Rebuild conversation # 172

[MikeyDee]

To all of you "tank" fans, have the examples of Buffalo, Edmonton, and Arizona taught you nothing? How long are you willing to be irrelevant and don't you understand that 1-2 high picks give you absolutely nothing in terms of the overall quality and competitiveness of your team? I guess you do not understand that.

I also made mention of that. I'm definitely not in favor of tanking and hate the word.

 

[Unfriendly Ghost]

To all of you "tank" fans, have the examples of Buffalo, Edmonton, and Arizona taught you nothing? How long are you willing to be irrelevant and don't you understand that 1-2 high picks give you absolutely nothing in terms of the overall quality and competitiveness of your team? I guess you do not understand that.

Are there even any sincere tank fans? I think most of us only argue for a rebuild. Selling assets, etc, but not scorched Earth.

 

[pz29]

Are there even any sincere tank fans? I think most of us only argue for a rebuild. Selling assets, etc, but not scorched Earth.

perhaps you are right, but what I see here are statements like "we need to lose this game and all other games," and that is just silly.

 

[Martinez]

Outside of Larkin, AA, Mantha, and Bertuzzi, I don't have much faith in where this team is going. As far as I'm concerned, anybody outside those 4 are tradable. Having said that... this team could use more players like Bertuzzi. I've been saying that for years.

Brady tkachuk?

 

[Frk It]

To all of you "tank" fans, have the examples of Buffalo, Edmonton, and Arizona taught you nothing? How long are you willing to be irrelevant and don't you understand that 1-2 high picks give you absolutely nothing in terms of the overall quality and competitiveness of your team? I guess you do not understand that.

What about the teams that got high picks and then won Cups within 5 years... like Chicago and Pittsburgh?

There are no guarantees in re-building, just like there are no guarantees in life.

-We know that the worst teams have the best odds of drafting high.
-We know that there is a very strong correlation between drafting high and getting elite players.
-We know that elite players are required for winning Cups.

Yeah, people are going to draw a line there... what do you expect?

 

[Run the Jewels]

To all of you "tank" fans, have the examples of Buffalo, Edmonton, and Arizona taught you nothing? How long are you willing to be irrelevant and don't you understand that 1-2 high picks give you absolutely nothing in terms of the overall quality and competitiveness of your team? I guess you do not understand that.

Do you understand we are essentially going on our third straight year of not really being a playoff team? We lucked in during the 2015-16 season when Ottawa beat Boston on the final day of the season.

We've tried really hard to be good and the truth is we're one of the 5-10 worst teams in the league. Our best players - Green, Kronwall, Zetterberg will all be lost within a year or two. We have no elite talent at all, not even close.

The tank tracker is simply a way to acknowledge an actual proven way to eventually become a good, entertaining, competitive hockey team. LA, Chicago and Pittsburgh have won 8 Cups combined by building off high lottery draft picks. You also need to draft well outside the lottery which is something we simply do not do.

We can continue to have this conversation for the rest of the season. My guess is as soon as Holland announces his retirement it's gonna be a moot point. No GM worth anything is going to come here and pursue the same failed strategy and overpay mediocre home grown talent to lifetime contacts while being one of the 5-10 worst teams in the league.

 

[MikeyDee]

Brady tkachuk?

Yeah! TKACHUCK, latin-canadien for "plays bigger than size, mucks it up, and likes the dirty areas" (quoted from the MikeyDee Dictionary).

 

[MikeyDee]

I

Do you understand we are essentially going on our third straight year of not really being a playoff team? We lucked in during the 2015-16 season when Ottawa beat Boston on the final day of the season.

We've tried really hard to be good and the truth is we're one of the 5-10 worst teams in the league. Our best players - Green, Kronwall, Zetterberg will all be lost within a year or two. We have no elite talent at all, not even close.

The tank tracker is simply a way to acknowledge an actual proven way to eventually become a good, entertaining, competitive hockey team. LA, Chicago and Pittsburgh have won 8 Cups combined by building off high lottery draft picks. You also need to draft well outside the lottery which is something we simply do not do.

We can continue to have this conversation for the rest of the season. My guess is as soon as Holland announces his retirement it's gonna be a moot point. No GM worth anything is going to come here and pursue the same failed strategy and overpay mediocre home grown talent to lifetime contacts while being one of the 5-10 worst teams in the league.

Strange verbiage from Bob McKenzie on TSN
I'd like to comment to the word REBUILDING. I'm finding it hard has a Red Wings fan to listen to others talk about tanking. I think tanking is a dreadful word that separates the true fan from the band-wagon fan or maybe just naïve about how the cap/lottery-era NHL works. Historically, look at what has happened to teams like the Edmonton Oilers and the Buffalo Sabres. These teams have many times had the chance to draft high and still come out in the pits. Tanking just to get a better draft pick doesn't solve anything. There's much more to winning and continued success than drafting high. At least Holland and the organization is trying to keep a winning attitude. I'm not trying to defend Holland here...just making the point that tanking isn't (edited 1-24-2018) always the way to go.
MikeyDee, Jan 15, 2018

 

[Redder Winger]

Do you understand we are essentially going on our third straight year of not really being a playoff team? We lucked in during the 2015-16 season when Ottawa beat Boston on the final day of the season.

We've tried really hard to be good and the truth is we're one of the 5-10 worst teams in the league. Our best players - Green, Kronwall, Zetterberg will all be lost within a year or two. We have no elite talent at all, not even close.

The tank tracker is simply a way to acknowledge an actual proven way to eventually become a good, entertaining, competitive hockey team. LA, Chicago and Pittsburgh have won 8 Cups combined by building off high lottery draft picks. You also need to draft well outside the lottery which is something we simply do not do.

We can continue to have this conversation for the rest of the season. My guess is as soon as Holland announces his retirement it's gonna be a moot point. No GM worth anything is going to come here and pursue the same failed strategy and overpay mediocre home grown talent to lifetime contacts while being one of the 5-10 worst teens in the league.

I agree.
But I don't agree our drafting has been poor.
From 2002 to 2014 we drafted the following guys
1st round Sheahan Mantha Larkkin
2nd round Fleischmann Hudler Howard Abdelkader Matthias Tatar Jarnkrok Ouellet Janmark Bertuzzi
3rd round Filppula Franzen
4th round Quincey Nyquist Pulkkinen Athanasiou
5th round Helm Jensen Mrazek
6th round
7th round Meech Marchenko
8th round
9th round Ericsson

Here are our borderline picks in the top 3 rounds
1st round Kindl Smith
2nd round Jurco Frk
3rd round Andersson Nestrasil Quine


Here are our misses in the top 3 rounds
1st round McCollum
2nd round Emmerton Axelsson Ferraro Sproul Nastasiuk
3rd round Lofberg Larsson Paterson Aubry

Our first round picks have been spotty, but Larkin and Mantha look good.
Kindl and Smith were spotty.
For Kindl, for example, three of the four D selected right after him were even worse busts. Only Niskanen succeeded. And if you look at the 5 D drafted ahead of him (Parent, Pokulok, Staal, Bourdon and Lee), only Staal played more games.
There were some non-D who would have been good picks (Oshie, Rask, Cogliano), but whatever.
For Smith - the seven defensemen picked after Smith played a total of 67 NHL games. The 8th, unfortunately, was PK Subban, but whatever, There were at least 39 other mistakes that draft before Subban was picked.

Sheahan... Meh, he could go in the borderline category. I'll always be pissed Holland didn't take Kuznetsov. But Sheahan looks like he'll be in the NHL for a long time and that's about all you can really, truly ask at 21. (But man, Kevin Hayes, Kuznetsov, Charlie Coyle, Brock Nelson, Tyler Pitlick, RYan Spooner., Calle Jarnkrok, Tyler Toffoli, Johan Larsson, Oscar Lindberg....
There was a run on centers from Bjugstad at 19 until the end of the 2nd round with ZERO misses.
Kind of cool.

 

[Run the Jewels]

I

Strange verbiage from Bob McKenzie on TSN
I'd like to comment to the word REBUILDING. I'm finding it hard has a Red Wings fan to listen to others talk about tanking. I think tanking is a dreadful word that separates the true fan from the band-wagon fan or maybe just naïve about how the cap/lottery-era NHL works. Historically, look at what has happened to teams like the Edmonton Oilers and the Buffalo Sabres. These teams have many times had the chance to draft high and still come out in the pits. Tanking just to get a better draft pick doesn't solve anything. There's much more to winning and continued success than drafting high. At least Holland and the organization is trying to keep a winning attitude. I'm not trying to defend Holland here...just making the point that tanking isn't (edited 1-24-2018) always the way to go.
MikeyDee, Jan 15, 2018

Buffalo, Edmonton and Phoenix have all gone through ownership changes that played a major role in their downfall so I don't consider them accurate at all. In fact they are totally irrelevant. Bobby Mac is doing a nice job speaking for Ken Holland, it is quite impressive. Kudos to him for that.

One thing I will agree with is that we can't do a full on tank with all the crappy contracts. No one wants them! What I've been pushing for is to trade UFAs like Abby, Helm, Vanek, Green, and possibly guys like Nyquist or Tatar to improve our awful defense.

Does trading Abby, Helm and Green constitute tanking? Is signing Green to an awful long term deal the only way to avoid tanking
?

People have such problems with the word tanking, should we say rebuilding instead? Is that OK? Or should we simply say we're trying real hard while we continue to slide down the standings year after year but still have our pride to where we can say we never tanked?

 

[ShelbyZ]

What about the teams that got high picks and then won Cups within 5 years... like Chicago and Pittsburgh?

It took both more than 1-2 high picks to Win Cups within 5 years... The Pens had 5 consecutive top 5 picks in 5 years (5OA in 2002, 1OA in 2003, 2OA in 2004, 1OA in 2005 and 2OA in 2006)

The Hawks had 3OA in 2004, 3OA in 2005, 7OA in 2006 and 1OA in 2007. And that followed picking at 8,9,10,11 and 13 at various points between 1997 and 2001.

If the Wings want to rebuild through the "chance" of netting high draft picks, fans are probably going to have to be patient for at least 7 seasons before Stanley Cups are any sort of reality.


IMO, this latest lottery system makes trying to rebuild through high draft picks a crapshoot. In the last draft, #2OA went to a team that didn't even finish within the 10 worst teams in the league and #3 wasn't in the 5 worst.

I just clicked the "simulate" button on the Tankathon lottery page and was amazed how many times the Islanders and/or Blackhawks ended up in the top 3...

They'd have to completely strip down the team and have LCA be a ghost town while they shoot for dead last for at least 3/4 seasons before they net a couple of #1-2OA picks.

 

[MikeyDee]

Buffalo, Edmonton and Phoenix have all gone through ownership changes that played a major role in their downfall so I don't consider them accurate at all. In fact they are totally irrelevant. Bobby Mac is doing a nice job speaking for Ken Holland, it is quite impressive. Kudos to him for that.

One thing I will agree with is that we can't do a full on tank with all the crappy contracts. No one wants them! What I've been pushing for is to trade UFAs like Abby, Helm, Vanek, Green, and possibly guys like Nyquist or Tatar to improve our awful defense.

Does trading Abby, Helm and Green constitute tanking? Is signing Green to an awful long term deal the only way to avoid tanking
?

People have such problems with the word tanking, should we say rebuilding instead? Is that OK? Or should we simply say we're trying real hard while we continue to slide down the standings year after year but still have our pride to where we can say we never tanked?

TANKING is giving up. I don't see it as an accurate portrayal of what the RWs are doing and hope they never do.

And not to rehash what I said in response to the Bob Mac statement, but he wasn't speaking for Ken Holland, but was giving an opinion (i.e. his own reality).

 

[Heaton]

To all of you "tank" fans, have the examples of Buffalo, Edmonton, and Arizona taught you nothing? How long are you willing to be irrelevant and don't you understand that 1-2 high picks give you absolutely nothing in terms of the overall quality and competitiveness of your team? I guess you do not understand that.

Bad management will hurt even non-tanking teams. Tanking only works when you have good management, which is why anyone who thinks re-building takes 10 years is basically saying they expect our management to be incompetent for 6+ years before hiring the right manager to fix the issues.

 

[Heaton]

TANKING is giving up. I don't see it as an accurate portrayal of what the RWs are doing and hope they never do.

And not to rehash what I said in response to the Bob Mac statement, but he wasn't speaking for Ken Holland, but was giving an opinion (i.e. his own reality).

Tanking is being proactive to fix an issue. Being bad on accident is what incompetent management does. GM's don't max out a team and load them with veterans expecting them to be bad.

 

[Claypool]

Tanking is being proactive to fix an issue.

You mean "maybe" fix an issue.

 

[Unfriendly Ghost]

perhaps you are right, but what I see here are statements like "we need to lose this game and all other games," and that is just silly.

I think a rebuild fan can want the team to lose this year. It's a little hyperbolic to want them to lose every game, but believing finishing lower in the standings will help the team long-term is fine. I personally don't want the Wings to be anywhere near the playoffs while they're rebuilding. In ideal circumstances, the Wings would trade guys like Tatar and Green ASAP and nip that whole thing in the bud.

 

[Pavels Dog]

Being bad on accident is what incompetent management does.

That basically means that until about 1 year ago, Ken Holland was the only GM in the history* of sports that wasn't incompetent.


* with acknowledgment that there could be a handful of exceptions

 

[Unfriendly Ghost]

I just clicked the "simulate" button on the Tankathon lottery page and was amazed how many times the Islanders and/or Blackhawks ended up in the top 3...

They'd have to completely strip down the team and have LCA be a ghost town while they shoot for dead last for at least 3/4 seasons before they net a couple of #1-2OA picks.

This is not how statistics works. Lotteries are closed systems with well-defined rules. Outliers exist, but it's ridiculous to pretend they're the norm when we know the hard-coded odds of the lottery.

 

[Frk It]

If the Wings want to rebuild through the "chance" of netting high draft picks, fans are probably going to have to be patient for at least 7 seasons before Stanley Cups are any sort of reality.

Going to have to be patient regardless.

IMO, this latest lottery system makes trying to rebuild through high draft picks a crapshoot. In the last draft, #2OA went to a team that didn't even finish within the 10 worst teams in the league and #3 wasn't in the 5 worst.

I just clicked the "simulate" button on the Tankathon lottery page and was amazed how many times the Islanders and/or Blackhawks ended up in the top 3...

They'd have to completely strip down the team and have LCA be a ghost town while they shoot for dead last for at least 3/4 seasons before they net a couple of #1-2OA picks.

New lottery made it more wide open, but the best odds are still with the worst teams. I like how they made it so going out of your way to be bad isn't as worth your while, but it still does give you the best odds.

This team is probably going to need multiple top 5 picks to turn things around, whether that's by luck or bottoming out.

 

[Pavels Dog]

Going to have to be patient regardless.



New lottery made it more wide open, but the best odds are still with the worst teams. I like how they made it so going out of your way to be bad isn't as worth your while, but it still does give you the best odds.

This team is probably going to need multiple top 5 picks to turn things around, whether that's by luck or bottoming out.

That ”probably” is so up in the air it’s not worth thinking about. I think our drafting is good enough to not need the Edmonton/Arizona/Buffalo-style bottoming out. But I could be wrong and we only find worthwhile players in the top 5. Even so, do we get a #1? That likely reduces the need for additional top 5 picks. Do we only get #4-5? Maybe need a couple. Maybe. Point being.. who the f*** knows.

 

[Frk It]

nvm... nothing to add

 

[Red Stanley]

Well, Larkin might as well be considered a top 5ish pick at this point relative to his draft class. Rasmussen could turn out to be more valuable than his draft rank would indicate, as well. This year's draft is supposed to be deep, so anyone in the top 10 could become a fantastic player. Next year's draft is supposed to be deep too. With some good luck that's 4 potential core pieces by the end of next draft from the first round alone. I'd rather be optimistic that our scouting staff will draft smartly, than watch a multi-year tank job that would depend on a whole lot of lottery luck to be even worth it.

 

[Pavels Dog]

I don't see the reasoning to support that, but OK...

Larkin? Mantha? Nyquist, Tatar, Howard, Abdelkader, Helm, Bertuzzi, Athanasiou? Now show me the list of non top-10 drafted players Edmonton has turned into solid NHLers in the last 10 years.... aaand GO.

(not every top 5 pick is a superstar, you generally don’t need many top picks if you find players throughout the draft that support 1 or 2 or 3 high picks)

 

[Frk It]

Larkin? Mantha? Nyquist, Tatar, Howard, Abdelkader, Helm, Bertuzzi, Athanasiou? Now show me the list of non top-10 drafted players Edmonton has turned into solid NHLers in the last 10 years.... aaand GO.

(not every top 5 pick is a superstar, you generally don’t need many top picks if you find players throughout the draft that support 1 or 2 or 3 high picks)

Most of those guys were drafted by guys who are no longer here, I'm pretty sure.

 

[The Zermanator]

These are just semantics, 'tanking' is just the negative twist on 'rebuilding' by those who are against the painful steps necessary to actually rebuild.

Perhaps a better distinction would be rebuilding vs renovating:
- Rebuilding: Replacing an existing structure with a new one, starting from the ground up.
- Renovating: Modifying an existing structure to make use of existing assets.

Now, Holland is clearly in the 'renovation' camp. He wants to retain the spine of this team while tweaking the extremities. This has been his (in)famous 'rebuild on the fly'. Marching forward with the same core, only really tweaking the depth.

I am in the 'rebuild' camp. As in I think there is very little to salvage on this team, and that it desperately needs to work from a clean slate. The success of the past has become an albatross around this team's neck, forcing expectations on an organization no longer equipped to meet them. The only 2 pieces I want to see in the future are Larkin and Mantha, and you can easily tank/rebuild while retaining those two. They are young enough, and they are also not good enough to carry a horrible team.

'Tanking' would accomplish two things, primarily:
1. It would provide us with the elite talent that we desperately need.
2. It will allow us to ride out the remaining years on all of the horrible contracts which are severely hampering this team's ability to improve. These are Ericsson, DeKeyser, Abdelkader, Helm, Howard, and Nielsen.

From there, we would have some young, elite talent, and the cap flexibility to surround them with complementary talent.