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Originally Posted by detredWINgs

Is there really a question? Kindl has only played for the Wings and Babcock. Quincey played for LA and Denver.

Consider this: Quincey was waived on October 13. The Wings chose to keep 7 defenseman over Quincey. He was claimed by LA and played his first game for LA on October 17. He played 22 minutes that game. Are we to suspect that Quincey went from at best a #8 defenseman to a #2 defenseman in a matter of 4 days? Or was this due to which team he was playing on?

8 defensemen. Lidstrom, Rafalski, Kronwall, Stuart, Lilja, Lebda, Meech, and Chelios.

I still maintain that Lebderp was outplayed by Meech and Quincey even then, and should have been the guy waived.

What you're saying is Quincey earned his right to a top 4 role on LA, when in fact he was given it, and managed to keep it while competing with the likes of a 19 year old rookie Doughty, a 38 year old O'Donnell, Denis Gauthier who spent the entire prior year as a veteran AHLer, defense-only Matt Greene (although probably the most talented of the bunch), etc.

He was actually the #4 in ESTOI and total TOI; he just got a crapload of PP time opposite Doughty. And that's because Jack Johnson missed half the year. He scored 38 points to lead the team's defensemen, but only 10 came at ES (27 on the PP). With Johnson healthy and Rob Scuderi added for 09-10, Quincey and Tom Priessing were irrelevant, so they were dumped off to the Avs. Quincey did well with Liles missing a quarter of the year, and then did almost nothing the next year when he himself played only a quarter of the year. He was again dumped for a surprisingly high return this past year, with the Avs now having better defensemen such as Erik Johnson, Shane O'Brien, Ryan O'Byrne, and Ryan Wilson. Quincey has spent his career as a band-aid defenseman. Nothing more. And that's what he is in Detroit. Assume White and Ericsson re-sign, and Quincey is solidly #6 (or lower) by the time his contract ends.

Originally Posted by cnot19

Kindl is not as good as Quincey. I don't think Kindl will eb anything special. He plays too timid, he lets other guys beat him to the puck to avoid getting hit.

Originally Posted by Captain Bob

Obviously it's because Quincey went to teams where they play youngish defensemen.

Not even that. He went to teams where they needed someone, ANYONE, who could actually play the puck better than Hal Gill and skate better than him. Kindl goes to those teams and probably gets the same role, maybe better.

Originally Posted by iRep TheWingedWheel

Kindl looks like he will finally get a shot this year. I can't see anyone we sign up at this point to come in and be the #6 D right away.

Few guys out there are better than Kindl.

As for the overripe thing, that's getting kind of old. If the kids ready then he's ready. The is no reason that Bertuzzi and Samuelsson shoulda been re-signed. Nyquist and Tatar (and Brunner) should all be with the big club this year instead only one will.

Bertuzzi did nothing last year to show me he shoulda been brought back on a 1 year deal let a lone a 2 year deal with a NTC.

Granted Samuelsson signed before we knew we weren't getting Parise and/or Suter, but still, Kenny didn't have to run out and sign him July 1. I'm sure he coulda waited a few days for their decision first and if Samuelsson went elsewhere in the meantime then who really cares anyway?

(I say that meaning it makes more sense to go with the kids after missing out on them, whereas as getting one or both woulda made us one of the cup favorites and I could at least see the argument for wanting to go the veteran route in that case.)

Th big problem with signing Samuelsson isn't even the kids; Samuelsson would have been available for another few days. But signing Sammy was basically Holland saying "we don't have room for you in our budget" to Hudler, because he was still budgeting for Parise. Had Holland not seriously lowballed Hudler, and then basically said "see ya later", we'd still have him even though we don't have Parise. And at that point, he could have still signed Sammy if he wanted to, probably for less than he did.

Bertuzzi/Datsyuk/Hudler
Nyquist/Zetterberg/Samuelsson
Cleary/Filppula/Franzen
Abdelkader/Helm/Tootoo

Yes please?