Re: NHL '10-'11 BS thread
This year, it's time to find out if I can successfully find another team to actually root for other than the hometown Red Wings, who continue to alienate me as a fan by bringing Todd Bertuzzi back over and over again.
Beyond that, their continued reliance upon older players who are clearly past their prime just leaves me utterly baffled. How Jimmy Howard was not named the starter at the beginning of last season is still a complete mystery to me. He should have at least been splitting time with Osgood from day 1. It was only after he was started virtually every game that they started winning and got themselves back into the playoff picture.
Lidstrom's best days are certainly behind him, though he's admittedly still awesome for his age. I just can't imagine what he has left to prove, or how anyone thinks he's going to prove it at 40 years of age. He's accomplished all he needs to and can only harm his own reputation by continuing to play. Even still, he's got to be the number one guy among 40+ year-olds in the league today, so it's not all bad.
Signing Kirk Maltby, even to a two-way contract, seemed like a move born completely of blind loyalty to the guys who have been here forever, which is not a way to build a winning team. Fortunately, he should be waived before the season even starts, so I guess it doesn't matter, it just seems like a weird move to me.
Bringing in a 40 year-old Mike Modano for less than $2 million doesn't seem like a terrible move on the surface, though he surely won't be a difference-maker by himself. But then you notice the news that the Penguins signed Mike Comrie (30 years old) to a contract for $500,000 and that he was interested in coming to the Wings until they signed Modano and ran out of cap space. WTF? Is Comrie the greatest player in history? Clearly not, but to get him plus some wiggle room under the cap instead of Modano seems like the better move to me, but what do I know?
The problem is that I just don't have another single team that I would want to root for. I like a bunch of others, like Boston, Montreal, hell even Chicago, which probably sounds weird (not a fan of the Turco signing, personally), but I don't feel any particular loyalty to any of them. Vancouver has some players that I like, but something about that team has always bugged me, so I don't know about them. Plus I fully expect them to underachieve yet again this year. I think I'm reaching the point where I'm more of a fan of a good hockey game than I am of any particular team. But I can watch every single Red Wings game if I'm inclined to, and the vast majority of them in HD, so that's probably what I will default to even if I don't terribly care if they win or not.