News Article: Tyler Wright: The days of leaving kids in the AHL for extended periods is over

[Flowah]

Detroit's nearing the end of the contract clutter teams like Chicago and Pittsburgh are just entering, and teams like LA are getting firmly mired in.

I don't recall any team getting out from under it's stars before they ding them for 2+ overpaid/ineffective years at the end of their runs. Datsyuk, Z, Kronwall, those three guys have either missed badly or struggled to earn their contracts most of their last 2-3 years in Detroit. Franzen's concussion stuff was just a killer, contractually.

When the stars of those other clubs are winding down but still on big deals we'll see those franchises enter the same kind of malaise Detroit is in now, or Vancouver has been in for awhile, or that LA's entering.

Nothing forced us to give term and price to non-factors like Abdelkader. That was poor asset management, plain and simple.

It is one thing to sign stars to contracts that screw you at the tail end of their career. It is another thing to sign contracts to non-stars who are hamstringing you already just a couple of years into those same contracts. We did the latter.

 

[jolly roger]

Depending on how the interview went, he might've just been responding to the direction that questions went, and there isn't anything more to it than that.

Or it's a combo, and the unflattering reviews of this latest draft led to the direction of the interview, which led to his comments.

Or...Kenny just figured out how bad his scouting reports were for the draft!

 

[Konnan511]

Give Mister his 9 games and see how he does.

 

[Ezekial]

Smith looks like a bust in his +1 season. No chance he sniffs the NHL in the near future, if at all.

He didn't have a good D+1 to be sure but when you're on a team where the one bright spot is a 16 year old D, you're probably not going to have a great statistical season. Guelph ****in sucks.

 

[Shaman464]

He didn't have a good D+1 to be sure but when you're on a team where the one bright spot is a 16 year old D, you're probably not going to have a great statistical season. Guelph ****in sucks.

Yeah, but, usually, even on bad teams, people who have been drafted in the second round should take a step forward. In fact his year and the year before that are pretty much indistinguishable. He is screaming bust at this point.

 

[Pavels Dog]

Yeah, but, usually, even on bad teams, people who have been drafted in the second round should take a step forward. In fact his year and the year before that are pretty much indistinguishable. He is screaming bust at this point.

Yup, just like PK Subban. Total bust.

Geez, the guy is a 2nd round pick not known for his offense.

 

[Run the Jewels]

He didn't have a good D+1 to be sure but when you're on a team where the one bright spot is a 16 year old D, you're probably not going to have a great statistical season. Guelph ****in sucks.

No worries, he can be sent down to Toledo to work on his game. Many of our prospects end up in Toledo before making it to Grand Rapids full time.

 

[Ezekial]

Yeah, but, usually, even on bad teams, people who have been drafted in the second round should take a step forward. In fact his year and the year before that are pretty much indistinguishable. He is screaming bust at this point.

I was tepid toward the pick at the time, that hasn't changed, but I certainly wouldn't label him bust yet. He's a banger winger who can't be expected to carry the offensive load for a bad team. The disappointing part to me is that Guelph was even worse in scoring the year before.

No worries, he can be sent down to Toledo to work on his game. Many of our prospects end up in Toledo before making it to Grand Rapids full time.

Certainly wouldn't be the end of his career.

 

[njx9]

Yup, just like PK Subban. Total bust.

Geez, the guy is a 2nd round pick not known for his offense.

Didn't Subban go from 46 to 76 points in his D+1 year? Or for 53 points in the AHL the following year? How is that similar?

 

[Ezekial]

Didn't Subban go from 46 to 76 points in his D+1 year? Or for 53 points in the AHL the following year? How is that similar?

56 points in 68 games in 06-07 Belleville Bulls

Drafted 2007

46 points in 56 games in 07-08 Belleville Bulls (23 in 21 games in playoffs though)

76 points in 56 games in 08-09 Belleville Bulls

 

[lomekian]

For a forum on a site called 'Hockey's future' it always confuses me how many people assume prospects have a linear development, and view the stat line as all important.

There are so many other things to consider, not to mention the fact that players often plateau and leap in their development (as people do in life). The whole interview with Tyler Wright is a good one, even if it does reveal that perhaps his view of scouting is perhaps overly influenced by his playing career.

That said, there is a logic in focusing on character. Throughout the 2000s we focused on skill and less on personality...and had a lot of prospects who either failed to develop, wouldn't stick about in the AHL if they didn't make the big club immediately or were plagued with consistency issues. Having been burned quite a few times the organisation is now prioritising desire, work ethic and maturity to a greater degree, perhaps sacrificing skill in the process.

As long as this is combined long term with picking players on skill and hoping they grow up (or sometimes, just grow), I'm happy with it.

This draft, and Wright's subsequent assertion that they need to get the kids up quicker, suggests that with so many question marks on so many players, they wanted to grab a whole load who have higher floors and were willing to sacrifice some ceiling. It suggests a recognition of the need for roster renewal, and perhaps a medium term plan to replace some of the bad contracts on the team with players of similar skill set.

At this stage, who the hell knows. Of course, players dominant at 18 have a better chance than those who aren't, but if player development was as easy to read as many on here suggest, there wouldn't be so many draft surprises (in either trend).

To me, it reads like a draft where there was a lot of depth but all but the very best had question marks, so they went for guys who were most likely to a) fill a roster need while b) having the greatest probability of one day being some level of NHL-er.

We'd probably disagree by some choices even by that rationale, but I'd be surprised if 3 or 4 selected this year don't go on to have decent NHL careers looking at their current profiles.

 

[Frk It]

This draft, and Wright's subsequent assertion that they need to get the kids up quicker, suggests that with so many question marks on so many players, they wanted to grab a whole load who have higher floors and were willing to sacrifice some ceiling. It suggests a recognition of the need for roster renewal, and perhaps a medium term plan to replace some of the bad contracts on the team with players of similar skill set.

At this stage, who the hell knows. Of course, players dominant at 18 have a better chance than those who aren't, but if player development was as easy to read as many on here suggest, there wouldn't be so many draft surprises (in either trend).

To me, it reads like a draft where there was a lot of depth but all but the very best had question marks, so they went for guys who were most likely to a) fill a roster need while b) having the greatest probability of one day being some level of NHL-er.

We'd probably disagree by some choices even by that rationale, but I'd be surprised if 3 or 4 selected this year don't go on to have decent NHL careers looking at their current profiles.

If you believe the bolded to be true... I hope you are ready for a long ass re-build.

I really have a hard time undrstanding this logic, as well. Bottom 6 forwards or bottom 4 defenseman aren't exactly hard to find. Yeah it's nice to have cheap bottom 6 forwards and bottom 4 defenseman, but that's really only a need if you have to do that in order to afford star players.

What's even the drawback to going for boom or bust skilled players in the draft when you are a re-building team? I understand the drawback when you are re-building on the fly, but what about when you have bottomed out and need a new core? If you're not going to embrace picking top 5, then you have to swing for the fences with the picks you get. I don't think Rasmussen is a terrible pick, if you are planning on having some top 5 picks over the next few years. But Holland is talking about being a playoff team and we are talking about signing some 30+ year old guys in free agency right now.

 

[Shaman464]

Yup, just like PK Subban. Total bust.

Geez, the guy is a 2nd round pick not known for his offense.

Subban is also a defenseman, which aren't the same as forwards. And as a matter of fact he actually had a pretty good D+1 but a rough start made it look worse than it was. His playoffs were pretty great though and in totality his scoring output increased.

And a second round pick not know for his offense. God, that just shows the terrible drafting mentality of this team.

 

[Kingpin794]

I would say Bert, svech and a dman

Renouf. Dude looks like he can eat up minutes.

 

[HockeyinHD]

While all this is largely true, a couple points:

1) Teams like Chicago and Pittsburgh have definitely been more proactive in getting prospects involved sooner than Detroit has.

I think you will be surprised by how inaccurate that statement is.

Chicago has had 6 guys in total play any NHL games from all of their drafts from 2012 on. Teravainen (12) wasn't a full-time player until D+3. Saad came up pretty quick from the 2011 draft(2 years). Shaw came up pretty quick from the 2011 draft. Hartman came up D+3. You should go look at their draft history lately, though. Not great. Panarin was a UFA signing a la Dekeyser or Brunner.

Same deal with Pittsburgh. They've been a little better, but Rust was a 2010 pick. Murray and Maata were '12s. Guentzel was a '13.

Larkin (14), Mantha (13), AA (12), Jurco, Ouellet, Marchenko (11), Sheahan and Mrazek (10). Detroit's been busier bringing up drafted players, they bring them up full time at worst D+3, and usually get them a look 1-2, it's just that when they come up they don't do much.

2) Stars are not the only caliber of player that Detroit has regularly signed to contracts that end up with multiple years of bad cap hits.

Enh. I think you'd be surprised how regularly that happens across the NHL. Detroit absolutely has some bad deals on their books, but most teams have 2-3 they wish they could take back, too.

So yes, pretty much anybody that has stars to pay, then pays them, will end up with at least some pain in the cap department, as those deals wind down. But it's a lot more worth it for perennial All Stars than for the collection of average and depth guys (plus the buyouts) that make up a good portion of the Wings' financial mismanagement.

Nah. IIRC Franzen's whole number comes off the books this year. If that's true Detroit will have 11 mil in cap space with just Tatar and AA to sign to RFA deals, +1 depth spot to fill... and next year Green and Mrazek come off the books for another 10 mil.

You guys tend to treat Detroit's cap setup like it's some kind of abomination. It's really not. It would help quite a bit if DK and Mrazek played like they did in 16 rather than 17 instead of how they played when they were 16 and 17 years old.

 

[jkutswings]

Zetterberg is on a bad deal, but he just had a great season, so I give him a pass, at least for now. But that still leaves:

Howard
DeKeyser
Kronwall
Abdelkader
Helm
Ericsson
Franzen
Weiss

That's EIGHT bad deals, totaling over $33 million in cap hit for this season. So even if you want to argue away one or two of those, Detroit undeniably still has significantly more bad deals than the average team.

 

[Unfriendly Ghost]

The logic seems like: well, you guys complained so much that we didn't bring the kids up early enough, so now we're drafting kids who are physically and defensively ready to go sooner, and we can bring them up. Why aren't you satisfied? Etc.

The problem is now they're drafting low upside, high ceiling guys instead of the offensive players they used to. They basically don't seem to understand that we want them to value skilled offensive hockey more. They're saying: well, it took us a long time to get defensive value out of those players, so now we can get defensive value sooner, and it's a net upgrade. But it's really not.

 

[Pavels Dog]

Zetterberg is on a bad deal, but he just had a great season, so I give him a pass, at least for now. But that still leaves:

Howard
DeKeyser
Kronwall
Abdelkader
Helm
Ericsson
Franzen
Weiss

That's EIGHT bad deals, totaling over $33 million in cap hit for this season. So even if you want to argue away one or two of those, Detroit undeniably still has significantly more bad deals than the average team.

If you want to include buyouts, LTIRed players, contracts that were once good/great and just turned less favorable as players declined, and market value contracts that look bad if the player/team has a down year.. then you'll find a lot of "bad" contracts on almost every team. It's just likely you judge our deals much more harshly.

 

[Hatter of the Beach]

I really would not be surprised if we saw Rasmussen up on the wings for 9 games depending on how his season in Tri City works out. He's the most NHL ready prospect we've had since Larkin

 

[Martinez]

Smith looks like a bust in his +1 season. No chance he sniffs the NHL in the near future, if at all.

Toledo walleye bound

 

[njx9]

Nah. IIRC Franzen's whole number comes off the books this year. If that's true Detroit will have 11 mil in cap space with just Tatar and AA to sign to RFA deals, +1 depth spot to fill... and next year Green and Mrazek come off the books for another 10 mil.

I believe Franzen is on the books until 19/20. And XO needs a new deal, in addition to AA and Tatar.

 

[Datsyukian Deke]

"Instead, our coach will just leave them in the press box for extended stays, for minor transgressions, while continuing to play and make endless excuses for talentless garbage."

My very thoughts exactly. Things will never truly change, unless somebody competent enough, is put into that position, as well.

 

[Beltv]

I believe Franzen is on the books until 19/20. And XO needs a new deal, in addition to AA and Tatar.

I don't see AA or XO getting to much. 1.3 to 1.5 for XO..little bit more for AA.

Tatar will be somewhere close to 5 I bet.

Are all three allowed to file for arbitration?

 

[Frk It]

Zetterberg is on a bad deal, but he just had a great season, so I give him a pass, at least for now. But that still leaves:

Howard
DeKeyser
Kronwall
Abdelkader
Helm
Ericsson
Franzen
Weiss

That's EIGHT bad deals, totaling over $33 million in cap hit for this season. So even if you want to argue away one or two of those, Detroit undeniably still has significantly more bad deals than the average team.

'Recapture' is still the biggest crock of **** I have ever seen.

 

[Cyborg Yzerberg]

So much negativity when it comes to our prospects. Tough to tell what's legit criticism and what's just being negative for the sake of being negative about everything.

People are just frustrated because we don't have a single Blue chip prospect in the entire organization. Svechnikov, Larkin, and Mantha seem like safe bet top 6 talent, Bertuzzi seems like a likely middle 6 talent, Hronek, Cholowski, Lindstrom, and Saarjiaarvi might be top 4 defensemen, maybe? This year we took a ton of guys because of their size, where Kenny is doing his best Vince McMahon impression, instead of prioritizing skill. Like maybe Rasmussen turns into a player, but I don't he's half the prospect that Mantha, Larkin, and Svechnikov are/were. People are frustrated by middling draft results the last decade and a half.