VeeshanVault

Ottawa is going downhill now. I know Lalime sucked last year, but he does deserve another chance.

Edit: Forgot that Lalime was traded to the Blues.

DOMINIK HASEK IS A GIGANTIC PUSSY

Awesome goalie, but his antics last year made me lose a lot of respect for him. The only good thing he did was give up some of his salary since he only played 14 games.

Eh. He came back and played pretty well. He got hurt and sacrificed his pay. I don't know what you'd want him to do.

He was hurt (strained groin) before the season started, and tried to come back without it being fully healed, which is why he was out the rest of the season.

This is true. But stupid player injury antics happen all the time, whether it's someone being ineffective because they're playing on an injury (Jason Giambi) or someone just having way too many injuries (Ken Griffey Jr) to waiting until right before the season to have surgery (Aaron McKie) to justifying such behavior by saying that even athletes deserve a vacation (Shaquille O'Neal) to making up excuses for bizarre injuries (Jeff Kent) to all of the above (Chris Webber). Did any of the players mentioned above give back their salary? Can you think of any professional athlete who has refused his salary for any reason related to his own performance? The closest I can think of is Bob Knight, who refused his (much smaller) salary during one season at Texas Tech. Michael Jordan donated his salary to charity in the past, but that's a different kind of situation.

Hasek came over to Detroit, was a major factor in winning the team a Stanley Cup, and then, when he had the team in a hard place, successfuly removed them from the hard place by simply declining his paycheck. As far as I'm concerned, that earns my respect.

You could criticize Hasek's character for signing with Detroit in order to win a ring (although then you'd have to criticize Karl Malone the same way). Personally, I don't think Detroit fans even have the right to criticize Hasek for that-- these are the Yankees of hockey we're talking about here.

Basically, Hasek proved himself to be one of the two or three best goalies of his generation, helped his team win a Stanley Cup, forfeited his salary during a controversial and injury plagued year, and now all the Red Wings fans are trashing him just because this past year was fucked up? I don't know what you guys expect out of an athlete.

I appreciate that he helped us win another Stanley Cup. I don't appreciate that he then went into retirement the year after, let himself get out of shape, and finally decided to come back after a year off for whatever reason when we already had too much money in our goalies. Then he gets injured after hardly playing, and the day that the organization believes he is going to be skating at practice again he announces in a press conference that he is out for the season.

He gave the money back so he wouldn't get lynched. Which is also one of the possible reasons he even came back to the NHL, since he was in some shady legal trouble back in Europe.

He should have stayed retired after he won the cup.

He gave back part of his salary, too. Not the entire thing. I think it was like 2m out of 8m or something. A nice gesture, but .... Guess we are just bitter since we are Wings fans.

It's not his fault Detroit got their asses handed to them in the second round by Calgary. Try "no effort and no teamwork" out as a scapegoat instead. Personally, it's nice to see another example of the fact that you can't buy a Championship. A lesson the New York Yankess, Los Angeles Lakers, Detroit Red Wings, and Colorado Avalanche all learned in the same year!

Effort beats skill. Skill only comes into play if effort is equal.

It's also not his fault that they made it to the second round, as he hadn't been playing for a few months at that point and was sitting on $8M of payroll. Payroll that he tied up when he decided to come out of retirement and join the team again ("hey guys, i'm in tip top shape for playing teh hockey!").

I don't know how much hockey you watch, but I think it was less "no effort and no teamwork" and more that we just couldn't score and were getting held all the time as is the popular style now and facing a goalie who played the series of his life. Hockey is a different game than Basketball, and the Wings are a much different team than the Lakers.

Ironically all those teams have 'bought' a lot of championchips