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Abel to Yzerman

Your Friday Wing Blog Roundup

by IwoCPO on 02/29/08 at 11:21 AM ET
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Don’t let the title fool you.  I have no intention of making this an every Friday thing.  It just happened to be Friday, and I felt like doing a roundup and, yes, you can consider it yours if you’d like.

I’m getting just a little tired of Pete at Yzerman is God.  Another day, another post I wish I’d written.  He’s liking the Stuart/Kronwall pairing and sees future possibilities for the 8th Swede.

I dream of a Kronner-Ericsson pair, some day, maybe next year. Jumping up in the rush, drilling in goals from the blueline, brutalizing opponents along the boards and in open ice, Ericsson throwing hands with Pronger and widening that gap in his ugly goddam grin….

Pretty remarkable how the blue line has evolved the last twelve months or so.  Yes, we lost Schneider—and before that, Fischer—but the youth movement has paid off.  Ericcson, Meech, Kindl and Smith all point to a strong defensive corps for maybe the next decade. You include Kronwall and Stuart, if he stays, plus obviously Lidstrom and Chelios, and there seems little need for further acquisitions back there. 

Scoring? Now that’s a whole ‘nother matter Kenny.  We’ll talk.

Matt Saler feels, and I agree, that the return of Kronwall should jump-start the O. 

I don’t know about you, but I’d love to see the Wings finish out this awful month with a win to help everyone put it out of our minds. They’ll have Kronwall back and a good passer in Stuart, so the excuse that the breakout passes aren’t as strong with the rookies back there is no longer as applicable. The offense should be able to get going tonight, especially considering the vote of confidence the forwards received at the deadline.

I know the consensus is that the decimated blue line has been the ultimate reason for the drop-off in scoring.  That’s optimistic.  The realistic view is that Samuelsson is a waste, as we’ve known he is for two years.  Hudler is not big enough to battle around the net, as we’ve known for two years. And he gets discouraged and pouty, which leads to apathy, which leads to his “happy” ass spending 52 minutes per night on the bench. 

Zetterberg, Datsyuk and Filppula (to an extent) I can see, because they’re typically the recipients of the outlet passes from Lidstrom, Rafalski, Kronwall and Chelios.  Homer’s definitely affected as many of his goals come directly off point shots from the big guns on the blue line.

But…but.  Regardless of who’s on the back end, the toughness around the net must increase.  McCarty will help, if he can stay healthy—which is iffy considering his layoff and injury history even before he reached rock bottom, personally.  Other, more creative, solutions?

Yeah, I’ve got one.  When all the dmen are back and we’re all debating who the sixth guy should be…how about moving Meech up to a wing?  I’d like to see it, and I’d be surprised if they haven’t already been toying with it in practice.  Yeah, Lebda too…for those of you who have already brought it up.  Consider this lineup with Meech as a forward (and yes, I know it’s drastic…but if the other guys don’t start popping some when everyone’s healthy, than drastic measures will be required):

Cleary/Datsyuk/Homer
Franzen/Zetterberg/Filppula
Maltby/Draper/McCarty (I’ll admit…it’s fun to type that again)
Meech/Kopecky/Drake

That leaves some potential talent riding pine, I know: Samuelsson, Hudler, Downey.

Reasons I like Meech as a wing instead of Samuelsson:  he’s fast, defensively responsible and aggressive.  If Uncle Mike is so hell-bent on keeping Samuelsson in the lineup he can sit Drake or Kopecky.

Mickey Redmond returns tonite.  Courtesy of Brennan at Gloveside, here’s a few reminders of what we’ve been missing:

“Put all the hay in the barn and let ‘em go at it!”
“This is no place for a nervous person”
“He got a little lumber on him, and it didn’t tickle”
“His head looks like the top of a Makers Mark bottle”
“He really left his jock strap hangin off the clock”

Welcome back Mick.  See everyone in chat tonite.  Friday Juenglings on me.

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Welcome to Abel to Yzerman, a Red Wing blog since 1977.  No other site on the internet has better-researched, fact-laden and better prepared discussions than A2Y.  Re-phrase: we do little research, find facts and stats highly overrated and claim little to no preparation.  There are 19 readers of A2Y. No more, no less. All of them, except maybe one, are juvenile in nature.  Reminding them of that in the comment section will only encourage them to prove that. Your suggestions and critiques are welcome: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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