Hannibal.

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Date	Title	Body
2 weeks 4 days ago	No shit.  And not only did he	No shit.  And not only did he give up way too much, but he also got a guy who is overpaid.  $3.75 MM is what Brad Stuart was making back when Quincey was released because he couldn't beat Bret Lebda for a spot on the roster.
2 weeks 4 days ago	I guess it's the lack of	I guess it's the lack of other guys that makes those guys blunders.  After years of trading away draft picks and picking low, your only path to prosperity in the near future is getting a couple of free agents.  This means that you can't be sitting on $8 MM or so of cap space, which is what Holland is doing.
2 weeks 4 days ago	I can sort of forgive him for	I can sort of forgive him for not taking Marian Hossa, as he still would have had to dump somebody other than Franzen to make room for him.  Plus, at the time that Marian Hossa became a UFA, Franzen had just scored 25 goals in a span of 39 games, including 8 game winners.  Hossa had just gone the entire 7 game series against Pittsburgh without a goal.  This last seasons' puzzling blunders are really bad though.  Jordin Tootoo?  Kyle Quincey?  Seriously?
2 weeks 4 days ago	Eh -- I'm not seeing it with	Eh -- I'm not seeing it with MSU.  Barring a huge improvement at the QB position, their offense will be pretty bad.  They didn't lose a lot of numbers on defense, but the few that they lost were their best players.
2 weeks 6 days ago	I'm guessing he'll retire as	I'm guessing he'll retire as a Red Wing at around age 40.  There might be some truth to the Datsyuk and Babcock rumors though, as those same rumors were around when he signed his last deal (2007, I believe).
2 weeks 6 days ago	I can't see them re-signing	I can't see them re-signing Filppula.  We're probably stuck with Franzen, given that injury prone, one-dimensional goal scorers who no longer score goals aren't a hot commodity.  Lots of dead weight just taking up sweaters, and lots of salary cap space too.  Time for Holland to make some big off season moves.
2 weeks 6 days ago	it's one thing to be a rookie	it's one thing to be a rookie who makes a few mistakes but shows flashes of brilliance.  It's another thing to be so awful that you look like you belong on a high school team two or three times every game.  Smith is to the Red Wings what the free safety was to RichRod's defenses.  He has to make huge improvements to his game to achieve mediocrity.
5 weeks 1 day ago	How nice would it be to have	How nice would it be to have Will Campbell, Craig Roh, and Denard Robinson back as an RB this year?  How nice is it to have Jeremy Gallon and Quinton Washington back this year?  I realize that some special circumstances have made losing fourth year seniors hurt lately more than usual, but I still think that you should work on keeping a guy for five years, if you don't need him as a freshman, or if he can make minimal impact.
5 weeks 1 day ago	Burned redshirts have come	Burned redshirts have come back to haunt us quite a bit in the past half decade or so, at a variety of positions.
6 weeks 1 day ago	Only $25 Million?  That's at	Only $25 Million?  That's at least a few billion short.  Wasn't expanding to 12 teams supposed to make trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars?  That's the way that it was sold to us, at least.
6 weeks 1 day ago	Replacing Lidstrom was an	Replacing Lidstrom was an impossible job.  But if you ask me, Holland can be criticized for not getting more forward talent to work with in the free agent market the past couple of years.  Holland has been sitting on a shitload of cap space lately for no discernable reason.  Just to give you some perspective, you could swap out Dan Cleary or Valtteri Filppula for Alex Ovechkin or and still be under the cap.
6 weeks 1 day ago	It could be really bleak, and	It could be really bleak, and there's no telling how long it could last.  Look at the two best teams in the league right now -- Chicago and Pittsburgh.  What do they both have in common?  They got good by being really terrible and getting high draft picks in multiple years.  In Pittsburgh's case, they got really lucky in that they got two guys (Crosby and Malkin) who are once-a-decade type talents.  But in the early to mid-oughts, both of those franchises were absolutely wretched.  There's no guarantee that high draft picks lead to future success.  Just look at Columbus and Winnipeg/Atlanta.  They have sucked forever.
7 weeks 1 day ago	And I wish that we had done	And I wish that we had done something to preserve the Brown Jug game.  It's one of the few remaining traditions in the game that reminds us of its roots.  And don't tell me that it's not important anymore.  There's a restaurant in Ann Arbor named after it for Chrissakes, and at the end of the day, our schedule is going to be calibrated in a manner that Minnesota is replaced with a team of equal caliber (in a game that has less charm).
7 weeks 1 day ago	I'm  not a fan of the	I'm  not a fan of the on-purpose scheduling imbalance.  It pretty much puts a dagger in the heart of decent non-conference scheduling for the big name teams.  Yeah, you'll get more OSU vs Nebraska, but you'll also get more OSU vs. Akron to balance it out.  It also probably isn't going to work very well.  Schedules have to be made years in advance.  Five years from now, whose to say if Wisconsin will be where they are now, or back to where they were before Barry Alvarez? If and when Illinois finally puts together a legitimate Top 20 team, they are going to have a cakewalk to the CCG, because the schedule will be made up assuming that they are shit.  And good luck filling up stadiums in Minneapolis, Evanston, and Ross Aide from now on.
7 weeks 1 day ago	We have numbers, but not	We have numbers, but not elite quality.  At least not demonstrated quality, outside of Countess.  We need elite quality if we want to stay on the field against some of the elite WRs that we will face on OSu and in our bowl games.  Obviously, Jabrill Peppers would make the pain go away some, but I'd love to have both Webb and Peppers.
7 weeks 1 day ago	I don't think that Marshall	I don't think that Marshall hurts too much, but Webb definitely does.  He is a layer at a pretty big position of need.  We are loaded with great DE prospects, but big time playmakers at CB and WR are lacking.  Plus, I don't want any future Cass Tech prospects to have teammates at OSU.
7 weeks 1 day ago	He doesn't have the lisp, but	He doesn't have the lisp, but he pronounces lots of guys' names wrong (e.g. when he pronounces Jagr, it rhymes with "dagger")
7 weeks 1 day ago	This definitely does not	This definitely does not increase his chance of staying in the NBA.  I don't know if it makes it worse, but there's no way that having a gay benchwarmer sells more tickets or gets more viewers than a heterosexual one.  The locker room effect is either neutral or bad.
7 weeks 1 day ago	This.  This guy will get	This.  This guy will get credit for being the first, but if he never plays again, it's the same thing as if a former player came out.
7 weeks 1 day ago	Barry Melrose is the Lou	Barry Melrose is the Lou Holtz of the hockey world.  He is a complete numbskull and absolutely everything that he says is worthless.
10 weeks 10 hours ago	It's just an internet poll	It's just an internet poll that is being taken too seriously.  There's a big flaw with the argument.  By definition, a games company can never have as much negative impact as a major oil company, because they deal in intangible products that aren't essential to the economy or hazardous to the environment.  They have to be judged by what they do within their industry. Nobody at EA should be making the argument that a bad game is less detrimental than an oil spill or a home foreclosure.  EA isn't in those businesses.  They are in the business of making games, and they have sucked at it for at least a few years.  A gut reaction shouldn't be a defensive response like that.  It should be some soul searching about why there is so much hostility towards them. (I haven't seen confirmation that it's real yet though). I also see this as part of a larger pattern going on in the gaming media and in the industry to plug their ears and marginalize critics.
10 weeks 10 hours ago	I felt that way until always	I felt that way until always on-line single player DRM like Diablo III or Sim City.  That is such a shitty trend.  Worse than rip-off DLC if you ask me.
10 weeks 10 hours ago	Wow, is that real?If that's	Wow, is that real? If that's the condescending attitude that the company has towards consumers, it's no wonder that their former CEO is now looking for another job.  That smug, asshole-ish attitude is reflected in every one of their games nowadays.
10 weeks 23 hours ago	If Burke is the only guy that	If Burke is the only guy that leaves, I still think that we are a lock for preaseason Top 5.  Maybe #1.  If it's just Burke and THJ, probably Top 10.
10 weeks 23 hours ago	We lost because at some point	We lost because at some point in the second half, Louisville had 11 offensive rebounds, and we had zero.  As long as I have been watching college basketball, I have never seen a complete slaughter like that.
10 weeks 23 hours ago	This is why, as a fan of any	This is why, as a fan of any basketball program besides maybe Indiana, Duke, and Kentucky, you've got to basically forget about winning a national championship and instead think about it as a massive gift if you get one.  Look for steady performance, with hopefully regular appearance in the Sweet Sixteen and an occasional Final Four.
10 weeks 5 days ago	Nothing is giong to happen,	Nothing is giong to happen, because nobody will testify in an official setting, and there is no paper trail.  It's easy to get away with a little bit of cheating now, as long as you put some effort into it.
10 weeks 6 days ago	On my planet, basically	On my planet, basically everyone hates Nike.  If anything, I think that people would be even more hostile.
10 weeks 6 days ago	I would characterize us as	I would characterize us as being in semi-rebuilding mode.  The Wings are basically an average NHL team now.  Even if we were in full rebuilding mode though, your team doesn't benefit from passing up opportunities to sign big time free agents who are in their late 20s and have maybe 10 more good years in them.  Since we aren't getting lottery picks, we're not going to be getting any of those 18 year old phenoms who have an almost instant impact.  We're either going to have to find late draft gold again (and wait four years for him to develop) or buy some talent.  I do think that Holland knows what he is doing as well as anyone in the league, but it's hard not to look at the Red Wings organization as a whole and see a rather ominous future.
10 weeks 6 days ago	This X 10 Last year, Babcock	This X 10 Last year, Babcock (or maybe Holland) felt better putting a 75% effective Dan Cleary and a washed up Tomas Holmstrom in the lineup than some of our young talent, and the team was garbage for basically the last two months.  A legitimately talented guy who has been in the minors for a couple of years should be able to crack that lineup.  Especially if you're talking about a future top 6 forward.  When you're in that situation, I don't buy the "they like them over-ripe" argument anymore.

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