T1B

Hasek and Chelios will be back for another season...

Chelios signed a one-year deal...he's a freak of nature and he's still an effective defenseman when he's not over-used. Dude will be 46 next January...unreal.
http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=210598&hubname=nhl

Hasek is reportedly going to play another season but he hasn't re-sign as of yet...it means another year for Jimmy Howard in the AHL.

Interesting to see what happens with Schneider, Markov and Bertuzzi. It appears that Calder and Lang are goners and they'll either be replaced by one of the youngsters, possibly a free agent or perhaps Igor Grigorenko. The play of Quincey, Kopecky, Filppula and Hudler throughout the season and the playoffs gives Holland more options and he doesn't necessarily have to spend top dollar for free agents. This team could essentially be the same...with the only changes being one of the defenseman not being re-signed, Lang and Calder not brought back and then Grigorenko would come over from Russia. I really don't see them spending any money on other teams' free agents...they have enough assets in their organization that they can just re-sign most of their vets and then inject young players in some of the remaining spots.

Are these guys going to need walkers with blades on them to last the year?

Chelios should be fine as long as he doesn't play more than 15-16 minutes a night. When Schneider went down, that caused his minutes to jump big time. He averaged about 17 minutes through Game 3 against the Sharks but after that, he had just two games out of 9 games where he didn't play less than 20 minutes. Those two games were at least 19 minutes though. I think he's much more effective if he's playing on the PK or playing in key situations late in the game. Other than that, I'd play him on the third pair to keep his 5 on 5 minutes down during the first and second periods.

As for Hasek, he needed some spot duty from Osgood and he didn't play back-to-back games until the playoffs...I believe it was Game 5 and Game 6 against the Flames. If he plays no more than 50 games, he'll be fine for the playoffs. He played 56 games in the regular season and 18 in the playoffs. Part of the problem this season was when Osgood broke his hand and missed quite a bit of time. Had he been healthy, he probably would've cut into those 56 games Hasek played. Osgood is more than capable of playing 30-35 games and winning 15-20 games. Had Osgood been a free agent this year, I think it would've been a possibility that Howard would back up Hasek and he'd get to play the same amount of games Osgood would've played in order to keep Hasek fresh throughout the season.