Strachan can go to hell.

Posted by w2j2 on 11/08/08 at 11:00 PM ET

...If General Motors goes bankrupt, and it could very well happen, the Wings would not survive in Detroit.

This will never happen because “President-elect” Obama owes too much to Michigan to let this happen. And if he should renege on his campaign promises (cough, count on it, cough), I’m sure all of the Michigan-based Obama supporters will happily give up their tax breaks in order to save GM. Right?

Posted by OlderThanChelios from Grand Rapids on 11/08/08 at 11:19 PM ET

The Kansas City Red Wings!

Posted by Heaton on 11/08/08 at 11:35 PM ET

Heaton…you suck.  I hate you . Booo. 

Dick.

Didn’t I read that the Wings are still the 3rd or 4th most profitable team despite their attendance problems?  They’ll be fine.  And I don’t think Illitch, who bought the team during the Dead Wings period, is too concerned.  Z for $8m for 10 years would be okay with me.

Posted by Gabriel from San Diego, CA on 11/08/08 at 11:45 PM ET

Besides…thanks to teams like Nashville, we have revenue sharing for struggling franchises. So we’ll be okay.

Posted by Gabriel from San Diego, CA on 11/08/08 at 11:56 PM ET

Didn’t I read that the Wings are still the 3rd or 4th most profitable team despite their attendance problems?

Not sure what attendance problems you’re talking about. From what I’ve read, the Wings have only had one game that wasn’t a sell out.

Posted by blankspace6 from Atlanta on 11/09/08 at 12:00 AM ET

How does Strachan warrant air time?  And some say that bloggers are reckless?

Posted by Forechecker from Nolensville, TN on 11/09/08 at 12:44 AM ET

The city would be a ghost town.

Wow. That is the single dumbest thing i’ve read in my life. 
This happens to every city. Eventually their manufacturing jobs leave. Get used to it. For a couple years people in the city will struggle, but eventually it will bounce back and people will find new jobs.
This very same thing happened to pittsburgh years ago when the steel industry left. Since then they’ve bounced back and now are even better than before with new jobs in healthcare and education.
WHEN the auto industry jobs leave, and the WILL leave eventually, don’t be dumb and think that you’re grandkids will work there too, the team might struggle financially for 5-10 years, but after that,  they will be fine. The city is big enough that it would bounce back quickly.

Posted by Kevin from Pittsburgh on 11/09/08 at 09:58 AM ET

GM can go bankrupt as long as Detroit re-tools for renewable energy.  Celluosic biorefineries, wind turbine manufacturing, solar panel manufacturing, etc.  It wouldn’t be pretty, but the city could come back.

Of course, re-tooling for electric or alternative fuel automobiles could do the trick, too.  Not that GM is smart enough to ever figure that out.  *#$%@& tools, if you ask me.  They coulda blocked Honda ad Toyota out fifteen years ago…  Idiots.

And I think at this point, we can forget about re-signing Z, Mule, and Hossa.  Even if the cap went up 3-4 million (which it won’t), we’d still be looking at casting off Huds, Sammy, Kopecky, Lilja, Malts, and Lebda, and, in likelihood, Draper and/or Flip to clear the needed cap space.  Cleary, Stuart, and maybe Kronner have NTCs, so no clearing cap space there.  That’s the salary you’d need to move to have a realistic chance at re-signing all three.  And even then you’d have about 90% or more of the cap spoken for, with about eight more bodies needed to fill out the roster.  The kids coming up will be relatively cheap, sure, but they won’t be that cheap.

So the question becomes, who do you let walk?  Z is pretty obviously not on that list, so I think we’re really looking at choosing between Mule and Hossa.  If you asked me at the start of the year, I’d say keep the Mule, but it is getting really, really hard to contemplate letting Hossa walk.  Not that I would pull the trigger on re-signing hiim today, but his play is giving Wings’ management reason for pause when it comes to looking at next season’s team.  I’m not saying re-signing Hossa over Mule is a lock (it might not even be possible, depending on where the cap is), but this decision is getting tougher by the day.  On the one hand, it’s a nice problem to have, but it is a problem, and Kenny Boy’s gonna have to earn his pay on this one…

Posted by mudshark from Divetown, Colorado on 11/09/08 at 11:20 AM ET

Additionally, Detroit (also Buffalo, Cleveland, and other cities in the region) have access to what will be an increasingly scarce resource going forward - fresh water.  Yes, desalination is a well-developed technology, but the cost is approximately six times what it is currently to make groundwater or surface fresh water drinkable - and that assumes no increase in energy costs to run the plant.

Cities always reinvent themselves - Baltimore used to be known for Bethlehem Steel and the port.  The port is still active (I believe it carries the highest volume of cargo in containers ready to be loaded on trains or trucks on the East coast), but there are also an increasing number of healthcare facilities, research labs, and biotech companies taking advantage of proximity to Johns Hopkins Hospital and the NIH and other facilities, and the city is attracting more convention business, too.

Just because a company, no matter how large it is, folds doesn’t mean that a region with several million people just closes up and dies.  They struggle and find something else. 

Plus if the Toronto Maple Leafs don’t want the Nashville Predators in their region, I can’t imagine they would welcome the Detroit Red Wings moving into their sphere of influence. 

Posted by Baroque on 11/09/08 at 05:27 PM ET