the last year of that contract that made no sense, but don’t you worry, Ol’ Six-Gun Holland will extend him for $7 million a year until 2048 if he has a good October. Just you fucking watch. Howard was pretty putrid last year, only putting up a .910 and a .916 at evens, but he was playing behind nothing. Or at least that’s what you’d think except the Wings were middle of the pack when it came to attempts and chances against. Jimmy Howard is just there. He’s a billboard on the expressway. You use him to identify where you are as long as you’re going somewhere else hurriedly. Like that Magikist one by the Fullerton entrance on the Kennedy for decades.

Anyway, he’s going to be backed up by Jonathan Bernier, whom Holland signed for three years for some reason. Perhaps he sees him taking the starting role when Howard’s deal is up next year and can serve out the remaining years of this rebuild that’s only working in Holland’s head. I have no idea. But you don’t sign Jonathan Bernier for more than one year. It’s the “Mr. Pussy” corollary from season 1 of Sex And The City. You don’t date Mr. Pussy. You take him for as long as you need service and then you release him back into the world. Fuck, why do I even know this? This is Jamie Benn‘s favorite reference we’ve ever made.

Defense: Jesus H. Christ, do not look too closely at this half-assed Boccioni of death. This team is still trying to make Danny DeKeyser happen. IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. They re-signed Mike Green out of pity, I guess. Niklas Kronwall is here to tell you about the onion on his belt. Trevor Daley. My lord people, Trevor Daly in the top four, possibly top pairing. Trevor Daley only exists for people who huff paint to yell at Mark Lazerus. What is this? I don’t even know what this is supposed to be. They don’t have one fucking kid who can crack this lineup? Oh right, there’s a Chelios descendant here who I assume they signed before he went to jail for beating up some college kid in a bar fight he most definitely started because the kid was reading at the bar. This is some rebuild, Ken.

Forwards: More public transit puke. Dylan Larkin slides up to take the #1 center role. Hey did you know he’s from the area and went to Michigan? I bet you didn’t because it’s not like they tell you that every eight seconds! He’s a child of Datsyuk! He probably hates gay people too! Gustav Nyquist is riding shotgun to score 20-25 goals that absolutely could not matter less. They shipped off Tomas Tatar but I’m assuming he’s still somehow here because we had to hear about how he’d revolutionize the sport for 12 years in the minors before he came up to the Wings to do a whole lot of not much. Hey, same for Tomas Jurco, come to think of it! There’s still a fucking Bertuzzi here. They’ve already drafted his sperm sample. I guess I’m supposed to think Anthony Mantha is a thing, I don’t. Andreas Athanasiou (I can’t wait another day….), or Andreas Anathasiou because I assure you it doesn’t make a difference, moves to center after the Wings tried to fuck him over with his contract last year. He’s really fast…and that’s it. Someone should have told them they didn’t need another Darren Helm because the old one is still here (now with detachable hips!). Evgeny Svechnikov is going to be on the top line by Halloween, and if he isn’t it’s only because the Wings are still trying to make everyone think they “overcook” their prospects when in fact all their prospects just sucked. Seriously, there are maybe two 20-goal scorers here. This team might not score 200 goals this year.

Outlook: Horrid. Their only hope is that they’re so terrible they finally fire Holland and find a GM worth a shit, except no NHL team ever does that they just hire some red-faced jackwagon who picked his head up off the hotel bar at the Stanley Cup Final long enough to say yes. They’ll make big noise about luring Yzerman back home, he’ll take one look at that roster and pipeline and laugh so hard he’ll tear an abductor. They should make Holland and Ottawa’s Dorion slug it out for Hughes. Or better yet, rig the pick to the Hawks after McDonough threatens Bettman with something. This team is going to suck out loud, to the point where you won’t even enjoy it. Even hearing their name will cause a giant, “UGGGHHH!” Wait for the excuses to why their arena dedicated to pizza that tastes like despair is 1/4 full for both the Pistons and Wings.

Khalil Mack is going to Scorpion overrated fraud Matthew Stafford and then chuck his giant moon-face into Comerica Park between the two broadcasters who are so miserable watching the Tigers they’re fighting each other. How Detroit is that?

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Cheli Comes Home

By Sam Fels July 23, 2018 3800 0

A lot of us can trace how we’ve “grown up” in our feelings toward Chris Chelios.

Earlier today, it was announced that Chris Chelios will become a team ambassador for the Hawks, leaving the Detroit Red Wings as he wanted to be closer to his family here in the area. That will make him the only team ambassador who can stand up 75% of the time and isn’t a total, raging piece of shit (though Chelios might be kind of a piece of shit but we’ll leave that for another time).

Chelios’s journey in the hearts of Hawks fans actually ends up being one of the stranger ones I can remember. Cheli was beloved here in Chicago for not only being the greatest Hawks d-man of all-time (and he is, at least until Duncan Keith retires), but by essentially being one of us. He was from here. He grew up in the old Stadium just like we did. He played like 75% of the crowd at the old Stadium would have if you’d tossed a jersey and pads on them and let them on the bench: completely unhinged, like every shift very well might be the last, and completely in the face of every opponent. Chelios was just about the toughest d-man you could find, and was simply a torture rack for any forward who came across him in the corner or in front of the net. But he was so much more than an over-caffeinated security guard. He had a hell of a shot, was a decent passer, and could get up on the play. He could do anything, really. His pairing with fellow Yank Gary Suter was probably the best Hawks defensive pairing until Keith and Seabrook showed up. They were also major parts of the US’s World Cup victory in ’96 in Montreal.

And Chelios found himself more in the hearts of Hawks fans because he wore his distaste for the Red Wings, Blues, and North Stars on his sleeve. Sometimes to his detriment of course, because Chelios was leading the idiotic charge against the Stars in ’91 when the Presidents’ Trophy winning Hawks were too stupid to live and somehow lost to the woeful opponents from Minnesota, with dumb Chelios penalty after dumb Chelios penalty (he racked up 46 PIMs in six games, for fuck’s sake). Chelios even went on to declare he would never play for the Red Wings. Those kinds of meltdowns were common, like ’93 against St. Louis for another example.

Of course, all those things changed when the Hawks did their head-first dive into the league’s septic tank. Chelios had already seen Roenick and Belfour get shipped off for a drunk and garbage disposal run-off, and it was clear where things were headed for him. Back then players couldn’t wield much control, and the Wings were the only team that came in with an offer. That offer was Anders Eriksson and two first rounders that became Steve McCarthy and Adam Munro, and if you don’t mind I’m going to take five minutes to punch myself in the face until my nose and brain become one.

Chelios would actually spend longer in Detroit than he did in Chicago, and Hawks fans didn’t seem to want to forgive him for it for the longest time. Then again those last few years he wasn’t much more than a very slash-y, cross check-y mascot for the Wings, but it stung. I admit to being enraged when he brought the Cup to Wrigley Field during the summer of 2008. Where did he get off? Was he just rubbing our noses in it?

But this was his home. Where else was he going to bring it? Really what I was pissed at is it still felt then like I might not ever see the Cup in Chicago for the right reasons.

Were really pissed at him? Or were we pissed that yet another Hawks hero had to find success somewhere else because the Hawks were simply just too incompetent? Were we just angry that what should have happened here with a player who wanted it as badly as anyone to happen here had to happen somewhere else? My hunch is it’s more the latter.

I don’t think I’m alone when I say my moment of clarity came when he had his Heritage Night. The boos still rang out for him, because he was still identified as a Wing. But you could tell it hurt him. You could tell he thought it was time to let go. And you know… it was. And is.

Chris Chelios loved being a Hawk. He did everything he could for an organization that quite simply didn’t deserve him as a player. And he only decided to leave when it became beyond obvious it was going to be futile from there on out. He didn’t force a trade to the Red Wings. That’s just where he was sent.

Chelios isn’t without black marks. He has that DUI from 2009 (though with the Hawks that makes you head coach material). He was one of the members of the US team that destroyed their rooms in the Olympic Village in 1998 when they turned to shit in the tournament. There’s probably one or two others.

He’s also no worse than the second-best player to man the blue line for the Hawks. He was a celebrated captain. When it comes to native Chicagoans to play for the Hawks, his accomplishments and importance simply dwarf Eddie Olczyk’s. On some really, really good Hawks teams in the early and mid-90s, he was clearly the heartbeat. Really, Brent Seabrook shouldn’t be wearing #7 because it should be hanging from the rafters. It may yet still, with the two of them claiming it.

But it doesn’t, mostly for reasons out of Chelios’s hands. It wasn’t his fault that the organization became a cartoonish heel towards its fans and players (though I guess he can take a little responsibility in those teams from ’91-’95 not winning. Not ’96, when the team doctors numbed his whole leg and nuts before the critical Game 4 against the Avs and he couldn’t play. Had he played, the Hawks very well might have won that and taken a 3-1 lead and then who knows?). It wasn’t his fault he got shipped off to our most hated rival, who just happened to be one of the greatest teams the league had ever seen at that point. It wasn’t his fault that the Wings treated him as the Hawks should have. And it’s not his fault that the jealousy and bile Hawks fans carried against Detroit for so long was taken out against him.

None of that matters now. And it’s not like team ambassador is an important position. But Chelios is back where he’s always belonged. It should have never taken this long. It probably should have never happened at all this way.

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Game #49 – They took the train going anywhere because your city is trash – Blackhawks 5, Red Wings 1

By Adam Hess January 25, 2018 2391 0

After three weeks of the Hawks essentially either getting their dicks kicked in or playing well enough to win but finding a way to lose, tonight was a welcome outburst of good hockey. Especially after Detroit was one of the teams that did the dick-kicking-in just last Sunday. This is what the Wings get for putting their shitty team in a shitty town and naming their arena after shitty pizza. TO DA BULLETS MY FRENT

– Give me more DeBrincat-Toews-Duclair. Give me all of it. The three of them went 56.25-62.16-58.82 on CF, respectively, and each found the score sheet (finally, in Captain Woke’s case). DeBrincat recorded a Cat Trick (yeah I said it, fuck off) and an assist, Duclair found the net after an absolutely orgasmic passing play from Keith and Top Cat to go with 2 assists, and Toews notched a helper on a nice rush that led to Top Cat’s second goal. As John said yesterday, as long as Toews can figure out he doesn’t have as much time as he wants to think he does to make plays, this line has chemistry, and the speed and skill of the two wingers will hopefully help Toews find more production.

– More on the Duclair goal. Please go watch it here. Granted, it is off a faceoff, which helps a little bit in catching the Wings on their heels. But can you imagine if the Hawks moved the puck with that sort of urgency on a power play instead of everybody standing around with their dick in the hands every time. If I’m Q, I’m sitting the whole team down in front of the video screen when they get back from break and just saying “DO THIS ON THE POWER PLAY.” Maybe they could score a damn PPG against a team not from Canada.

– The third line of Wingels, Anisimov, and Heart Man was one of the few low spots for the Hawks in this game. And they were a very low spot. All three of them got absolutely skull fucked on shot shares, with Heart Man and Anisimov both posting 33.33 rates and Wingels below that at 32%. Those were -22.83 and -24.94 compared to the team rate for the game, which is just pathetic. Even adjusting for score and venue, Natural Stat Trick has all three around 40%. To echo John from last night’s wrap again, this is further evidence that the Hawks aren’t gonna be able to roll a 3+1. And if maybe for some reason this third line was intended as the 1 and rather than part of the 3, that might actually make this look a lot worse.

– Guess which defenseman led all Hawks blue liners with a 60% CF. Connor Murphy, bitches. It’s becoming evident that Sam’s assertion that Murph is this team’s best defenseman this year is correct, and Q’s diaper filling over Hjammer is just sad. Murphy also tallied the primary assist on Top Cat’s first goal, which got the night started. Fuck you and your press box, Joel.

– Ant Man Forsberg was fine in the net tonight, but he still too scrambly-panicky for me to truly comfortable with him, even as a main backup. I am not sure what options there are out there, but I almost wonder if Stan shouldn’t investigate adding one of the league’s better backups via trade. There’s still enough here for the team to maybe sneak into the playoffs if they get reliable goaltending, and I am not sure you’re getting that from Glass/Forsberg. But it’s also about more than this year. Again, I am not sure Forsberg is really a good backup, and those can prove to be important throughout a regular season. Points won or lost when your backup is in can impact playoff seeding. So a good backup who might have some controlability moving forward, and maybe some potential to take the starter’s mantle in the coming years (Crow is only getting older and that brain can only get more mushy) could be a wise investment.

– For being “HOCKEY TOWN,” Shitty Pizza Arena sure had a lot of very obviously empty seats tonight. Shit, you can see a lot in that photo above. Not that Chicago is one to talk cuz ticket prices are dropping like bricks around here and seats are opening up in the UC like mad, too. But with opening a brand new arena, and this being the only Chicago-Detroit matchup in the Motor City this year, I was a little surprised to see how empty the arena was. Just another fly dropping to the NHL attendance plague. Ho Hum.

– Look, it’s only Detroit. They’re not great. But this kind of effort is one we hadn’t really seen from the Hawks since the ass whooping they gave Ottawa, who is also bad. And this is also the same Detroit team that kicked the Hawks dick in 11 days ago. If it is indicative of what’s to come for this team (and that is a BIG if), there is reason to think this team can find the playoffs. Maybe.

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Game #49 – Hawks vs. Red Wings Spotlight: Andreas Athanasiou…They Couldn’t Wait Another Day…

By Sam Fels January 25, 2018 1817 0

You’ve probably heard all the complaints and conspiracy theories about baseball’s offseason. Be it tanking teams, teams that are only “tanking,” collusion, analytic front offices, whatever the cause you might think has led to everyone being quite bored. But if anyone actually paid attention to hockey, or if the players had a union worth a shit, the case of Andreas Athanasiou this past summer would have generated similar talk, especially considering the inaction of everyone else.

Athanasiou came off his rookie year when he played 64 games and scored 18 goals. Hardly Earth-shattering, but given that he’s perhaps the fastest skater in the league and his age, there’s certainly a lot of potential there. A player a lot of teams would certainly like to have in their holster, for sure.

And then he sat. And sat. Now, this is where you’d have to interject that Ken Holland boned himself with a lot of stupid contracts and simply didn’t have the money to pay Athanasiou what he probably deserved. This wasn’t a GM playing hardball, at least not totally. More like the hardball hit him in the head and Athanasiou was left to deal with the dizzy GM afterwards.

But then again, Holland didn’t have any reason not to even if he had the cap space. As Athanasiou was only a restricted free agent, he basically either had to take whatever the Wings offered him, or go to the KHL. It’s quite a league where your promising young players have to threaten going to play in Russia, where they assuredly don’t want to go, just to get anything near the money they’ve already earned. And according to reports this wasn’t a massive gap. Athanasiou wanted somewhere around $2 million.

Hey, we’ve been on both sides of this. We’ve been critical of Stan Bowman and the Hawks awarding contracts to their players well before they had to. The trade of Brandon Saad, the first time, was another example of the Hawks not wanting to play hardball. The system is rigged to let teams do that, and without any punishment. They can play chicken and never have to swerve.

Because no one came for Athanasiou. How many teams could have used a middle six winger with this speed and scoring instinct? All of them? Damn close. And as the Wings only had somewhere around $2 million in space, an offer of more wouldn’t have been beyond most GMs, and compensation would have been a first and third round pick.

And that’s a twofold problem. One, any player making $2-3 million per year, with exceptions, are not going to be worth a first and third round pick, at least to most GMs. The compensation levels are ridiculous. If you go above $3 million, it’s a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Think about a player making $4 million. Probably a 20-goal scorer, yeah? Second pairing d-man? Second tier starting goalie, maybe? Is that worth three draft picks? Then again, that depends on what you think of draft picks, because they develop a lot weirder than they do in baseball. It’s a hard system to judge, but GMs horde them like leprechauns to gold even though most of them don’t have any idea what to do with them.

But for someone it should have been. The Oilers are missing wingers everywhere, they couldn’t give up a couple picks for Athanasiou, who is certainly better than a lot of wingers they have? We could go down the list here. Isn’t Athanasiou the idealized version of Vinnie Hinostroza? What would have been the better signing for the Flames, him or Jagr?

But GMs don’t do it, and it’s not just the compensation. There’s a gentlemen’s agreement that restricted free agents will never be poached. Shouldn’t this be some sort of collusion? Except the compensation is in the CBA and could always be pointed to. It robs the players of all leverage until they’re 28 or so unless they want to go play in a lesser league thousands of miles from home. How can that stand? The idea of an offer sheet is to provide some sort of leverage for younger players and it’s been taken away from them by an unwritten agreement between GMs.

This would be something that the NHLPA should go after in the next negotiation. But you know how that will go.

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Game #49 – Hawks vs. Red Wings Q&A: Our Q&A With JJ From Last Week, Because We’re Not Talking To Wings Fans Twice

By Sam Fels January 25, 2018 1706 0

Not that much has changed since the Hawks laid an egg against the Wings 10 days ago. So here’s what we asked JJ From Kansas then. You can follow him on Twitter @JJFromKansas and read his work on WingingItFromMowtown.com, if you really feel the need to mentally injure yourself.

Let’s start here: The Wings are a capped out team, and they aren’t any good. While they lose Mike Green’s salary after the season, Dylan Larkin, Andreas Athanasiou, and Anthony Mantha all need new contracts after the year. So basically… why does Ken Holland still have a job?

Ken Holland still has a job for the same reason Stan Bowman will still be with the Hawks through iteration #4 of “We just need this NEW large pile of also-ran nobodies to give overwhelming value on their low-cost deals because we can’t afford to fit the proper supporting players under the weight of the contracts for Kane, Toews, and Brent Seabrook.” Winning cups buys a lot more leeway than it ought to, even as we approach the end of the 10th year since Holland’s crew last lifted one. Fortunately, the increases to the cap and the other deals falling off should make more than enough space for Larkin and Mantha (with the hope they come to their senses on Athanasiou and don’t end up trading him), but yeah it shouldn’t be Ken Holland’s ring-heavy hand pushing those deals across the table to the only reasons to tune in and watch Detroit these days.

Dylan Larkin had 23 goals his rookie year. That dropped to 17 last year with the move to the middle. He’s only got six so far this year. What’s the deal?

Eh, I’m not so worried about Dylan Larkin the goalscorer as long as he continues to be Dylan Larkin the growing-up capable two-way playmaking center. The 23-goal rookie season was a lot of him being fed by Henrik Zetterberg and defenders not having enough of a concept of how quick he can turn a corner on you. The 17-goal output last season taught him that defenses adjust to one-trick ponies really well. He’s currently on pace to put up 23 more points than in his rookie season and, while I’d like it more of them were goals just because goals are more fun to watch than assists, I can rest well knowing he’s playing better now than he has at any other point in his still very-young NHL career.

Will the Red Wings trade Mike Green, and possibly Gustav Nyquist, before the deadline?

Mike Green seems like such a no-brainer trade that it makes me irrationally angry thinking about how it’s still entirely possible the team holds onto him for some dumb reason. Bob McKenzie seems pretty confident Holland won’t do the dumb thing and hold onto Green, but I need to see it before I can relax. I don’t think Nyquist moving is all that likely though. He had his NTC kick in this year and there really hasn’t been a lot of chatter about moving him out, even though the team absolutely ought to be doing that. Honesty, it might surprise me less if they traded away newly-signed Tomas Tatar this season before his no-trade clause kicks in over the summer.

They wouldn’t really get rid of Athanasiou either during this season or in the summer, would they?

This team once gave up a first-round pick for Kyle Quincey.

What gives you hope about where the Wings might be in two or three years?

There’s already a lot of promise in Larkin and Mantha with more promise to come. While the team doesn’t have that real franchise cornerstone piece, it seems the organization has finally gotten the hint that they’re not going to get two of those out of the 6th and 7th round again and that they haven’t yet re-upped Ken Holland to another deal. The rest of Detroit’s division outside of Tampa and Toronto is also wheel-spinning stuck-in-the-mud trash, so that should give them plenty of opportunity to gain traction first and get back to those actually-useful trips to the postseason where you can come out of losses saying at least the kids who are going to lead us in the future learned something valuable. I’m just not sure that two or three years is the realistic timeline for this kind of optimism though. Maybe three or four?

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Game #49 – Hawks vs. Red Wings Douchebag Du Jour: Whatever A Luke Witkowski Is

By Sam Fels January 25, 2018 2021 0

We couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. We had to check how to spell his name a couple times. Apparently, the Red Wings have some shaved ape they called up to play wing on occasion and his name is Luke Witkowski. He has 50 penalty minutes in 18 games. That makes him fourth in the league in penalty minutes per game, behind three real Aristotles in Derek Dorsett, Cody McLeod, and Michael Haley and just ahead another bridge troll Tom Wilson.

We’re trying to figure out why. We get it, you have to live in Detroit and and play on this terrible team and maybe you’re angry. But of course that’s never the story in hockey.

Witkowski has played parts of four seasons in the NHL, three in Tampa and this one in Motor City. And clearly he’s under the impression if he goes around measuring himself in a way that only truly stupid men measure themselves that’s the way he’ll stick. And it sure is doing the Red Wings a lot of good. They might have finished last instead of 6th without this kind of SANDPAPER.

Are Larkin and Mantha more protected because this dolt is on the bench? We’re guessing not because he’s played more than 10 minutes in a game exactly once out of his 18. And normally he’s in the three-minute range. So who does the help? Certainly not the other wingers who soak up his time and then jumble the lines.

Where else but this dumbass world would a player gain the outlook, and usually rightly so, that if he just takes enough fists to the face that he can stick in the top league? Would baseball let a reliever stick around because he threw at hitters who like, bat flipped one too many times? Maybe the NFL needs a gunner on a punt unit that also likes to try and rip guys heads off in the pile and after a whistle, but it’s unlikely. Guys like this get laughed out of the NBA.

What makes it funny is how counter it is to what used to be the Red Wings philosophy, who left this all behind when they were good. But now they suck, so they resort to this, we guess because they have nothing to lose. Remember when Don Cherry claimed that the Wings’ attendance woes was because they didn’t have a Kocur or Probert anymore? How we and they laughed. Was he right?

While it’s sad when someone’s dream dies, Witkowski clearly isn’t good enough to be in the NHL. That makes him like millions of others. So cast him out. This does no one any good.

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