The Hossa Saga
And I owe one to IWOCpo, who swore the Hossa deal will get done, to which I wish the best but in all matters but this one: My god, they’re offering him an 8-10 year deal? Do you realize that would solidify the face of the organization for the next freaing decade? Pav-Z-Franzen-Hossa, and friends. It’ll be a variety show with guest stars like Burt Reynolds and a reanimated incarnation of Liberace on defense and goal, respectively. Overall a bad idea. Truth is I don’t see the Wings making any more moves this offseason, and instead filling out the roster with Griffins.

The Wings Draft Year, 2009
And this - Jim Nill from the draft regarding trading down a couple of picks to get another later one:
“Maybe we got stage fright”

Stage fright is right. At least 7 other teams picked the swedes you were planning on taking. The league has finally awoken and smelled the Swedish, friends. A record Swedish crop this year, scooped up by a bevvy of other teams. They didn’t talk about that in the TV lead-up did they? Time to start seeding ghost-scouts in obscure leagues with dominant teams such as the Bavarian ERV Schweinfurt and the winning Turkish Izmit Kocaeli Büyüksehir Belediyesi Kagit Spor Kulübü. Just don’t let the other scouts see you fly there.

Balls of hate and trouble all around.
Landon Ferraro. Wait and see. Forget daddy. Red Deer MVP, another #13. This link claims he’s a goal scoring machine—actually after watching that, I’m kinda stoked. A guy who scores goals AND fights? About freaking time. Stick him on a treadmill now.

Tomas Tatar; MVP of the Slovakian juniors, 7-4-11 in seven games; way to look into ther leagues, Mr. Nill. It was hard to find any links on him, but I did find this image:




(Almost) Last but not Least
Another interesting Wings draft pick? Their second to last one: Mitchell Callahan.

From the Freep: “The Wings drafted Mitchell Callahan, a tough California native who plays for Kelowna (WHL), in the sixth round and Swedish defenseman Adam Almqvist in the seventh round. “He’s a little ball of trouble,” Nill said of Callahan, who was unranked by NHL Central Scouting. “Every time he’s on the ice something happens. He’s fearless. We don’t have a lot of that in our organization and we hope he turns into a Sean Avery-type, a real instigator type.”’

From mlive:
‘Callahan led all WHL rookies in fighting majors with 20, and frankly could have had more had the coaching staff not pulled back the reins to contain his enthusiasm to chuck the knuckles.’

Another quote from Red Wings Central from Callahan’s GM from the Kelowna Rockets: “Daniel Carcillo in Philly is the kind of guy this guy is, He’s after you all the time, under everybody’s skin, he’s yappin’ at you and he’s doing all the things that bother everybody. He’s an agitator.”
“The biggest thing with Mitchell is, I think he’s underestimated with his skill level, He’s going to play on one of our top two lines next year and I think the Red Wings made a good pick with this guy.”
Some Fights:
http://www.hockeyfights.com/fights/64489
http://www.hockeyfights.com/fights/63960
http://www.hockeyfights.com/fights/63956

Bring it, Callahan.

Mostly this draft made me remember laughing drunkenly when I heard they signed a guy named “Johahn Franzen” - I thought to myself, “Really? A guy named Johahn? Really.” The crow tastes good, my friends. The Wings sure can grow ‘em.

To wrap things up here tonight, I learned the definition of a new word at Friday’s draft:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truculent - it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling:
1 : feeling or displaying ferocity : cruel, savage
2 : deadly, destructive
3 : scathingly harsh : vitriolic

They gave that descriptive adjective to the Toronto draft pick Nazim Kadri. Can’t wait to see that guy play, just to see what “truculent” looks like on the ice.