Dead last is locked up.

[jkutswings]

With the loss to Carolina, Detroit has 39 points with 11 games remaining. Even if they win out, they'd finish with 61 points, while LA and Ottawa are already at 62.

Enjoy the trophy, boys! A top 4 pick is officially guaranteed!

Click to read more...

 

[ZDH]

We tanked so well this year, proud of my boys.

 

[Peter Tosh]

Now, we can ice the best team possible and start trying to win games

 

[TCNorthstars]

We tanked so well this year, proud of my boys.

We really didn't tank.

 

[Larkin2AA]

We really didn't tank.

Agreed.

I'm curious to know where this team would have been this year if fully healthy? Probably still last place, but I don't think we would have been in last place by 22 points (or whatever it is now). Having players like Dekeyser, Mantha, AA (for the time he was here), Green (for the time he was here), Zadina, Bernier, etc.

Next year we will obviously be bad again, but I think (if healthy) we shouldn't be nearly as bad as this years team.

 

[Retire91]

LOL never thought we would be this bad, oh wait, yes I did.

 

[pz29]

Looking forward to pissed post-lottery posts when we lose the lottery and end up picking fourth.

 

[Hen Kolland]

We really didn't tank.

Ehhh, we kind of did. Yzerman spent next to no resources to make this team better through free agency. He made some shrewd acquisitions between Biega, Fabbri, and hopefully Timashov (although he had no influence on the season).

But by and large, he managed his first season like someone who wanted to observe and begin to clean house, and do so fully aware of what the results would look like in the standings. Continued to say nice things about Blashill and make comments that the record is not his concern in this season.

Basically everything he has done was done with wide eyes knowing the team was going to be bad, and he was accepting of that.

It might not be deliberate tanking like burning your organization to the ground like Ottawa did, but Steve got his hazmat suit on and sat in the middle of this while he allowed Covid-19 to run its course (hypothetically of course).

 

[Hen Kolland]

Looking forward to pissed post-lottery posts when we lose the lottery and end up picking fourth.

You mean the posts that started in November?

 

[ArmChairGM89]

More than happy picking 4th

 

[TCNorthstars]

.

It might not be deliberate tanking like burning your organization to the ground like Ottawa did, but Steve got his hazmat suit on and sat in the middle of this while he allowed Covid-19 to run its course (hypothetically of course).

Tanking is selling off useful players to help your team suck. Tanking isn't when you only have a few useful players to begin with. Tanking is what Buffalo did when they got Eichel.

The Red Wings just severely lack talent.

 

[jkutswings]

Looking forward to pissed post-lottery posts when we lose the lottery and end up picking fourth.

I don't see the correlation.

Detroit needed to embrace the rebuild. Yzerman was transparent about it being a long and potentially ugly process. Most fans expected a year at or very near the bottom of the standings. And as it happens, this particular draft class is shaping up such that even picking 4th, Detroit should be able to select a highly regarded prospect.

But even if there was an enormous drop-off after the 3rd (or 2nd or 1st) guy on draft boards... That doesn't remove the need to turn over the roster, or the benefits of having at minimum a 4th overall pick and the top pick of every round thereafter.

I'll take this awful season even drafting 4th, over last year and drafting 6th, or other down years selecting even lower. Either aggressively chase a Cup, or aggressively rebuild to do so.

 

[Hen Kolland]

Tanking is selling off useful players to help your team suck. Tanking isn't when you only have a few useful players to begin with. Tanking is what Buffalo did when they got Eichel.

The Red Wings just severely lack talent.

The Wings do not need to lack talent to this extent. Yzerman consciously didn’t add impactful talent and has prioritized and accepted losing as a result.

 

[Retire91]

That is a lot different than tanking, accepting the fact that anything you do to help will only hurt is a skill in and of itself that I am glad Yzerman possesses. We don't need or want stop gap plugs. He has tried to make the team better in the right ways.

 

[Steve Yzerlland]

More than happy picking 4th

I'm not. That's our worst case scenario. Which I'm fully expecting based on our past lottery luck...

 

[Claypool]

Mantha injury + DeKeyser injury + Howard's declining play really help solidify last place.

 

[Hen Kolland]

I'm not. That's our worst case scenario. Which I'm fully expecting based on our past lottery luck...

He’s not saying that he’s happier picking 4 than he would be 1 2 or 3. But 4 is already guaranteed to be our highest selection since kicking off this rebuild. Your guaranteed one of the four best players in the draft, and that means a lot.

Let’s not forget that last year was hinted quite a bit that Seider wasn’t among the players we had ranked as lottery picks.

It’s okay to be happy about it and still have capacity to be even more happy about it if we land higher

 

[TCNorthstars]

The Wings do not need to lack talent to this extent. Yzerman consciously didn’t add impactful talent and has prioritized and accepted losing as a result.

What could he have possibly done to add impactful talent short of selling our 1st round pick? He did nothing to make the Wings actively worse. That would be tanking.

 

[Retire91]

I see Drysdale as some people's number 4 BPA. If we get 4th and that means statistically that pushes us into a hard look at Drysdale I don't know that its necessarily a bad thing. Of course I want those big potential franchise centers but its likley no matter where we pick this person is going to start out immediate as our best player for the next 15+ years. There is kinda no way to lose.

 

[2xJack]

The Wings do not need to lack talent to this extent. Yzerman consciously didn’t add impactful talent and has prioritized and accepted losing as a result.

You're right. The Wings do not need to lack talent to this extent. Too bad the drafts over the past decade were poor and we have so many bad contracts to deal with. Yzerman, lacking a time machine, could not fix any of that.

 

[Lazlo Hollyfeld]

The Wings do not need to lack talent to this extent. Yzerman consciously didn’t add impactful talent and has prioritized and accepted losing as a result.

I would argue it's not that he prioritized losing, it's that he prioritized where the team will be in a few seasons over how they perform this season.

 

[Steve Yzerlland]

He’s not saying that he’s happier picking 4 than he would be 1 2 or 3. But 4 is already guaranteed to be our highest selection since kicking off this rebuild. Your guaranteed one of the four best players in the draft, and that means a lot.

Let’s not forget that last year was hinted quite a bit that Seider wasn’t among the players we had ranked as lottery picks.

It’s okay to be happy about it and still have capacity to be even more happy about it if we land higher

No you're not. 4th pick doesn't mean that's the 4th best player. Go revisit any draft to prove it to yourself. For the record I would be devastated if we didn't get a top 3 pick. We are clearly the worst team in the league over 20 points LOWER than the second worst team! This season has been very painful to watch and we never get lucky I'm so sick of all of this bs....

 

[Obe2kenobe]

With the loss to Carolina, Detroit has 39 points with 11 games remaining. Even if they win out, they'd finish with 61 points, while LA and Ottawa are already at 62.

Enjoy the trophy, boys! A top 4 pick is officially guaranteed!

Woooo! We did it! Other teams wait til the last few days or more to clinch it. We do it with 11 games left. Pretty impressive. I’d like to thank Frans Neilson for the lack of goals. Jimmy Howard, couldn’t have done it without you. I mean the guys gone months without a win, you don’t see that often. And a special thanks to defensemen, you given us so many goals against short handed, power play and even strength, not to mention how many times did we pull the goalie only to get scored on ourselves.
I think we also need to thank Ken Holland for the roster he left us with. So many un-tradable contracts. Abdelkader,Neilson, Ericsson, Howard to name a few.
Let’s hope the hockey gods get us that #1 pick. And kickstart this rebuild.

 

[2xJack]

Can we just cancel the last 11 games now? Nobody wants to watch them, we've got last locked up, and coronavirus is starting to take off here in the states. I don't see any sense in playing those games.

 

[avssuc]

Steve got his hazmat suit on and sat in the middle of this while he allowed Covid-19 to run its course (hypothetically of course).

In before this joke doesn't age well