Blashill hasn't changed anything.
The Red Wings upgraded on Howard.
This was the second-worst season of Blashill's disgraceful tenure.
Let's throw a party for him.
The Wings faced a fraction of the high danger chances they did last year. What are you talking about with "not changing"?
Jimmy Howard Stats | Hockey-Reference.com
Thomas Greiss Stats | Hockey-Reference.com
At ES,
19-20 Howard faced 658 total shots. Of that, they determined 368 were "good" chances and 124 were "high danger".
20-21 Greiss faced 717 total shots. Of that, they determined 157 were "good" chances and 30 were "high danger".
Bernier in 19-20 faced 1079 total shots. Of that, 588 were "good" chances and 202 were "high danger".
Bernier in 20-21 faced 611 total shots. Of that, 142 were "good" and 46 were "high danger".
Like, these numbers should be indisputable about the Wings defense and structure being worlds better in 20-21 over 19-20. This isn't to go to bat for Howard, because he was all-time bad last year... but my god did the Wings leave their goalies out to dry in 19-20. Bernier was phenomenal in the face of that.
There are many ways to build a team from scratch.
The Vegas Golden Knights showed that you could build a competitive successful team fairly quickly with the right coaches, staff and players in place.
They have made the playoffs since they started 4 years ago most of them under former Redwing Gerald Gallant.
We could just keep on meandering by with Blashill who managed to keep his team out of the playoffs for 6 straight years or start anew with someone like Gallant which coached a team built from expansion leftovers and draft picks and led them to the Stanley Cup final.
We shouldn't be blinded by the fact that the Redwings better record this year was built mostly on the shoulders of both our goaltenders without which Blashill would have looked the inept coach he has been the past 6 years.
Steve could use the budget he has to add a few skilled players to the young promising core they already have in place. They just need a winning coach with a proven NHL track record to develop a competitive team.
The Golden Knights had complete flexibility to structure their team however they wanted without the burden of any long term deals to old players. They also got the benefit of being paid to take a legitimate top line from the rest of the league. Marchessault, R. Smith, Karlsson... they were given these guys and these guys with a massive chip on their shoulder because the old teams literally paid Vegas to take them. No, what we shouldn't do is say "VGK did this from scratch, so what the f*** is Detroit doing"? Detroit isn't being handed Jonathan Marchessault for free. If Detroit could have just blinked Nielsen, Abdelkader, Weiss, DeKeyser, Zetteberg, Datsyuk, Franzen, etc's contracts out of existence for no cost, they would have been able to make sweeping changes all at once too.
Again, no, it wasn't based upon our goalies magically being superheroes. Bernier and Greiss faced in 20-21 less good chances combined than Howard himself faced in 19-20. Combined, they faced about 60% of the high danger chances that Howard alone faced. The 1-2-2 made a HUGE HUGE HUGE difference in what the goalies were asked to do.