GDT: Red Wings @ New Jersey Devils -7:00 EST- FS-D

[Dotter]

Bad math, disastrous talking point to support the country club...

Lol, using your very own picture (the one you provided) it proves, using basic kindergarten math, Ken Holland came out of all that +1 for draft picks.

Thanks for proving my point!

 

[HIFE]

Bad math, disastrous talking point to support the country club...

View attachment 90171

Wow if draft picks are gold that makes Legwand solid platinum!

Last week I happened across a Stars/Preds game. Interesting to see Janmark on the top line with Tyler Seguin and good ol' Ironhook steadily improving. Wasn't the same annoyance as Hudler going on to lead his team in points for two season but I had to give my head a little shake.

 

[Pavels Dog]

I disagree with that 100%... but if you believe that, when do you think the re-build started?

Had 0 eye on the future with that garbage Legwand trade... that was a pure in the moment trade. The whole Dan Cleary fiasco was an eye on the future?!?! C’mon man.

To say since 2012 is just blaspheme.

Still think you have a silly "all or nothing" notion of rebuilding. If a once raging alcoholic who has become sober, one night decides to have one single beer; do you say he's still an alcoholic? You didn't address the Stepan trade by Arizona either. Rebuilding or not?
The "Dan Cleary fiasco".. I don't even know how debate something that in my mind has zero effect on a rebuild. So we signed an over-the-hill veteran for a bit too long. Whoopie. Did he keep us out of top draft picks? Did he stop Nyquist from becoming Ovechkin 2.0? Did he steal candy from your kids? In rebuilding terms, it had zero effect. The short-term effects were worse considering he was partially why Nyquist wasn't brought up sooner which hurt us a little bit in the standings (part of why we got Larkin in that draft, unfortunate consequence for sure).

It's hard to discuss rebuilding if you believe there's only two states an organization can be in: rebuilding or not. In reality there's a spectrum with clubs all over the place. Since 2012 Holland clearly stated he would no longer trade 1st round picks. That alone is evidence there was one eye on the future. Rebuilding? Not in your terms perhaps. But if the focus was still on the "now", Holland failed completely considering he could have traded Mantha, Larkin, 1st rounders and so on for help. Only in Red Wings land is trading away Jarnkrok considered a huge blunder and mortgaging the future; a sign of how spoiled we are. And people compare our rebuild to Toronto's failed attempts, when they traded away Stralman, Rask, Steen, two 1st round picks (one of which turned into Seguin)..

 

[ArGarBarGar]

If you are an alcoholic you are an alcoholic, sober or not. That's an odd comparison to make.

 

[Winger98]

Yes I think they did. They were drafting and developping players and injecting youth into the roster; Emmerton, Kindl, Sheahan, Andersson and etc. And still re-tooled by signing Daniel Alfredsson. It was/is more of a natural rebuild just like now. Except the core was much better and Wings were attracting better UFA.

Is there only one type of rebuild?
In 2002 KH didn't inject youth, he signed Hasek, Hull, Luke and etc. That, in my opinion, is not "rebuilding". He traded draft picks.

Wings are not burning it down purposefully tanking (do teams often do that?). They are doing a much more aggressive rebuild since missing the playoffs last season. That's undeniable.

I think there has to be a consistency of focus for something to be a rebuild. This isn't a scorched earth thing, but when Holland re-signs Helm and Gator, and signs Nielsen and Daley, attempts to re-sign Smith, etc., those aren't rebuilding moves, imo. Yeah, Holland hasn't been shipping picks out like he had in the past - though he hadn't been shipping out picks at that sort of rate since the cap was first implemented. We rarely had a full compliment of picks, but Holland hasn't been sending 1sts, 2nds, and 3rds out hand over fist in awhile.

I look at this team now and see a team sort of locked in stasis. They don't have many moves they can make to really pursue a rebuild other than dealing pending UFA. They also don't have the cap room to pursue better UFA or to help facilitate trades. Outside of the cap jumping $10m, Holland has shoved the Wings into a position where entropy is probably going to rule the day and they will continue to get worse without any real ability to put some control on that descent. Though I really thought this team was going to be a little better than they've shown over the past month.

This what clubs like SJ should be looking to avoid. You ask what they should do, they should probably deal Thornton and Ward this year. They're getting older, they haven't picked high in quite awhile,but they still have some guys younger than Thornton they can lean on a bit in Couture and Pavelski. Put getting into the playoffs on their shoulders while grabbing the biggest haul they can for a couple of other guys. Chicago is already closer to us than SJ, as I don't see a lot of pieces they could realistically move for great returns while not crippling their club. Dealing Saad or Anisimov would just make their forward depth even more shallow, while their blueline is even more top heavy than their forwards.

I think most clubs go that route, though. They aren't proactive enough with smaller moves - like moving Gator and/or Helm at the TDL a couple of seasons ago - and they just slide into a death spiral.

 

[Frk It]

Still think you have a silly "all or nothing" notion of rebuilding. If a once raging alcoholic who has become sober, one night decides to have one single beer; do you say he's still an alcoholic? You didn't address the Stepan trade by Arizona either. Rebuilding or not?
The "Dan Cleary fiasco".. I don't even know how debate something that in my mind has zero effect on a rebuild. So we signed an over-the-hill veteran for a bit too long. Whoopie. Did he keep us out of top draft picks? Did he stop Nyquist from becoming Ovechkin 2.0? Did he steal candy from your kids? In rebuilding terms, it had zero effect. The short-term effects were worse considering he was partially why Nyquist wasn't brought up sooner which hurt us a little bit in the standings (part of why we got Larkin in that draft, unfortunate consequence for sure).

It's hard to discuss rebuilding if you believe there's only two states an organization can be in: rebuilding or not. In reality there's a spectrum with clubs all over the place. Since 2012 Holland clearly stated he would no longer trade 1st round picks. That alone is evidence there was one eye on the future. Rebuilding? Not in your terms perhaps. But if the focus was still on the "now", Holland failed completely considering he could have traded Mantha, Larkin, 1st rounders and so on for help. Only in Red Wings land is trading away Jarnkrok considered a huge blunder and mortgaging the future; a sign of how spoiled we are. And people compare our rebuild to Toronto's failed attempts, when they traded away Stralman, Rask, Steen, two 1st round picks (one of which turned into Seguin)..

I don't think they were doing much more than the bare minimum towards a re-building effort up until a year or 2 ago. As I said a page or so ago, I think they knew re-build on the fly wasn't really viable, they just trotted it out there to buy them some time on an honest re-build and keep the streak going. And I get that, most teams couldn't keep a playoff streak going of they wanted.

 

[Redder Winger]

You can't start a "rebuild on the fly" once Lidstrom is gone, when Datsyuk is 35 and Zetterberg is 33. When the Red Wings were presented with the Hossa/Franzen choice, that's when they should have been starting to think about "rebuild on the fly." At the most, 1-2 years later.
The second San Jose loss was as about as far as anyone needed to go.

I'd point to Chicago as an example of "rebuilding on the fly." Shipping complimentary pieces out. Keeping the core. Changing who you view as core, when it's required.

And that required giving away veteran jobs to kids.
1) Because kids are cheap.
2) Because it gives you the opportunity to get younger.

But Holland's loyalty created a country club. Too many guys had jobs here as long as they wanted them. Guys like Cleary and Bertuzzi -- clearly well past it - had no business on this team. Maybe you give a 3rd line job to a Hat Trick Dick and suffer through his inconsistency and don't resign a Bertuzzi. Axelsson, it turns out, was a pretty good hockey player. You give Jan Mursak more than 6 minutes a night on line 4.

But at the end of the day, Mursak and Axelsson are Mursak and Axelsson. Perhaps competent top nine players - perhaps not.

Most importantly, you halt trading away assets earlier. Trading away a first for Kyle Quincey was stupid.

At the time, in 2012, we already had Kronwall, Lidstrom, Stuart, White, Ericsson, Kindl (there's six) and Brendan Smith (who produced at a career high pace - 7 points in 14 games).
Oh, and Commodore.

Holland, perhaps believing that Quincey must be good because he drafted him, paid an outrageous price for a guy who was a healthy scratch on one of the worst teams in the league.

So the team traded away a 1st, a 2nd and three thirds between 2012/16.
They also traded Jarnkrok and Janmark - two solid, young prospects.
That's not logical behavior for an aging team that needs to get younger.

And people may say that Jarnkrok and Janmark aren't that great. And they aren't great. But i think if they were in Detroit, we wouldn't have Frans Nielsen's stupid, bloated contract.

 

[Pavels Dog]

I don't think they were doing much more than the bare minimum towards a re-building effort up until a year or 2 ago. As I said a page or so ago, I think they knew re-build on the fly wasn't really viable, they just trotted it out there to buy them some time on an honest re-build and keep the streak going. And I get that, most teams couldn't keep a playoff streak going of they wanted.

They also weren't doing more than the bare minimum to keep the team competitive in the last 5 years or so. Like you say, most teams can't keep playoff streaks going. It seemed like for us, anytime we were in trouble someone stepped up with incredible play to carry us. Howard had some insane seasons, Kronwall was a beast after Lidstrom retired, Zetterberg singlehandedly won about 6 games in a row in 12-13 to get us in, Nyquist stepped up in '14 and outscored every single player in the league for a few months, Mrazek played like a star in 15-16 and Larkin flirted with Calder-trophy play... in any given season past 2009 we could have missed the playoffs if not for the simple fact that we had all-world coaching and some kind of "winning culture" or whatever you want to call it. But it certainly wasn't due to Holland loading up the roster in order to keep things going. It certainly wasn't due to Todd Bertuzzi, Dan Cleary or Legwand.

Ottawa, Vancouver, SJ, Boston, LA, Montreal... the list is long of teams that have had great years mixed with missing the playoffs and landing top picks. Chicago and Pittsburgh are currently outside the playoffs. Teams that aren't able to stay consistently good are able to mix in some talented youngsters in a more organic way than we were, without making "rebuilding" moves. If we had been a normal team we would have missed the playoffs a few times between 02-08 and have some top ~10 picks roughly in their prime right now. If we were a normal team we would have missed a few times between 09-15 and have more top 10 picks entering their prime or developing right now. But we weren't a normal team. We were a historic team, a modern dynasty. Seems like people forget that seasons like the ones we are having now and had last year... that's what most teams have every now and then, WITH their star players in their prime.

 

[Frk It]

They also weren't doing more than the bare minimum to keep the team competitive in the last 5 years or so. Like you say, most teams can't keep playoff streaks going. It seemed like for us, anytime we were in trouble someone stepped up with incredible play to carry us. Howard had some insane seasons, Kronwall was a beast after Lidstrom retired, Zetterberg singlehandedly won about 6 games in a row in 12-13 to get us in, Nyquist stepped up in '14 and outscored every single player in the league for a few months, Mrazek played like a star in 15-16 and Larkin flirted with Calder-trophy play... in any given season past 2009 we could have missed the playoffs if not for the simple fact that we had all-world coaching and some kind of "winning culture" or whatever you want to call it. But it certainly wasn't due to Holland loading up the roster in order to keep things going. It certainly wasn't due to Todd Bertuzzi, Dan Cleary or Legwand.

Ottawa, Vancouver, SJ, Boston, LA, Montreal... the list is long of teams that have had great years mixed with missing the playoffs and landing top picks. Chicago and Pittsburgh are currently outside the playoffs. Teams that aren't able to stay consistently good are able to mix in some talented youngsters in a more organic way than we were, without making "rebuilding" moves. If we had been a normal team we would have missed the playoffs a few times between 02-08 and have some top ~10 picks roughly in their prime right now. If we were a normal team we would have missed a few times between 09-15 and have more top 10 picks entering their prime or developing right now. But we weren't a normal team. We were a historic team, a modern dynasty. Seems like people forget that seasons like the ones we are having now and had last year... that's what most teams have every now and then, WITH their star players in their prime.

Yeah, plus we can't re-write history anyways. I'm all for talking about what we can do over the next 6 months/12 months/24 months to try and build another dynasty though.

 

[avssuc]

Lol, using your very own picture (the one you provided) it proves, using basic kindergarten math, Ken Holland came out of all that +1 for draft picks.

Thanks for proving my point!

So if you would...

Ken Holland announced back in 2008(?) that "draft picks are more valuable than gold" or something along those line. In that time, he acquired many draft picks and gave up only 1?

Grammatically explain the underlined...

Outside of that, you can't say that he "acquired many draft picks" when he is simultaneously trading the Wings higher picks away to relieve cap woes, and/or to acquire sub-journeyman players for #streak. I mean, just seriously take a look at what the Wings gave up. Players, 1st round picks... if that's your idea of killing it on the market, I don't have words to express my sympathies.

Bernays and Lee are loling at your posts.

 

[Ezekial]

I don't know why you're circling Datsyuk's trade, we moved back 4 spots to get an extra second. Just nonsensical to your point, really. A lot of the others were trash moves though.

 

[Dotter]

Grammatically explain the underlined...

In grammar class they taught us to use a question mark when asking a question. If you notice I ended the sentence with a question mark. Did you not notice that? I was too lazy to look it up and really didn't think it would matter much since it is common knowledge Detroit has drafted more players in the last entry draft than he has in 20+ years.

Outside of that, you can't say that he "acquired many draft picks" when he is simultaneously trading the Wings higher picks away to relieve cap woes, and/or to acquire sub-journeyman players for #streak. I mean, just seriously take a look at what the Wings gave up. Players, 1st round picks... if that's your idea of killing it on the market, I don't have words to express my sympathies.

Bernays and Lee are loling at your posts.

Without putting too much thought in your picture with weird circles written all over it. It doesn't have the OTT trade, IT doesn't have Smith trade. It doesn't have Jurco trade. It doesn't have Sheahan trade. It doesn't have Vanek trade. It doesn't account for the 3rd Ken Holland got for losing Mike Babcock.

Basically your picture is garbage. Even still, after all your cherry picking, it still proves Detroit as +1 in trades. LOL!

Between last season and this season, Ken Holland will have acquired more draft picks to get an extra FREE entire DRAFT ENTRY. In 2 years he's going to acquire around 8 extra draft picks. In a normal draft teams get 7 picks. Ken is getting an extra 8 for free.

Again, thank you for proving my point!!!

 

[Dotter]

I think there has to be a consistency of focus for something to be a rebuild. This isn't a scorched earth thing, but when Holland re-signs Helm and Gator, and signs Nielsen and Daley, attempts to re-sign Smith, etc., those aren't rebuilding moves, imo. Yeah, Holland hasn't been shipping picks out like he had in the past - though he hadn't been shipping out picks at that sort of rate since the cap was first implemented. We rarely had a full compliment of picks, but Holland hasn't been sending 1sts, 2nds, and 3rds out hand over fist in awhile.

I look at this team now and see a team sort of locked in stasis. They don't have many moves they can make to really pursue a rebuild other than dealing pending UFA. They also don't have the cap room to pursue better UFA or to help facilitate trades. Outside of the cap jumping $10m, Holland has shoved the Wings into a position where entropy is probably going to rule the day and they will continue to get worse without any real ability to put some control on that descent. Though I really thought this team was going to be a little better than they've shown over the past month.

This what clubs like SJ should be looking to avoid. You ask what they should do, they should probably deal Thornton and Ward this year. They're getting older, they haven't picked high in quite awhile,but they still have some guys younger than Thornton they can lean on a bit in Couture and Pavelski. Put getting into the playoffs on their shoulders while grabbing the biggest haul they can for a couple of other guys. Chicago is already closer to us than SJ, as I don't see a lot of pieces they could realistically move for great returns while not crippling their club. Dealing Saad or Anisimov would just make their forward depth even more shallow, while their blueline is even more top heavy than their forwards.

I think most clubs go that route, though. They aren't proactive enough with smaller moves - like moving Gator and/or Helm at the TDL a couple of seasons ago - and they just slide into a death spiral.

Since missing the playoffs, *if* Kenny trades assets for picks at this trade deadline (and we all know he will), are you going to agree Wings are showing consistency towards a rebuild?

The only way he was going to re-sign Smith was at a deal Ken Holland said he "couldn't refuse" according to sources quoting him directly. And so he didn't have to hit Free Agency Frenzy. Do you agree if Kenny got Smith at a 2 or 3 year deal on the cheap he wouldn't have signed Daley?

Regardless, Wings needed a defenseman to eat up minutes. Cholo isn't near ready yet. I consider Daley a "scab" player filling in a role until Kenny has a kid ready to take over that role. Do you agree Ken Holland has been consistently injecting kids onto the roster?

 

[avssuc]

I don't know why you're circling Datsyuk's trade, we moved back 4 spots to get an extra second. Just nonsensical to your point, really. A lot of the others were trash moves though.

Because the Yotes drafted a teenaged defenseman that has played better than anyone on the Wings (not named Green), and because Holland used the cap space gained to sign a player worse than Jarnkrok... for 3 times as much as Jarnkrok... to plug a hole from one his other poor moves.

Theres probably a Jim Lahey quote out there for this, but this is all I could find:

 

[avssuc]

Again, thank you for proving my point!!!

Well, if you're happy, then I'm happy. Keep up the great work, bud.

 

[Ezekial]

Because the Yotes drafted a teenaged defenseman that has played better than anyone on the Wings (not named Green), and because Holland used the cap space gained to sign a player worse than Jarnkrok... for 3 times as much as Jarnkrok... to plug a hole from one his other poor moves.

Theres probably a Jim Lahey quote out there for this, but this is all I could find:

View attachment 90231

There's no guarantee that Chychrun will be a better player than both Cholo and Hronek. He's not some elite defenseman in this league for having played on a terrible team last year.

Calle Jarnkrok is better than Nielsen? Okay, because of points? Maybe if Nielsen played with a Filip Forsberg and not a Darren Helm he'd have a few more points.

The point is your talking about trading away picks as a negative to Holland and moving a first for a 4 spots earlier first and a second isn't throwing away picks. Just because you personally don't like what happened after doesn't change that it's actaully a counter-point to what you are arguing.

 

[Dotter]

There's no guarantee that Chychrun will be a better player than both Cholo and Hronek. He's not some elite defenseman in this league for having played on a terrible team last year.

Calle Jarnkrok is better than Nielsen? Okay, because of points? Maybe if Nielsen played with a Filip Forsberg and not a Darren Helm he'd have a few more points.

The point is your talking about trading away picks as a negative to Holland and moving a first for a 4 spots earlier first and a second isn't throwing away picks. Just because you personally don't like what happened after doesn't change that it's actaully a counter-point to what you are arguing.

It's a "what have you done for me lately" league. Cholo is out of sight, therefore he's a bum. Chychrun is in the NHL so therefore he's the best thing since sliced bread.

Calle Jarnkrok is a very underwhelming player. He's no loss what-so-ever. He has a whopping 8 more points than Luke Glendening. And Calle has played more games on a better team with better line-mates.

 

[Winger98]

Since missing the playoffs, *if* Kenny trades assets for picks at this trade deadline (and we all know he will), are you going to agree Wings are showing consistency towards a rebuild?

The only way he was going to re-sign Smith was at a deal Ken Holland said he "couldn't refuse" according to sources quoting him directly. And so he didn't have to hit Free Agency Frenzy. Do you agree if Kenny got Smith at a 2 or 3 year deal on the cheap he wouldn't have signed Daley?

Regardless, Wings needed a defenseman to eat up minutes. Cholo isn't near ready yet. I consider Daley a "scab" player filling in a role until Kenny has a kid ready to take over that role. Do you agree Ken Holland has been consistently injecting kids onto the roster?

If/when Holland deals some guys off for futures before the TDL I will feel the same way I did last year: hopeful that his focus is shifting. If he then goes into the offseason and doesn't sign another Daley or Nielsen to a multi-year deal, I'll begin to believe he is looking at an actual rebuild rather than trying to retrofit every summer to squeeze into the playoffs.

And, yeah, I agree about Smith/Daley. But in the end it's the same thing, and I don't really differentiate between them. I don't think either player makes a whole lot of difference and we're better off just not wasting time/resources on them. I mean, let's say we didn't sign Daley and XO plays every day instead and plays 16 minutes a night. That leaves four minutes to spread among the other five D to make up for Daley's absence. I don't think that hurts us at all, and maybe we get stupidly lucky and XO runs with it. Or maybe another guy takes the extra minutes and runs with it (Ericson: The Resurrection!) and we either have a better trade piece or a young-ish guy looking a lot better for the future.

As for injecting youth, I'm not sure how different it's been from many years in the streak. I don't really count XO and Jensen since they're in their mid-20s already when they got their shot. But is Larkin, AA, Mantha, Bert, and Frk really that different from Holland working in Helm, Gator, Nyquist, Tatar, Sheahan, Smith, and Kindl? I hope the present group proves to be better, but just by numbers I'm not sure it's all that different from what goes on naturally across the league. Especially over the past five years or so where the league seems to have put a massive premium on pushing young guys into their lineups over signing/re-signing older vets.

Regardless of what happens I'll still have my primary concern regarding attempting a rebuild right now and it's this team playing up to their abilities. I'm in a weird place with this team, as I'm happy at the idea of drafting higher but I think they have woefully under-performed since Thanksgiving. Since the summer I've believed this club has the ability to be a 15-20 team in the league and not a bottom 5 club. If they find their stride, or they get a new coach in who can get them going, I think the hopes of picking high will disappear. So I'm really hoping for Dahlin this year.

 

[Ezekial]

Turned the game on 45 seconds ago then AA unleashed the best, great lob to him.

 

[avssuc]

There's no guarantee that Chychrun will be a better player than both Cholo and Hronek. He's not some elite defenseman in this league for having played on a terrible team last year.

Calle Jarnkrok is better than Nielsen? Okay, because of points? Maybe if Nielsen played with a Filip Forsberg and not a Darren Helm he'd have a few more points.

The point is your talking about trading away picks as a negative to Holland and moving a first for a 4 spots earlier first and a second isn't throwing away picks. Just because you personally don't like what happened after doesn't change that it's actaully a counter-point to what you are arguing.

No, I stated facts coupled with the majority opinion (fans & experts). It's not much of a debate, both players I mentioned are better right now, one is astronomically cheaper, and they are all related in Hollands game of rearranging chairs on the Titanic.