It's odd, though I know this team is more than likely going to finish bottom 5, I'm actually far more excited than I have been the past few years.
Interested to see Cholowski and Sulak. Not expecting much of Ehn or Rasmussen except on special teams.
This was me in 2014. The season after the run to 3-1 against Chicago. I dreaded seeing the lineup with Bertuzzi, Tootoo, etc. coming back. As soon as Nyquist and Tatar and a couple others got in there, I instantly felt much better. God, Holland is lucky he built up such a rep because that 2012 FA period would have been enough to get most GMs fired. Missing on Suter wasn't the nail in the coffin. It was flat out wasting the money he didn't spend on Suter.
3M to Samuelsson
1.9M to Tootoo
2.5M to Colaiacovo
All three of these deals were ****ing awful from the moment they were signed. Hell, those were worse than even stuff like Ericsson and DeKeyser, because at least those guys gave you something at some point. These three provided nothing to Detroit. Tootoo and Cola ate the two compliance buyouts and Samuelsson would have if he wasn't immediately injured. I mean, that was something like 11.5% of the cap on players that did ****ing nothing. At least guys like DeKeyser, Ericsson, Daley, Abdelkader, etc. contribute at least somewhat to the meager success of the team. Tootoo, Cola, and Samuelsson were actively dead weight on the roster that the team was simply better off NOT playing.
Stuff like Gustavsson is par for the course. That wasn't a bad deal.