Hey thanks for the reply. These are dark days on this board, and your mention of a Hronek, Saarijarvi and Cholowski future is a welcome sight.
I like all the points you made, but it also gives me the impression that the Red Wings move here is well thought out. Right around the time you've highlighted as being the time that the Red Wings would have to worry about obstructing the pipeline, is the time that Daley is set to move out.
In the mean time, the Griffins that you've highlighted are low calibur prospects aren't they? Like, when was the day we decided Lashoff wasn't going to take to more NHL seasoning? And I wouldn't expect Daley to be that much different of a player as a 34 yo or a 36 yo. He's not going to be logging stressful minutes in Detroit most likely.
I think you should definitely be hoping for a guy in that crop to underdog his way to a new level of potential, but it does that guy no favors to just toss him out there for 82 games as a stop gap, and it's certainly not gonna do any favors to a potential d-partner of theirs that's even less experienced.
As a casual fan, it looks to me like the Red Wings moved out Smith in favor of Daley, in order to prepare for the Cholowski era, which would only happen if the switch had been flipped to "full rebuild", which I thought was what everyone was clamoring for...
From what I remember reading at the time, the Wings had tried to re-sign Smith before they dealt him. I think the one who moved on was Smith. I don't think an actual rebuild is starting here.
With Daley and his workload, I think his minutes will be manageable as long as everyone stays healthy, and no one outside of Green and Dekeyser will be pushed hard minutes wise. Until guys start getting hurt. Then we'll see whatever vets are left get pushed a little harder with the younger guys getting only slightly more minutes.
Bringing Daley in just makes it all the more unlikely that we're going to see one of the current crop of "kids" (Jensen is 26, Russo is 24, and XO is 23...really hard to call them prospects/kids but they are for this club) get a good look and maybe exceed expectations. Injuries should be expected with every season, but it has long seemed as if the Wings hope injuries force us to put our best team on the ice rather then giving us something to weather until our better players are healthy again.
I think the hope should have been that we put guys like Jensen, Russo, and XO out there a lot now with the hope that they can be the steadying influence for when the next group comes up. And if they aren't, we could probably sign a Trevor Daley equivalent every summer.