ESPN: Rebuild? Red Wings just keep winning

[njx9]

Thing is he talks about it and we seem to try it for a few games.

Then it becomes clear we aren't talented enough to play that style and we revert.

That's probably fair, but when he's demoting Sproul over Marchenko, or giving Athanasiou 10ish minutes a game, it's hard to feel like he's putting both feet in the water. It would be hard for me to say, with a straight face, that we've regularly been playing our best players this season, let alone trying to put them in position to best use their best skills, even if it might expose some weaknesses.

 

[Rzombo4 prez]

That's probably fair, but when he's demoting Sproul over Marchenko, or giving Athanasiou 10ish minutes a game, it's hard to feel like he's putting both feet in the water. It would be hard for me to say, with a straight face, that we've regularly been playing our best players this season, let alone trying to put them in position to best use their best skills, even if it might expose some weaknesses.

Anyone who has ever wanted to win with a below average team has emphasized defensive hockey. This is nothing new and is exactly what Babcock did before Blashill. ****, go back and look at those Jersey teams from the 90s. It sucks to watch but there is a case to be made for playing in this manner, if winning is your primary goal.

Anyways, Blashill and Babcock have nothing to do with this team and its drafting.
Holland wanted us to become slightly bigger and more physical. Doing so required that we prioritize size over skill to one degree or another (I think Nasty may be the best example of this). The big kids with skill go early in the draft.

 

[Flowah]

That's probably fair, but when he's demoting Sproul over Marchenko, or giving Athanasiou 10ish minutes a game, it's hard to feel like he's putting both feet in the water. It would be hard for me to say, with a straight face, that we've regularly been playing our best players this season, let alone trying to put them in position to best use their best skills, even if it might expose some weaknesses.

I mean...

He played AA on the second line that first game back. He played Sproul. AA looked a little lost in the top6 and we lost a couple while Sproul was in.

It seems like Blash just feels that pressure and never lets the team gel or anything. A couple losses and the easiest thing to do is blame the rookies and guys that take risks (even if they also create a lot of chances). So revert back to safe crap and safer players. Problem is we aren't good enough defensively for that so....

Anyways, Blashill and Babcock have nothing to do with this team and its drafting.

You know what Babs said when someone asked him about his WCOH victory? "Look at my team. It's easy to win with this much talent." Or something to that effect. He's not wrong. Even Scotty Bowman couldn't coach this team to the Cup. Look at the teams Bowman did have. They're stocked with top talent. Coaches can make a difference, sure, but ultimately you NEED a good roster to win.

 

[SirloinUB]

I absolutely agree that the expectation that we pull a Nashville and pull a high quality defenseman out of basically every 3rd or 4th draft is silly. It's just never going to happen. That said, I think there are two confounding factors going on here: a) we don't/didn't take enough defensemen and b) we took the wrong defensemen. (a) is easy to address, especially when you see that our history on the forward front isn't really all that much better. We're not passing on defensemen to draft Wayne Gretzky. (b) I think is the more important issue: we're not identifying the right guys.

In 2007, in the first round, we took Brendan Smith, the 68th ranked skater in CSS's list. We passed on Subban, who was ranked 102. Given that it was pick 27 and we were reaching either way, I think that the ranking difference is fairly negligible. But I think we can reasonably assume that our scouts thought Brendan Smith would have a better NHL future than Subban, who went 17 picks later (and still well ahead of his ranking). I think we can call that either a scouting issue or a development issue pretty safely - either Smith wasn't worth that pick and our scouts missed something, or he was and he messed up his development. I'm open to other interpretations, but I don't think "he just wasn't very good" holds much water (not that anyone's saying that, specifically).

Given all of that, I think we can see two things - either we need to revamp the scouting and development program for defensemen, or we need to draft high enough that the chances of hitting a home run are much higher. To address your other point, while I think it does make it look a bit worse to say "here's what the rest of the league did compared to us", I don't think that's the best way to read the list. I think it's better to read it as, "here are the chances we missed on", which should lead to "why did we miss?" Yeah every other team might've only got one guy to match our one Kronwall, but we still missed on 20+ guys. If Holland is really as good a GM as people say, that shouldn't be happening, or if it's happening regularly, it should be getting addressed. If it was, and if we were even finding one top pairing defensemen a decade, I'm pretty confident that this team would be moving in a very different direction and the 'reload' would be a much better strategy.

Did we put ourselves in the best position possible to capitalize on the long odds we find ourselves in based on where we draft?

I look at trading away a first for Quincey, trading away 2nd and 3rd round picks for Cole, Legwand, Zidlicky. I look at drafting 47 forwards compared to 20 defenseman from 2005 to 2015. Not really sure you can say we did.

If we shouldn't criticize Holland for not finding a good defenseman in rounds 2-7, and we also don't draft high enough in round 1 for one, I just want to know where exactly a good defenseman is supposed to come from?

I do not disagree that more picks should have been spent on D. However, 10-15 extra dmen certainly increases the odds, but does it really change the situation if less than 1% of these draft picks pan out into top Dmen? As I pointed out, the numbers work out to 1 successful top pair(ish) dman has been picked every 136 draft selections.

I think, as njx9 points out the bigger problem is missing on the guys they did. Missing so badly with Smith and Kindl is killing this team now.




Interestingly, if you look at the team now, they did not put enough value into drafting Defense, but if you try to look at it objectively and remove hindsight, its less clear:

From 2005-2010 (maybe 2011) we arguably had the best defense in the league and they still spent 2 first round picks on D. In 2011 they grabbed a handful more dmen (plus others mixed in over that period). In hindsight, that wasn't enough, but would it have made sense to spend more picks on D at the time?


I guess no matter how we look at it, mid 2000s to early 2010s was a dismal period of drafting for this team, and we are suffering the consequences.

 

[Rzombo4 prez]

I do not disagree that more picks should have been spent on D. However, 10-15 extra dmen certainly increases the odds, but does it really change the situation if less than 1% of these draft picks pan out into top Dmen? As I pointed out, the numbers work out to 1 successful top pair(ish) dman has been picked every 136 draft selections.

I think, as njx9 points out the bigger problem is missing on the guys they did. Missing so badly with Smith and Kindl is killing this team now.




Interestingly, if you look at the team now, they did not put enough value into drafting Defense, but if you try to look at it objectively and remove hindsight, its less clear:

From 2005-2010 (maybe 2011) we arguably had the best defense in the league and they still spent 2 first round picks on D. In 2011 they grabbed a handful more dmen (plus others mixed in over that period). In hindsight, that wasn't enough, but would it have made sense to spend more picks on D at the time?


I guess no matter how we look at it, mid 2000s to early 2010s was a dismal period of drafting for this team, and we are suffering the consequences.

I don't get how you can use these ugly statistics to excuse the past drafting performance, yet somehow argue that we have some legit opportunity to defy these odds moving forward and successfully rebuild on the fly. As soon as you acknowledge the long odds of finding really good defensemen outside of the top 10 you have painted yourself into the rebuild corner.

 

[Pavels Dog]

What is scouting, if not trying to predict and gauge what players will be, years down the line? If other teams looked at Ouellet and didn't see an NHL-level defender, they did a better job at scouting than we did. "You don't know what will happen!" is a really lame excuse when we're talking about the front office of a pro sports team. It's their job to find players they believe will excel, and if they're consistently not doing so, they're failing. I just don't see how our drafting and development over the last ~16 years is even slightly defensible.

I just can't see eye-to-eye with that kind of perspective. Ouellet is still looking like a decent 2nd round pick. We're not talking about a top 15 draft pick that is put on waivers like McIlrath. Our scouts haven't been bad because they haven't pulled off the impossible (yet again) and found elite players late in the draft. Smith is an NHLer, Kindl at least for a time looked decent, Sproul and Ouellet will likely carve out NHL careers, Marchenko is easily a #5-6.. our scouts correctly identified guys with NHL potential. When an elite d-man is picked outside of the 1st round, it means 30 teams out of 30 have wrongly assessed that guy's potential or likelihood of reaching that potential. It happens. And for every Subban or Gostisbehere that reach their potential, there's two dozen guys that were viewed at a similar level at the draft who turned into nothing.
Even AFTER we had drafted guys like Kindl, Smith, Ouellet and Sproul they looked like fantastic picks. Do you remember? To call them bad draft picks is nothing but hindsight.

But if you need draft picks to have great defensemen, isn't that an argument for doing what it takes to get those picks? As in they've won too much, depleted the cupboard, and now they need to trade, sell, or lose and draft high.

The important thing is to no longer trade away picks for rentals, to not trade prospects unless we know they won't make an impact. To make the most out of the draft. The 15th pick with which we took Larkin was the highest pick we've had since the early 90s. Whether you've noticed it or not, what the Wings have been doing the last couple of years is a night and day difference compared to a 20 year run that came before. Let's see what our scouts can turn some #15-20 picks into before we pull the plug on the rebuild.

I just, I really don't understand how you think you can get away with drafting only 20 defenseman over 11 drafts from 2005 to 2015, with only 4 in the first 2 rounds, and think you are going to end up with anything other than a defense that sucks.

That's like putting the absolute bare minimum into your 401K, and then being surprised when you get to 65 that you can't retire.

By my count we took 23 d-men over that time. And 16 in the 7 drafts since 2010. It's not that few imo, but it would be interesting to see those numbers compared to other teams. There are more than twice as many forwards on an NHL team as there are d-men, and you need to draft goalies too. Defensemen are about 30% of an 23-man NHL roster. From a mathematical standpoint you should be using just over 2 out of 7 draft picks on d-men, which is what we've been doing pretty much.

Now it's easy to say in retrospect we should have been drafting more d-men. As long as we get to keep our best forwards and Mrazek, I'd easily swap every other draft pick for a d-man.

It sounds to me as though Pavels Dog does not actually believe that rebuilding on the fly will actually work after all. Apparently our defense is currently in the bottom quarter of the league and you need to draft in the top 10 to have a realistic chance of drafting a top-pair defensemen.

Who knew?

People keep talking about our drafting since the year 2000 as if we've been rebuilding since that time. Which obviously isn't true. Our draft record between 2000-2010 SHOULD be by far the worst in the league. Easily. The fact that it actually isn't is impressive. But from 2010 on we've been holding on to our draft picks and prospects to a higher extent. Rebuilding on the fly may be possible when you're drafting around 15-20 and make those picks count (I think we've been good at that so far with Larkin/Mantha+Bert/Svechnikov/Cholowski). But I think we're still suffering the effects of being a contender for a long time. In 2008, John Carlson was drafted 27th. Erik Karlsson 15th. We won the cup and drafted 30th. I wouldn't trade that cup for a better draft pick, but maybe some on this board would?

Getting into the top 10 is the best chance to get elite players. But you at least have a more realistic chance in the 10-20 range than you do when you're drafting 25-30 or not at all in the 1st round. I trust our scouting enough that I believe when given a good drafting position they will do something with it. Like I said, so far early results are promising. But the outcome of Cholowski vs. Chychrun/Fabbro will mean a lot when we review this time period in the future.

 

[GrandmaSlices51631]

How's Frans look?

He is missed dearly in NY.

 

[SpookyTsuki]

How's Frans look?

He is missed dearly in NY.

Like himself second line center

 

[Frk It]

By my count we took 23 d-men over that time. And 16 in the 7 drafts since 2010. It's not that few imo, but it would be interesting to see those numbers compared to other teams. There are more than twice as many forwards on an NHL team as there are d-men, and you need to draft goalies too. Defensemen are about 30% of an 23-man NHL roster. From a mathematical standpoint you should be using just over 2 out of 7 draft picks on d-men, which is what we've been doing pretty much.

I wish there was a place that listed the # of picks by position for each team. It's way too much work to tally them up for each team over 10-11 years. I mean apparently I couldn't even do it right for just 1 team.

The % of picks we spent on defenseman is comparable to how much of a team is comprised of defenseman, but only 4 of those 23 being in the first 2 rounds seems to be the real problem.

Getting into the top 10 is the best chance to get elite players. But you at least have a more realistic chance in the 10-20 range than you do when you're drafting 25-30 or not at all in the 1st round. I trust our scouting enough that I believe when given a good drafting position they will do something with it. Like I said, so far early results are promising. But the outcome of Cholowski vs. Chychrun/Fabbro will mean a lot when we review this time period in the future.

Yeah it will, which kind of scares me. Obviously was big on Chychrun. On the positive side, I like that we have both Cholowski and Hronek. I am feeling the Hronek pick so far. Cholowski has put up good numbers, despite playing on the 3rd pairing so far (based on SCSU hockey twitter). Going to be awhile before we know what they are though. They both need to put on a whole bunch of weight.

 

[njx9]

I mean...

He played AA on the second line that first game back. He played Sproul. AA looked a little lost in the top6 and we lost a couple while Sproul was in.

It seems like Blash just feels that pressure and never lets the team gel or anything. A couple losses and the easiest thing to do is blame the rookies and guys that take risks (even if they also create a lot of chances). So revert back to safe crap and safer players. Problem is we aren't good enough defensively for that so....

You know what Babs said when someone asked him about his WCOH victory? "Look at my team. It's easy to win with this much talent." Or something to that effect. He's not wrong. Even Scotty Bowman couldn't coach this team to the Cup. Look at the teams Bowman did have. They're stocked with top talent. Coaches can make a difference, sure, but ultimately you NEED a good roster to win.

I think your first point is right on, and sort of gets at what I was trying to say: AA plays up on that line like, once, and then gets 'banished' to the lower lines and less minutes. Yeah, he might not have been incredible or instantly belonged, but I feel like yanking him off the line immediately makes it really hard for a guy to get any kind of rhythm going.

And I agree with your final point - I don't think it's on Blash that this team isn't going to win the Cup. Coaching can enhance talent, but it can't replace it.

I just can't see eye-to-eye with that kind of perspective. Ouellet is still looking like a decent 2nd round pick. We're not talking about a top 15 draft pick that is put on waivers like McIlrath. Our scouts haven't been bad because they haven't pulled off the impossible (yet again) and found elite players late in the draft. Smith is an NHLer, Kindl at least for a time looked decent, Sproul and Ouellet will likely carve out NHL careers, Marchenko is easily a #5-6.. our scouts correctly identified guys with NHL potential. When an elite d-man is picked outside of the 1st round, it means 30 teams out of 30 have wrongly assessed that guy's potential or likelihood of reaching that potential. It happens. And for every Subban or Gostisbehere that reach their potential, there's two dozen guys that were viewed at a similar level at the draft who turned into nothing.
Even AFTER we had drafted guys like Kindl, Smith, Ouellet and Sproul they looked like fantastic picks. Do you remember? To call them bad draft picks is nothing but hindsight.

I'm not asking them to find elite players late in the draft; I'm criticizing them for missing badly on Kindl and Smith (among others). We had opportunities to draft defensemen who would've measurably improved the team, and we have consistently missed on them for 16 years. Nearly every other team in the league has come away with a far better defender than Smith or Kindl, and it's silly to chalk that up to coincidence. If your sole bar for first round picks is 'NHL potential', I'm not sure if we're going to agree on much.

That said, I take issue with the hindsight comment - of course this is hindsight. We're looking, directly, at the results of our scouting, drafting and development over the last decade and a half. As such, we're specifically judging it's efficacy. Saying "there was no way to know!" is a really, really weak justification for why we've failed to draft a single decent defenseman, in spite of investing some premium picks in the position and in spite of numerous guys who turned out to be studs being available. Marchenko being a decent 5/6 is ridiculous - those guys are available, cheap, every single year in FA. If he represents the fruits of our defensive drafting and development, we should just stop bothering entirely because there's no actual benefit to the team.

Now, if you want to argue that our development plan is why Kindl and Smith ultimately failed to fulfill whatever promise we thought they had, that's one thing. But to say we did everything right because they looked like decent players at the time ignores everything about what scouting is.

 

[The Zermanator]

From Gary Lawless on TSN: A look at potential hot-seat situations across the NHL

http://www.tsn.ca/talent/a-look-at-potential-hot-seat-situations-across-the-nhl-1.600270

Ken Holland: The Detroit GM needs to fix the Wings defence, which has been awful and is dragging down the club. They don’t have the personnel. They don’t have a top pairing. Danny DeKeyser is being pushed well beyond his limits in the No. 1 slot and everyone below him is at least one station above his abilities. DeKeyser is a No. 3 at best but he’s playing top-pairing minutes. The Wings can’t get the puck out of their own zone efficiently and they turn it over way too often. Holland needs to find a fix. Stat.

It's good to see his name coming up like this more and more. It should be. Professional sports should always be 'What have you done for me lately?' It's just the nature of the game, no resting on laurels. Sink or swim time. You produce until you can't, then retire.

 

[BinCookin]

From Gary Lawless on TSN: A look at potential hot-seat situations across the NHL

http://www.tsn.ca/talent/a-look-at-potential-hot-seat-situations-across-the-nhl-1.600270



It's good to see his name coming up like this more and more. It should be. Professional sports should always be 'What have you done for me lately?' It's just the nature of the game, no resting on laurels. Sink or swim time. You produce until you can't, then retire.

It's a short blurb, but i liked it.

Basically saying "Holland has to add a D man, the current D are too weak". Yup, that is exactly right.

I don't know who we should add, or how much it should cost us.


Also realize that if we add a D man. Sproul//Ouellet will be waived eventually.

 

[SpookyTsuki]

From Gary Lawless on TSN: A look at potential hot-seat situations across the NHL

http://www.tsn.ca/talent/a-look-at-potential-hot-seat-situations-across-the-nhl-1.600270



It's good to see his name coming up like this more and more. It should be. Professional sports should always be 'What have you done for me lately?' It's just the nature of the game, no resting on laurels. Sink or swim time. You produce until you can't, then retire.

It's what it should be. Except he will never even be close to the hot seat unless he misses the playoffs and big

 

[WFIAA]

I do not disagree that more picks should have been spent on D. However, 10-15 extra dmen certainly increases the odds, but does it really change the situation if less than 1% of these draft picks pan out into top Dmen? As I pointed out, the numbers work out to 1 successful top pair(ish) dman has been picked every 136 draft selections.

I think, as njx9 points out the bigger problem is missing on the guys they did. Missing so badly with Smith and Kindl is killing this team now.




Interestingly, if you look at the team now, they did not put enough value into drafting Defense, but if you try to look at it objectively and remove hindsight, its less clear:

From 2005-2010 (maybe 2011) we arguably had the best defense in the league and they still spent 2 first round picks on D. In 2011 they grabbed a handful more dmen (plus others mixed in over that period). In hindsight, that wasn't enough, but would it have made sense to spend more picks on D at the time?


I guess no matter how we look at it, mid 2000s to early 2010s was a dismal period of drafting for this team, and we are suffering the consequences.

I'm curious where you are pulling your 1 in 136 chance of drafting a top pairing defenseman. Based on that percentage, over a 20 year timespan, you would only get 13 top pairing defenseman in the entire league (not withstanding players who don't play up to 20 years after being drafted). That's simply not correct.

 

[Retire91]

I'm curious where you are pulling your 1 in 136 chance of drafting a top pairing defenseman. Based on that percentage, over a 20 year timespan, you would only get 13 top pairing defenseman in the entire league (not withstanding players who don't play up to 20 years after being drafted). That's simply not correct.

Its still a pretty low number with some fine tuning. And considering in the face of those odds the wings drafted the fewest defenseman by far than any other team helps to show how incompetent Holland's management team has been.

A: that we don't have any top tier defenseman
B: that drafting all those extra forwards we don't have enough forwards with significant enough trade value to get said defenseman without gutting the future.

 

[Frk It]

5th in the division. 9th in the conference. Trouba's not coming here. Fowler's not coming here.

We are straight up in no man's land, and not sure what's gonna change that.

 

[8snake]

Harsh reality when others around the league are starting to say what some of us have been saying. That comment about DD drives it home...Holland decided to pay a 3rd pairing D-man stupid money because we are so bereft of talent on the back-end that DD has been playing 1st and 2nd pair minutes.

 

[left hand path]

the ESPN jinx

 

[Retire91]

Holland continues to lock in mediocrity far into the future. This team is going to be bad to mediocre for a long time.

 

[Lazlo Hollyfeld]

Wings are miraculously above .500 at the moment, but are 22nd in Goals For, 18th in Goals Against, 26th on the PK.

 

[Bench]

Wings are miraculously above .500 at the moment, but are 22nd in Goals For, 18th in Goals Against, 26th on the PK.

Only 6 ROW out of 16 games. Not the prettiest look. But standing at exactly 15th in point percentage.

Seems pretty consistent with a middle of the road team.

 

[Reddwit]

Harsh reality when others around the league are starting to say what some of us have been saying. That comment about DD drives it home...Holland decided to pay a 3rd pairing D-man stupid money because we are so bereft of talent on the back-end that DD has been playing 1st and 2nd pair minutes.

Oh, come on. Dekeyser is not a third-pairing defenseman. He's the better half of a 2nd pairing on most teams and likely the defensive half of a top pairing that features an elite offensive defenseman.

Unfortunately, he's signed to be a 1/2 guy on a team that arguably only features 2 top 4 defenseman these days. That's going to be ugly. Playing about your station is one thing but playing above your station when everyone else is as well isn't going to look good on anybody.

 

[Frk It]

Oh, come on. Dekeyser is not a third-pairing defenseman. He's the better half of a 2nd pairing on most teams and likely the defensive half of a top pairing that features an elite offensive defenseman.

Unfortunately, he's signed to be a 1/2 guy on a team that arguably only features 2 top 4 defenseman these days. That's going to be ugly. Playing about your station is one thing but playing above your station when everyone else is as well isn't going to look good on anybody.

He's playing with a very good offensive defenseman this season (Green on pace for 50 pts) and not faring very well.

Middle pairing + 1st PK is the sweet spot for Danny.

 

[Number1RedWingsFan52]

This team needs a major over haul, But ownership wont allow it due to going into the new arena next fall.

 

[Retire91]

This team needed a major overhaul 5 years ago. Grooming justin abdelkader to be the team's future franchise top winger should have been a sign.