That's a really good point because Holland did the same exact opposite with Abby and Helm. Inflated numbers from playing with elite players, then he signed them to ridiculous long term contracts.
IMO, the other factor there, which likely also points toward the guy making personnel decisions, is that in Tampa's case they had young guys that were making linear progress in development that helped make those guys expendable. That is also the exact opposite of what was going on in Detroit.
When Namestnikov was traded, Tampa had Point following up a surprising rookie season with a solid sophomore one and Gourde putting in a solid rookie season. For Conacher, they had Killorn also putting up a decent rookie season, and guys like Palat and Johnson getting called up and looking NHL ready. All of whom continued to improve and climb up the depth chart.
In Detroit on the other hand...
I think when you look at the influx of questionable contracts, you have to wonder how much of that was done as a side effect to the absolute trainwreck the post-Lidstrom "youth movement" became, and then you have to wonder who is at fault for that as well.
After the 2013 playoff run, Holland uncharacteristically and willingly deleted a veteran D from his roster and didn't sign any on the UFA market as they thought the late season addition of DeKeyser and the "emergence" of Kindl, Smith and Lashoff during the previous season/playoffs had them on the right track. Almost a 3rd of the way into the next season, DeKeyser is dealing with his 2nd longterm injury in barely 8 months at the NHL level, Kindl and Smith are back in Babcock's doghouse and Lashoff is proving to be the fringe NHL bottom pair plug that he turned out to be. All of a sudden, the guy that's barely forming a passable top pair with Kronwall gets a hefty 6 year extension... Holland then went into the UFA market that summer looking to back the brinks truck up to Matt Niskanen's residence for 7 years, before settling on giving Kyle Quincey a raise. Dekeyser has yet to, and probably never will make the impact that was projected when he was signed and the other promising guys from then are out of the league or still in it but probably shouldn't be.
Then, in the same season Ericsson got his extension, the Red Wings had an unexpected youth movement at forward as well. They started that year with too many forwards (especially after bringing back Cleary at the last minute) and put Nyquist in GR and Tatar in the pressbox. By the time the season ended, Nyquist was lighting it up at a 40G/season pace, Tatar was producing in a top 6 role, Sheahan was producing in a 3C role, Glendening pretty much locked down the 4C spot, hell even Joakim Andersson had shown some improvement over the previous year, Tomas Jurco looked like he was going to be a talented winger and even Landon Ferraro had found a role on the 4th line. Meanwhile guys like Emmerton, Tootoo, Bertuzzi, Cleary, Samuelsson, Eaves, and even infamous deadline rental Legwand had either been moved down the line-up, into the pressbox, down to GR or out of the organization completely. Similar to how Holland handled the defense the previous offseason, he made more subtractions on offense to make room for the young guys and didn't sign any free agents other than Dan Cleary. Despite some of those young players struggling the next season, Holland continued the next offseason with really only swapping Weiss for Richards, leaving a spot open for Pulkkinen and bringing back Cleary for the locker room. However, similar to Ericsson's extension by the time they'd gotten to November a lot of those young guys were regressing or in Jurco's case a new coaches doghouse, on top of Franzen pretty much being done and rumors of Datsyuk playing his last NHL season. Then boom, the guy that pot 23 goals the year before that and who Datsyuk apparently actually liked playing with gets a hefty and questionable extension. In some ways, all of those young guys, with the exception maybe being Glendening, failed to live up to the hype built in 13-14 and within the next 2 years, Holland would be extending Abdelkader and Helm and signing Nielsen long term.
Mrazek fits into that failed youth movement as well, but obviously without any real contract consequences, other than maybe his own ending up causing them to have to make a decision on him when he was still eligible to become an RFA. But I think it's also notable that Mrazek is the only goalie to attain any sort of regular NHL level employment to come out of the Red Wings system in the 10 years since Howard stole the starting job from Osgood....
To me the panic signings/extensions were a reaction to the inability to solidly fill roster spots from within. There's probably a lot of hands in that with scouting, coaching, training, etc. but at the end of the day Holland was the one who presided over all of those individuals. It's peculiar to me that about 95% of Hollands bashing is based on cap management and bad contracts and very little of that remaining 5% goes to the teams inability to develop young players to supplement their aging core or build for the future until it was too late.
Knowing that Yzerman is probably pretty similar to Holland in terms of his patient approach, valuation of veterans and free agents, etc., I can only hope he brought with him whatever he used to find a pretty steady supply of forward depth both in the mid-late rounds of the draft and outside of it. I'm talking the Point's, Johnson's, Gourde's, Palat's, and even Conacher's and Namestnikov's of the world. Having that steady influx of forward depth allowed guys to become expendable (Downie, Lecavalier, Drouin, Conacher, Namestnikov, etc.) so they could be traded to fill holes where Yzerman maybe wasn't as great at bringing guys up (mainly on D...). I mean, the Conacher and Downie trades gave the Lightning their two most recent starting goalies and both of those forwards haven't been NHL regulars for YEARS. And Namestnikov and Drouin brought in two top 4 Dmen without hurting them up front whatsoever. This negated the need to use the UFA market for anything other than veteran plugs for the bottom of the line up. That is also the complete opposite of things under Holland where they hoped their needs could be filled every July on the free agent market.
That said, I guess time will tell whether that had more to do with Yzerman or Murray/Cooper/etc.
) next summer might be valuable...
