Oh, I never said the front office has done NOTHING right. Nyquist, Tatar, and DeKeyser have all been worthwhile acquisitions, and a handful of others have been ok as well.
But when you balance that with the laundry list of average players, questionable moves, and HGA (Hot Garbage Actions), the overall grade for the last five years is something like a 5/10, and that level of success is - for me, at least - such an unacceptable drop from previous excellence, WITHOUT AN ACTUAL REBUILD, that I refuse to support it.
The fact that we are in a very good position to potentially transition into the next generation of Detroit Red Wings without needing an actual rebuild is a credit to Ken Holland and his staff. There has been like 3 or 4 bad signings in the last 5 years. Cleary, Samuelsson, Bertuzzi and, maybe, Quincey (I don't think it's a bad signing, I also don't think it's a good one but it can be if he plays like he did the second half of last year). All of those signings were short term deals. They aren't signings that have hampered us with terrible contracts for years to come. And due to the injuries of the first 3 players listed, we got to see our young core anyways.
I'll say it again, by sticking to our system we have kept our organizations young core in place for the past 5-7 years and all of our top prospects are NHL ready or very close to being NHL ready. If they are truly top prospects, then we shouldn't have anything to worry about going forward other than who is going to step up and be the next superstar. And if no one does or looks like they are going to we have cap space and assets to trade still.
There have only been a few bad signings the past few years. Cleary, Quincey and Samuelsson is about it. The real problem has been the lack of movement at the trade deadline and during UFA to make the team BETTER.
The fact that we haven't made a trade at the deadline over the past few years has put us in a better position going forward. Especially now with the log jam of NHL ready forwards and a potential log jam of NHL ready defensemen. We have a very solid young core that has developed in our system that is NHL ready which means if our team stays healthy this year, mainly Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Franzen and Kronwall, we have a team that can contend if our young players keep progressing like they did last year. On top of that we have pieces to trade for needs at the deadline with having too many NHL ready forwards and defensemen.
As for the UFAs, yes, we have missed on our top guys like Suter and Niskanen, but we also haven't handed out any long term, bad contracts like Buffalo did with Ehrhoff or Tampa did with Carle. If our biggest complaint is a 2 year deal for Kyle Quincey, who played very well to finish last year, and a one year, earn your spot deal to Dan Cleary, then I'd say we are going to be alright.