NHL 2012

[Speedy Cerviche]

I like the way Carter & Richards winning the cup really sticks it to the Flyers.

I'm not really sure it does - both had plenty of chances in PHL and just couldn't get it done. Happy to see Flyers West win it, what with them having Gagne, Richards, Hextall in the front office, and others.

Still not a Carter fan - dude was one of the most over-rated scorers I've ever seen.

Seems more to me that Richards & Carter became scapegoats for other peoples' failure in Philly. For some reason Flyers fans/press are really unwilling to criticize Holmgren for all the bad decisions he's made, and turned on those 2 players instead. Some major screw ups include getting Pronger's age wrong and signing him to a terrible 35+ contract, not picking up a goalie 2 years ago (could've had Halak for JVR or a 1st round draft pick, didn't want to pay), finally deciding to spend on a goalie this year, and botching the whole thing by signing Bryzgalov to a 9 year, 51 million $ contract (way too much for a guy who never did anything in playoffs, and only had a few decent regular seasons).

[Strazos]

Scapegoats? I'm not sure - especially after their long-term contracts, they took a number of nights off, even in the playoffs (including showing up to practices/games drunk). Carter especially came up small repeatedly in the playoffs (Game Five of the 2010 Finals, for example). Sure, he put up respectable stats in the regular season...but he scored a lot of superfluous goals, never passed, and had an abysmal shooting percentage while consistently ranking towards the top in shots taken.

I think it will be a bit more fair to judge Holgren in a few years - I don't think anyone expected these trades to pay off immediately, or thought the team would perform as admirably as it did this past season. So they didn't win this season...but if they win a year or two down the line, was it still a failure?

[Surlyboi]

They ruined hockey and raped my childhood.

You too? I've hated the Devils ever since the 1995 Finals.

That was my first year at the NHL and yeah, sucked.

[Ceryse]

The NHL since '94 makes me glad I got to watch my team (the Oilers, as mentioned before) in the '80s. Very few teams since the very early '90s has had even remotely the same kind of tempo and electricity on the ice to even the post-Gretzky Oilers (a couple of the Detroit years, Chicago's one year.. Lemieux's Penguins..)

If I didn't have that kind of history watching the game I don't know if the game today would be more or less tolerable.

Oddly enough, I'm thinking more.

[Speedy Cerviche]

The Oilers of the mids 80s would have a today equivalent salary of like 100 million $ (once all the young guys got off their entry level contracts). They were finishing with 120 points in standings and 100 more goals for than anyone else.

Sure its great if you happen to be a fan of that team, but for everyone else its pretty bad having a hopeless team year in and year out. Now its much better with the parity of every team being in the same salary-talent range, and the difference between the best player in NHL and the worst player being far smaller than it was in the 80s.