I'm all out of love, I'm so lost without you I know you were right believing for so long...

Chris Chelios - my favorite hockey player - is known for running his mouth. A LOT. But when he's not giving lip to referees, the guy makes some good points about the team, the league, and hockey in general. Recently, he said this to radio station WDFN-AM (1130):

On Sergei Fedorov possibly being an asset to the team:

“You know what? Depending on the right price and what you give up, I’d think he’d be a bargain. You say that and last night I watched him score a beautiful goal. He’s got that rocket shot of his and he’s still got that skill, Sergei does. I don’t think the price would be a big ticket, and even if it wasn’t now at the deadline, he’s going to be a free agent next year. He’s definitely one guy you’ve got to consider. He’s a great skill player and with the way the game is now with the power play, he could really actually help and contribute.”

Cheli, I could not agree with you more. Unfortunately, Ken Holland did not seem to agree, telling Wojo on DWFN this on Tuesday:

On if he came close to a deal with secondary scoring, specifically with Sergei Fedorov:

"We had obviously a lot of talks about Sergei. We had 13, 14 people here, all our pro scouts and management and our coaching staff. We had mixed emotions on bringing Sergei back. I talked to Scott Howsen a number of times and in the end, we made a decision, we made a bit of a pitch, obviously nothing significant and he ended up going to Washington. We’re comfortable with it. Were we close to anything? I talked to a couple of teams on some things, got a little close in a couple areas but obviously not close enough to get a deal done."

On if past conflicts between Mike Babcock and Fedorov played into the decision to not bring him in:

"I get Mike’s opinion, but I had about a dozen opinions there. Ultimately, you know, the player that they got they really liked. They wanted to get a real good prospect. If you look at our team, coming out of the work stoppage, we were really suppose to go down. … We’re still building this thing, we’re still growing it. We don’t want to get rid of real top prospects. We did it last year with Sean Matthias. We don’t want to do it every year, so we traded some assets we were comfortable in trading and we’re still trying to build this program into being a playoff team each year."

I guess I don't really care so much about not getting Sergei back. But I think Kenny had a lot more say in not bringing him back than he is letting on.

Ken Holland used to be my management hero. This all changed with the CuJo situation (a series of events that still makes me so mad I can barely bear to blog about them). My issue here really isn't with Sergei - I just expected a more dramatic trade-deadline move in general.

Kenny and I have grown apart. Apparently we are not on the same page anymore.

(Oh yeah, I almost forgot: notice me NOT mentioning our last three losses. Nope. not a word.)