Official 13-14 NHL Regular Season Thread

[philou21]

Engelland got 5 games.

[batdad]

No suspension for Quincey....no hearing or nothing. Even Getz took on some responsibility for that play last night for putting himself in a bad position.

Meh on Red Wings having trainer/doctor etc issues. They are a class organization and Wings fans should be rejoicing with what they have when they take a look around the rest of the league. Wings are pretty much tops of everything in off ice staff.

The difference between now and 5 years ago is simply this/.//other teams now have good Euro scouts and those later round Euro picks that turn into superstars are much harder to find.

I just do not at all undertand how a Wings fan can complain about anything off the ice. That is one hell of an amazing off ice organization.

And Darren Helm setbakcs? The way Darren plays with his size...duh he got hurt. ANd the way he works out on his own is not surprising either. Guy is an amazing specimen but you can overdo things...like David Booth in Vancouver. canucks fans should want all trainers here canned for Booth? Because he refused to listen and train to be a hockey player and just hit the gym hard which resulted in 3 groin injuries and a hip injury because he would NOT do the right things?

SOrry Primis...serious overreaction and it does not matter to me how well you know the Wings. I know what they have in that group of people off the ice there, and if not the best in the entire NHL very darn near the top.

[philou21]

Varlamov accusations got retired. The judge said there wasn't enough proofs that it really happened. I wasn't expecting that, maybe an off-court deal with the victim or something like that. Might as well prove that all of this was a joke for making easy cash.

[Primis]

Varlamov accusations got retired. The judge said there wasn't enough proofs that it really happened. I wasn't expecting that, maybe an off-court deal with the victim or something like that. Might as well prove that all of this was a joke for making easy cash.

There seems to have been a lot of smoke for there to be no fire.

I bet this is not the last you hear of Varlamov's troubles.

[philou21]

There seems to have been a lot of smoke for there to be no fire.

Yeah that's why I don't know what to think. But athletes and stars are more suitable to attrack attention over small things. But I don't know..

[batdad]

Well with Roy as his coach...

[philou21]

That joke is already beaten to death here. When people learned he was arrested for beating his girlfriend they associated it with Roy being the new coach.

After missing 17 games Gaborik got back tonight and broke his clavicle. God that guy is unlucky.

[philou21]

That Buffalo victory was weird and funny. Poor Smith.

[Primis]

Hits keep coming for DET.

Ericsson is now out 4-6 weeks w/ broken ribs. This team is no good at all unless healthy, and it doesn't look like they're ever going to be healthy. Got booed off the ice at home against NYI last night.

[philou21]

There is a rumor that Phaneuf will sign a 7 years deal worth 7 millions per seasons with Toronto. 7 millions for Phaneuf?

[Manimal]

There is a rumor that Phaneuf will sign a 7 years deal worth 7 millions per seasons with Toronto. 7 millions for Phaneuf?

The Maple Laughs

[philou21]

Most likely.

[batdad]

Yeah Dion is definitely a comparable to a player like oh I dunno.....Zdeno Chara? I mean look at all the trophies Dion has at home.

[philou21]

I wonder what Subban will ask to MTL if Phaneuf got 7 millions.

[batdad]

9.5 easily.

[philou21]

Yeah I thought something like that.

[Primis]

So, about that DET injury thing.

It's still happening.

You're out of your element on this one, batdad. Since I last posted, we've had 4 or 5 more guys go down, and 3 or 4 of them listed still as "groin". There's clearly something wrong with the trainers. Some guys are on their 2nd or 3rd groin injuries of the year.

There's clearly a problem with the training staff. They're doing something wrong, and whatever it is they're not stopping it when they see the injuries it causes.

[batdad]

Last time you mentioned this...there was exactly one guy out with a groin injury....and he was hurt the night before.

Not buying it. Sorry.

Maybe they are or maybe the players are not listening, or maybe a run of bad luck. That happens here as well...David Booth refused to listen to trainers about his off season....Tom Sestito did not listen to trainers in his off season and came to camp in horrible shape. And Alex Burrows had bad luck.

Not all groin injuries can be prevented.

Or maybe the trainers are telling guys they have to bulk up.

Last time I looked at HF and there were 2 guys going on about the trainers in the Red Wings forum and a couple others telling them that they were full of it. One guy with a groin, a goalie with a groin (which actually turned out to be knee) and a case of bad luck.

Maybe there are a couple more now...but they just played on pants out door ice with snow (and god knows that type of ice causes constant injuries) and the season is compressed and all teams are having tweaks etc occur.

Likely just bad luck. I would not worry so much about it. In the long run it gets you what you want...they call up all those farmhands that were sent down that you were so widdled about.

[Primis]

To further this thing... I went digging to give you actual data.

The Production Line blog keeps a chart on Google Docs simply referred to as "THE CHART". It tracks EVERYTHING you can imagine for a season. It is impressive:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... ing#gid=27

If you look under the Game Log tab, every injury, healthy scratched, demotion/promotion is tracked on a game-by-game basis. I spoke with Petrella (who runs TPL) on Twitter and he and I went over the Game Log. Some of the slots listed on the Game Log are shown simply as "STIR" (Short Term IR) generically because the injury was never officially listed. However, in many cases writers like Ansar Khan, Ted Kulfan, Bill Roose, etc, find out the injury anyways by just asking Ken Holland or Mike Babcock. So we went back over the STIR items and we came up with the following.

The Wings have 6 different players who have suffered a total of 9 groin incidents.

* = Active Groin Injury.

Alfredsson (2)
* Weiss (2)
* Helm (2)
Nyquist
Gustavsson
* DeKeyser

In addition, there's debate about Gustavsson having more than one lingering incident that comes and goes. It maybe should count as more than one. Wings have been hazy releasing details on him though.

The other big injury issue is d-men shoulders. That's less on trainers (we think) and more on the d-men getting beat up. Ericsson, Smith, and DeKeyser have all 3 had shoulder problems, as has forward Helm. You could pinpoint when DeKeyser and Ericsson got hurt though, and IIRC maybe Smith.

At any rate DET has 5 guys out with injury at the moment (3 of them Groins), and 6 games ago had as many as 8 for 2 games in a row. The last time the Wings only had 2 guys out to injury was Game 22 -- 2 is the lowest number for the season thus far.

The point is, it's not imagined.


EDIT: Petrella figured out Mangames Lost By Injury (counting who is already confirmed out for next game):

166 Mangames Total so far...

52 games to Groin
45 Shoulder
22 Concussion
19 Knee

[Primis]

Lupul fined $10,000 for cross-checking Eaves in the head at Winter Classic, no suspension.

Unbelievable. As if it's not bad enough he wasn't ejected, and went on to score in the shootout.

Apparently the lesson is go ahead and head-hunt during the Winter Classic because the league doesn't have the balls to actually discipline anyone for anything that happened during it. Bad PR and all...

[jesterx7769]

If you watch the video Kindl comes in and delivers an elbow to Lupul's head which goes un-called. Lupul then looks like he is responding to the person he thinks just elbowed him the head. It looked to me also as if he was just trying to be physical to get the puck and his feet get tangled up on Eaves stick which cause him to kinda lunge into Eaves head.

I am a Wings fan but do not think it was malicious and I do not like all these suspensions the league is handing out. If this hit by Lupul is suspension worthy then we might as well just start suspending everyone for every penalty. Lupul was penalized for it when it happened and it wasn't after the whistle like Thornton which I think suspensions should primarily be reserved for. I'm not happy Eaves is hurt but it is part of the game.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck- ... --nhl.html

[batdad]

Not going to argue with you anymore about it Primis. Lets move on from it. If you want to discuss Wings injuries that is fine. You can have your opinion about it. Mine differs. And if Mike Babcock--maybe the best coach in the show thought it was an issue I am sure he would have them canned. ANd maybe he will at year end.

I would just say this

1. Wings have been lucky and pretty darned healthy in the past.
2. The call ups are getting valuable expereince.
3. Random rubbish happens.

[Primis]

I would just say this

1. Wings have been lucky and pretty darned healthy in the past.
2. The call ups are getting valuable expereince.
3. Random rubbish happens.

I'll disagree with #1. They haven't been "lucky" to escape injuries so much as they've had so much depth it just really wasn't an issue when it came down to it. Like I noted in the D-men thread, there was an entire month a few years back where Stuart-Kronwall were their first pairing on a good day, and on a bad day even Kronwall was out and Stuie was left with the depth. I think sometimes people think that those DET teams never got hurt or lost guys to injury... they did. Even Lidstrom (who rarely ever got hurt) was out some. Forwards like Zetterberg and Franzen have always been in and out of the lineup quite a bit too. Aside from Z's on-again-off-again back problems, injuries have almost always been game injuries -- you saw when they happened, and knew it.

The problem this season is that there are so many mysterious Groin injuries, and most of them seem to come up on an off-day during practice or something. Aside from Samuelsson's now-infamous incident at a practice last year where he went into the corner, tweaked his groin, fell into the boards, and ended up with hurt groin, head, and pectoral muscle all at once... non-game injuries aren't normally a thing (aside form the random guy taking a puck in practice I guess). Sure, Dan Cleary's leg is ready to fall off, we know. We've seen him hurt it 3243829043092 times in-game, it makes sense. Those are easily-rationalized.


As far as the 2nd item, in Lashoff's case I think it's good. He began the season as the 7th dman on the roster, but he's played most every game as it turns out. It was also good to get Almqvist a look to be honest. People REALLY like Oullett but it's a bit early for him to be up any like he was. Marchenko now seems to be the "OK, this is getting ridiculous" point. DeKeyser still qualifies as a rookie, so the Wings will have now dressed 5 different rookie dmen so far in this season. That's pretty excessive. There's a certain point where the experience isn't a good (or even an actual NHL) one.

[MWE]

Sestito scored this week

[batdad]

LOL. Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo is hurt again. Not dressing as backup....Canucks cannot get Ericsson in from Utica in time for game in Anaheim. Lack starts (was going to anyway) and canucks sign 43 year old back up goalie to PTO on emergency basis. No...it is not me. I am 44 now. LOL