Last week, around 30 former Red Wings players received 2008 Stanley Cup rings as a way to honor their time spent with the organization. The rings have the player's name on one side of the ring and diamonds on the other. The number of diamonds represents the number of Cups that player won with the team. "In respect to the tradition of the Red Wings, and what these players contributed," Holland said. "Players in that era didn't receive rings. Mr. and Mrs. Ilitch felt this would be a way to honor these players for what the players accomplished." And that's exactly why the Wings are able to keep their players. They honor tradition, respect their players, and make athletes want to be a part…

Red Wings Corner seems to think that the Wings have one more big contract in their future : General Manager Ken Holland just said in the press conference to announce Henrik Zetterberg's 12-year deal that he can probably sign one more player before July 1. Some of that has to do with league rules on contract "tagging" and not knowing what next year's salary cap is for certain. Holland said that he's operating under the scenario that the cap will remain about the same ($56.7 million) or "a little less" or "a little more". If the cap max goes up, then the Red Wings are very happy. If the cap max goes down, then Zetterberg's deal still leaves them room with which to work.The one player that w…

The past calender year has been one of the busiest and most successful in the NHL's recent memory. I encourage you to visit Bryan Thiel's blog post on the Top 10 Stories of the NHL in 2008 at the Blleacher Report; but not wanting us Red Wings fans to have to wait for story No.1, I'll bring that to you now !

Al @ Bleed Cubbie Blue (SBN's Chicago Cubs blog) has a great collection of photos of the construction at Wrigley Field for the Winter Classic game. You can check out the three days of photos here, here, and here. There are so many articles and blogs talking about the Winter Classic coming up on New Year's Day so it's hard to stay on top of everything, but here are some recent articles that I found to be interesting. Please feel free to suggest any articles I may have missed in the comments. Greg Wyshynski over at Puck Daddy had a fantastic two post series about the marketing of the Winter Classic featuring a lengthy interview with Brian Jennings, the executive vice president of marke…

In The Hockey News 10th Annual People of Power and Influence rankings issue (dated December 29), the Detroit Red Wings top the list with six entries. The rankings are a list of anyone and everyone who have some influence in the world of hockey, and even includes Tiger Woods at number 58 for his comment  “I don’t think anyone really watches hockey anymore,” which the publication estimates set the league’s marketing efforts back 20 years. Toronto and Buffalo are tied for second with four entries each. In total 24 teams are represented on the list. Anaheim, Colorado, Columbus, Florida, New York Islanders and St. Louis are the only teams not represented. Vancouver was not originally re…

Is it possible...  that a  team can be so good, that playing regular season NHL games just doesn't get it done for ya ? I mean, after watching the Red Wings dismantle the Sharks 6-0, I thought to myself, “Dude, what the heck happened here? Where did the 52-point Sharks go?" Maybe I should have asked myself, "Dude, where did these Wings come from ?" I have come to the opinion that the deal is, this team just wants to be pushed. The Red Wings have earned points in 16 of their last 20 games (14-4-2) while the Sharks fell to 5-1-1 in their last seven road games. Many thought before the game that the Red Wings might not have a good chance to win due to the absence of Chris Osgood and his groin…

Of the course of the summer, I have questioned the wisdom of signing Chris Chelios at the age of 46 years old to a one-year contract to be the Detroit Red Wings seventh defenseman. It didn’t make sense to me to bring him back for one year when you had three young defensemen who were capable of filling that role and developing into better NHL defensemen for the experience. Further it pushed the Red Wings into a roster and salary cap situation where they could lose as many as two of these defensemen in order accommodate Chelios’ desire to play another season.