Ouellet, Backman, Sproul, Jensen, Smith, etc...

Claypool

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Jan 12, 2009
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Since 2006 the Detroit Red Wings have drafted a total of 25 defensemen. The group has played 592 NHL games for Detroit scoring 127 combined points. (Note: I’m not include Danny DeKeyser since he was not drafted).

Here’s a breakdown of the top five defensemen in games played and points:

Brendan Smith – 291 GP - 67 Points
Alexey Marchenko – 110 GP – 19 Points
Nick Jensen – 57 GP – 17 Points
Xavier Ouellet – 104 GP – 16 Points
Ryan Sproul – 57 GP – 7 Points

When we talk about the Red Wings current struggles this is the main point of contention. Not only has this team been unsuccessful in drafting a top pairing defenseman since 2006, they haven’t been able to draft a legitimate top 4 defenseman. I believe Smith is a quality third pairing guy at best on a contending team. He was too high in Detroit’s lineup.

The group of Mattias Backman, Ryan Sproul, Xavier Ouellet, Nick Jensen, Brendan Smith, and Alexey Marchenko was a complete and utter flop.

Management better hope Filip Hronek, Dennis Cholowski, Jordan Sambrook, and Vili Saarijarvi all fare much better in the NHL that the previous group.
 

joe89

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Apr 30, 2009
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You don't just draft top4 defensemen, you develop them. Fair to say it's the combo of both because some of these guys have looked good early on in their careers and then never taken the steps necessary.
 

TheMule93

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May 26, 2015
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Pretty sad that we haven't drafted a good defenseman in nearly two decades (Kronwall, 2000 NHL entry draft). I guess you could include Jiri Fischer.

I'm definitely more excited for Cholo, Hronek, and Saarijarvi than I was for Sproul, Ouellet, and Smith though I was pretty hyped for them too at one point
 

obey86

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Jun 9, 2009
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time will tell. won't be hard for the new group to at least be a little bit better than that first group though.
 

Claypool

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You don't just draft top4 defensemen, you develop them. Fair to say it's the combo of both because some of these guys have looked good early on in their careers and then never taken the steps necessary.
A lot of these guys spent plenty of time in the minors. They played on contenting teams in Grand Rapids nearly every season. If they aren't dominating the AHL they unlikely will make an impact at the NHL level, at least in a top 4 role. I think this group just plain sucked.
 
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Henkka

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Jan 31, 2004
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Jim Nill did build our development center to Grand Rapids. He signed Curt Fraser as Griffins Head coach to kill our defensive propects. Joe McDonnell was the scouting director on that era, responsible for all scouting.

Ken Holland trusted 100% on these guys. And they did fail miserably.

And now those same wimps have a contender at Dallas. Same Curt Fraser there coaching their defence.

NHL life is freaking weird.
 
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Leronziia

kenorH
Jan 10, 2016
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Jim Nill did build our development center to Grand Rapids. He signed Curt Fraser as Griffins Head coach to kill our defensive propects. Joe McDonnell was the scouting director on that era, responsible for all scouting.

Ken Holland trusted 100% on these guys. And they did fail miserably.

And now those same wimps have a contender at Dallas. Same Curt Fraser there coaching their defence. NHL life is freaking weird.

So, are they good or bad scouts?
 

Redder Winger

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May 4, 2017
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Don't know about how is their scouting. Håkan Andersson is a great scout they trusted. They also look good as builders with Stars.

But as a scouting director, Jim Nill has been the worst we ever had.

What's your evidence?
 

Winger98

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Feb 27, 2002
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A lot of these guys spent plenty of time in the minors. They played on contenting teams in Grand Rapids nearly every season. If they aren't dominating the AHL they unlikely will make an impact at the NHL level, at least in a top 4 role. I think this group just plain sucked.

Time in the minors doesn't necessarily equate to being well developed. If anything, it makes a more damning statement against our development system as none of those guys really addressed their most glaring deficiencies. This clearly doesn't take all blame from the players, but the Wings don't have a single victory to point to in the past ten years for a guy who came up through the system as a defenceman. Hopefully we'll see things change a bit considering the amount of off-ice personnel change over the past half decade, but if our current crop follows the path of previous prospects...at some point it can't all be placed on the players.
 

Redder Winger

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May 4, 2017
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It didn't help when we had like 4-5 prospect defensemen sharing time with the AHL vets in GR.
I don't understand what happened to Sproul. Babcock seemed so high on him.
He was progressing well. Then Blash took over and his game in GR went backwards.

Marchenko is another strange case. Sure, he was slow. But the year he was waived he gave up just 1.5 goals/60 on a team that bled goals against. Dekeyser and Jensen, for example, gave up close to 3 goals/60.. His ga numbers were good the year before.
And this was a guy who took more Dzone than Ozone draws.

XO will probably be the next to go.

And Jensen, once Blashill is fired.
 

jkutswings

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Jul 10, 2014
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It's not like the championship teams were exclusively drafted defensemen, either. They hit one of the biggest home runs of all time with Lidas in 89, and had a couple very good but short-lived guys in Vladdy and Fisher, but then brought in tons of external talent (Murphy, Fetisov, Rafalski, Stuart, Chelios). It wasn't until 2000 when they drafted Kronwall (whom I've always been biased against, thinking he was an excellent 1B, but not the greatest 1A).

So, to be fair, even when things were at their best, they weren't drafting 1A guys more than once a decade. (It's just frustrating that they've reduced both quantity and quality to such an extent for such a long stint since then.)
 

Go Wings

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Sep 26, 2009
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I've said this is a huge problem for years as well. This morning then anything is the reason we need to complelely rebuild. If we had hit on some quality defensemen we could have continued to build on the fly.

To correct this problem Detroit needs to take a hard look at the scouting and development involed in defensemen. Copy what Nashville is doing.
 

Marky9er

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Jan 30, 2008
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I think Marchenko looked a lot better before the injury. Probably stunted his development badly, or more like totally.
 

jkutswings

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Jul 10, 2014
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I've said this is a huge problem for years as well. This morning then anything is the reason we need to complelely rebuild. If we had hit on some quality defensemen we could have continued to build on the fly.

To correct this problem Detroit needs to take a hard look at the scouting and development involed in defensemen. Copy what Nashville is doing.
I think Nashville is the other extreme, where they had problems for quite awhile in landing any decent forwards. Overall, I'd much rather be short on forwards than defensemen, but I think the key is to be willing to adapt your drafting to the needs at hand, at least to an extent.

Detroit went far too long drafting far too few defensemen, and the ones they did select didn't pan out, and they didn't manage to trade for or sign enough free agents to make up the difference. It was all those 'holes in the Swiss cheese' lining up at once that created this mess.
 

HIFE

Registered User
May 10, 2011
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Detroit, MI
The lack of desperation during those years may be a factor. As a cup contender you're riding high looking toward the immediate future and not long-term. It feels like drafting was almost an afterthought. Now that Detroit is sliding down the side of a mountain we've woke up to necessity of careful drafting.
 

Lazlo Hollyfeld

The jersey ad still sucks
Mar 4, 2004
28,131
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Since 2006 the Detroit Red Wings have drafted a total of 25 defensemen. The group has played 592 NHL games for Detroit scoring 127 combined points. (Note: I’m not include Danny DeKeyser since he was not drafted).

Here’s a breakdown of the top five defensemen in games played and points:

Brendan Smith – 291 GP - 67 Points
Alexey Marchenko – 110 GP – 19 Points
Nick Jensen – 57 GP – 17 Points
Xavier Ouellet – 104 GP – 16 Points
Ryan Sproul – 57 GP – 7 Points

When we talk about the Red Wings current struggles this is the main point of contention. Not only has this team been unsuccessful in drafting a top pairing defenseman since 2006, they haven’t been able to draft a legitimate top 4 defenseman. I believe Smith is a quality third pairing guy at best on a contending team. He was too high in Detroit’s lineup.

The group of Mattias Backman, Ryan Sproul, Xavier Ouellet, Nick Jensen, Brendan Smith, and Alexey Marchenko was a complete and utter flop.

Management better hope Filip Hronek, Dennis Cholowski, Jordan Sambrook, and Vili Saarijarvi all fare much better in the NHL that the previous group.

I agree. Just wondering why you didn't go back one more year and include Kindl?

Drafted 19th overall and the highest pick Detroit had since taking Martin Lapointe, he's the biggest swing and a miss on that list.
 

Pavels Dog

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Feb 18, 2013
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Management better hope Filip Hronek, Dennis Cholowski, Jordan Sambrook, and Vili Saarijarvi all fare much better in the NHL that the previous group.
It's not just those guys. Big focus on D drafting recently. Kotkansalo, Lindstrom, Setkov etc. are d-men with potential. Hicketts, Sulak, Russo as free-agent pickups. Wings are finally throwing everything at the wall when it comes to finding impact D. What's left is getting top 10 picks and using on D. This year the only real option was Liljegren which seemed like a bad pick at #9. In '18 chances are we'll use our 1st on a D.

We've drafted bad on D, but it's also kind of expected for a team without top picks. It's easy to look at Nashville as a "they can do it, why can't we!" example, but they suck at drafting forwards and have zero cups. Our D problem is hopefully on the way to solving itself with a combination of more draft picks available to us and a higher draft position.
 

Heaton

Moderator
Feb 13, 2004
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Auburn Hills
I think a bigger issue is the philosophy this team has when it comes to defensemen, very rarely does this organization allow young offense defensemen play offensively. I'm concerned some of the offensive defensemen we draft will be forced into defensive roles while they keep slotting guys like Daley on the top PP.
 

waltdetroit

Registered User
Jul 20, 2010
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It's the revisionist narrative now that he's gone.

Nevermind Nill's role in finding Zetterberg and Datsyuk, he apparently was a massive failure the whole time he was here.
Nill became director of scouting in 1994 through 2012, Many years there were no 1st round or even early picks. The problem I had was when they picked a d early, it wasn't so great (meaning top 2 D) except for Fischer & Kron. I guess it is a bit hard to rate Nill because he didn't have high round (no-brainer) picks but you need to get the most out of your picks. Here is a list of the D picked by Nill's staff in rounds 1-3 . There were 12 D picks from 1994 through 2012, or 18 years, out of 40 total picks in rounds 1-3 in those years. Standard would have been 54 picks. Here is some context
1994 1 23 Yan Golubovsky Russia D
1994 3 75 Sean Gillam Canada D
1995 1 26 Maxim Kuznetsov Russia D
1996 1 26 Jesse Wallin Canada D
1998 1 25 Jiří Fischer Czech Republic D
2000 1 29 Niklas Kronwall Sweden D
2005 1 19 Jakub Kindl Czech Republic D
2007 1 27 Brendan Smith Canada D
2008 3 91 Max Nicastro United States D
2009 3 90 Gleason Fournier Canada D
2011 2 48 Xavier Ouellet Canada D
2011 2 55 Ryan Sproul Canada D

To see all wings picks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Detroit_Red_Wings_draft_picks
 

Zetterberg4Captain

Registered User
Aug 11, 2009
13,726
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Detroit
We need more picks overall used on dmen

We need some top ten picks used on dmen

We need to let offensive dmen be offensive, screw this turn them into defensive turtles garbage. That's something you can both cover up and learn once in the NHL( hello karlsson)
 

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