OT: Holland's worst blunder
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GettingYourMoms
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ShelbyZ
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I think the "multiple vets" option should just be the 2012 offseason in general...
-Right off the bat, the Wings already knew they were losing Stuart and Lidstrom. Obviously Lidstrom can't be replaced, but all Holland had done to prepare was overpay to bring back Quincey, declare that Brendan Smith was probably ready for the NHL, try to get into the Justin Schultz sweepstakes and then pencil Ryan Suter into the 2012-13 line-up.
-Hudler was coming off a 25 goal and 50 point season, but Holland didn't think he deserved much of a raise over his $3M salary and let him walk as a UFA. Though, I've often wondered if the Wings FO was pehaps bitter with Hudler about the KHL thing 3 years earlier, then coming back and being completely useless for most of 10-11. But Holland would basically contradict that valuation with his UFA signings (see Samuelsson 2.0 and Tootoo).
-Within like an hour of free agency opening and well before "the decision" from Suter, Holland had already blown over $6M on singings that proved to make almost no impact whatsoever:
Samuelsson 2.0: No wonder Holland didn't want to spend more than $3M for a 28YO Huder... he could bring back a 35YO Samuelsson coming off an injury filled season for that same money. Samuelsson ended up being useless and was a gift that kept on giving when his injury with the Wings prevented them from using a compliance buyout on him after that first year.
Tootoo: While I liked Tootoo, the singing was absolutely brutal. The contract given to him was essentially a reward for having a career year with Nashville after they gave him some consistent time on the 3rd line. But with the Wings, from the get go he was used as 4th line plug that didn't do anything on special teams. He provided some energy, big hits and some middleweight tilts to get the players riled up, but he wasn't (and never had been) the type of guy that "keeps the flies off" as he'd been advertised at the time of the signing. His usage could've been handled by a $600k journeyman UFA on a one year deal, or they could have just kept Abdelkader in that type of role and given Datsyuk a better option at wing, like gee I don't know? Maybe that Nyquist guy that Babcock kept saying he wanted on the NHL team going back like 2 years...
Gustavsson: Holland reneged on his announcement that Joey MacDonald would be the back up for 12-13 and decided to spend double on Gustavsson, despite Gustavsson having previous injury and even health issues, and not doing anything special in Toronto. Holland hilariously pitched Gustavsson as competition to push Howard for the starting job in a contract year. A plan which backfired spectacularly. First off, they didn't even need him in that first year. MacDonald recovered from his back surgery shortly after the season started and went on to have a decent season for a Flames team that had decided to transition away from Iginla and Kiprusoff and rebuild. Meanwhile, Gustavsson gets hurt after the first game, misses a month and then is complete garbage when he returns, forcing the team to ride Howard to a career year and a nice fat contract that Red Wings fans still lament to this day. The next year, Gustavsson has some decent runs filling in for a struggling and sometimes injured Howard, but still can't stay healthy himself. Despite this, and the availability of cheaper and much more durable options on the UFA market, Gustavsson gets a raise and returns for a 3rd even more injury riddled season. His absence hot shots Mrazek to a regular role in the NHL that precipitates his raise to starter money and eventual unceremonious expulsion from the organization. As a gift that kept on giving, Gustavsson leaves and signs with the Bruins in 15-16, where in their final regular season game, he gets blown out by a Senators team that had nothing to play for. Earlier in the day, the Wings had lost their own final game, which meant the Bruins needed only one point to take the last WC spot in the east, which would've pushed the Wings out of the playoffs and ended the playoff streak that seemed to fuel moves like pie in the sky dreams of signing Stamkos or overpaying to keep Helm and bring in Nielsen to help replace Datsyuk... Thanks Jonas.
Brunner: Hard to fault Holland with anything on this one, but it was going to be a double edged sword no matter what consider you'd only get to see him play half a season before having to deal with giving him a raise.
-Waiting for Suter's decision meant the Wings missed out on most other worthwhile options on D and eventually had to settle on a perpetually injury Carlo Colaiacovo, who had never even played a full NHL season.
-The team also had Filppula coming off a career year with a year left on his contract. They wouldn't have had the cap room to keep him if he had another decent year, but we'd be constantly reminded over the season that he probably didn't want to stay anyway. In a market where the Hawks had regularly been selling one year rental forwards for things like 1st round picks and other decent assets, the Wings could've sold high on Filppula and gotten some help on D or at least garnered some assets that could help them re-tool or acquire D without having to rely on the UFA market. Instead, Filppula sticks around, has a crappy season and just walks as a UFA. But of course, they were a playoff team, so why sell? and obviously they got a fine replacement in Stephen Weiss anyway. Oh wait.
-Right off the bat, the Wings already knew they were losing Stuart and Lidstrom. Obviously Lidstrom can't be replaced, but all Holland had done to prepare was overpay to bring back Quincey, declare that Brendan Smith was probably ready for the NHL, try to get into the Justin Schultz sweepstakes and then pencil Ryan Suter into the 2012-13 line-up.
-Hudler was coming off a 25 goal and 50 point season, but Holland didn't think he deserved much of a raise over his $3M salary and let him walk as a UFA. Though, I've often wondered if the Wings FO was pehaps bitter with Hudler about the KHL thing 3 years earlier, then coming back and being completely useless for most of 10-11. But Holland would basically contradict that valuation with his UFA signings (see Samuelsson 2.0 and Tootoo).
-Within like an hour of free agency opening and well before "the decision" from Suter, Holland had already blown over $6M on singings that proved to make almost no impact whatsoever:
Samuelsson 2.0: No wonder Holland didn't want to spend more than $3M for a 28YO Huder... he could bring back a 35YO Samuelsson coming off an injury filled season for that same money. Samuelsson ended up being useless and was a gift that kept on giving when his injury with the Wings prevented them from using a compliance buyout on him after that first year.
Tootoo: While I liked Tootoo, the singing was absolutely brutal. The contract given to him was essentially a reward for having a career year with Nashville after they gave him some consistent time on the 3rd line. But with the Wings, from the get go he was used as 4th line plug that didn't do anything on special teams. He provided some energy, big hits and some middleweight tilts to get the players riled up, but he wasn't (and never had been) the type of guy that "keeps the flies off" as he'd been advertised at the time of the signing. His usage could've been handled by a $600k journeyman UFA on a one year deal, or they could have just kept Abdelkader in that type of role and given Datsyuk a better option at wing, like gee I don't know? Maybe that Nyquist guy that Babcock kept saying he wanted on the NHL team going back like 2 years...
Gustavsson: Holland reneged on his announcement that Joey MacDonald would be the back up for 12-13 and decided to spend double on Gustavsson, despite Gustavsson having previous injury and even health issues, and not doing anything special in Toronto. Holland hilariously pitched Gustavsson as competition to push Howard for the starting job in a contract year. A plan which backfired spectacularly. First off, they didn't even need him in that first year. MacDonald recovered from his back surgery shortly after the season started and went on to have a decent season for a Flames team that had decided to transition away from Iginla and Kiprusoff and rebuild. Meanwhile, Gustavsson gets hurt after the first game, misses a month and then is complete garbage when he returns, forcing the team to ride Howard to a career year and a nice fat contract that Red Wings fans still lament to this day. The next year, Gustavsson has some decent runs filling in for a struggling and sometimes injured Howard, but still can't stay healthy himself. Despite this, and the availability of cheaper and much more durable options on the UFA market, Gustavsson gets a raise and returns for a 3rd even more injury riddled season. His absence hot shots Mrazek to a regular role in the NHL that precipitates his raise to starter money and eventual unceremonious expulsion from the organization. As a gift that kept on giving, Gustavsson leaves and signs with the Bruins in 15-16, where in their final regular season game, he gets blown out by a Senators team that had nothing to play for. Earlier in the day, the Wings had lost their own final game, which meant the Bruins needed only one point to take the last WC spot in the east, which would've pushed the Wings out of the playoffs and ended the playoff streak that seemed to fuel moves like pie in the sky dreams of signing Stamkos or overpaying to keep Helm and bring in Nielsen to help replace Datsyuk... Thanks Jonas.
Brunner: Hard to fault Holland with anything on this one, but it was going to be a double edged sword no matter what consider you'd only get to see him play half a season before having to deal with giving him a raise.
-Waiting for Suter's decision meant the Wings missed out on most other worthwhile options on D and eventually had to settle on a perpetually injury Carlo Colaiacovo, who had never even played a full NHL season.
-The team also had Filppula coming off a career year with a year left on his contract. They wouldn't have had the cap room to keep him if he had another decent year, but we'd be constantly reminded over the season that he probably didn't want to stay anyway. In a market where the Hawks had regularly been selling one year rental forwards for things like 1st round picks and other decent assets, the Wings could've sold high on Filppula and gotten some help on D or at least garnered some assets that could help them re-tool or acquire D without having to rely on the UFA market. Instead, Filppula sticks around, has a crappy season and just walks as a UFA. But of course, they were a playoff team, so why sell? and obviously they got a fine replacement in Stephen Weiss anyway. Oh wait.
GMR
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kliq
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It was a relatively low cap hit, if we moved some spare parts we easily could have done it.
Gniwder
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MBH
Players Play
What "Blunders" has Yzerman made other than keeping Blashill?
he got Vrana and a first.
A first he used to get Cossa.
At the end of the day, Vrana may or may not be as good as Mantha - but he's close. And you got Cossa??
Mantha 316 games 99-103-202 (27 when the season starts)
Vrana 295 games 84-84-168 (25 when the season starts)
InjuredChoker
Registered User
ok, i'll bite.
yotes/jackets have acquired significant draft capital by trading away
OEL
connor garland
christian dvorak
darcy kuemper
adin hill
derek stepan
seth jones
nick foligno
david savard
do we have players like these guys to sell and acquire assets? not really. only somewhat comparable assets are larkin, vrana and bert. not sure it makes sense to trade these guys right now, except bert who i think should be traded in the near future.
and when did yotes/jackets acquire these players? between 09-18. and who was our GM during those years?.. so our lack of talent and thus ability to sell that talent and acquire significant draft capital is because we failed to acquire talent between 09-18 and/or we already sold that talent earlier (nyquist, smith, tatar etc.).
yotes also acquired draft capital by taking cap dumps. there i think it's fair to knock yzerman as i think we should've been doing that more than what we've done.
just for the record, do you think vrana + 1st + 2nd = AA 2.0? and if vrana + 1st + 2nd = AA 2.0, then what is mantha?
Dotter
THE ATHLETIC IS GARBAGE
Lil Sebastian Cossa
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I've tried. Honestly, I think everyone should just drop that guy on ignore. He simply isn't interested in actually discussing. It's just the same "Yzerman is bad too, guys! And Ken Holland did an awesome job even though the team continuously nosedived."
I think inevitably Yzerman will have to trade the next age group of players (Bert, Vrana, Hronek, Fabbri ect...) because thus far he has failed to acquire the necessary talent and he squandered significant capital on Cossa. Building around a goalie doesn't generally work out. It's a good way to end up with disproportionate cap wrapped up in your goalie on the way to being a middling team. Of course that's assuming the pick isn't a bust which is a likely scenario.
Look at teams that tanked to rebuild in recent years.
Colorado
Ottawa
Toronto
Buffalo
Jersey
LA
Anaheim
NYR
All acquired more high end talent quicker than we have.
Yzerman may eventually get it together. He probably will but we are a very long way from emerging out of the rebuild. Likely 7-10 years.
Now the lazy way to interpret this is that I am somehow bashing Yzerman. That's not accurate. I'm basing my opinion on objective observation as opposed to blind faith. The same is true about my opinion of Holland who I would argue is one of the best GMs ofnhis era. One of the best all time.
Lil Sebastian Cossa
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1. Yes... there is no link between spending 13.85m (4.5M on a garbage fourth liner, 3.85 on a garbage fourth liner, and 5.5 million on a garbage 3C) and not being able to add talent. It is a combo meal of paying far too much for mediocre to outright shitty hockey players and god awful drafting. People give Toronto shit for paying MITCH MARNER just under 11 million and he's 5 million times the player that a combination of Justin Abdelkader, Darren Helm, and Frans Nielsen would be.
2. Who on Earth is saying what Yzerman has done is perfect? And we are turning the corner. Turning the corner from continually shipping off and tearing down to maybe start adding pieces soon. Turning the corner doesn't mean "boom, we're contenders now". Turning the corner doesn't mean "hey, we have a perfect core and everything is super and nothing ever needs to change. It means that we actually have some hope because we have a bunch of talented young players on the cusp of making the league. We don't really have many, if any, contracts where the pay wildly outstrips the value on guys.
3. Um... on draft capital... The Red Wings have made 11 picks in the 1st or 2nd rounds since Yzerman has been here. Columbus? 4. Arizona? 5. Good call, buddy. And this is including trading away the 2nd for Nick Leddy and a 2nd in the trade for Cossa too. So, the number for Detroit COULD have been 13 in the past three drafts.
4. If Holland traded Mantha for Vrana, 1st, 2nd, and Richard Panik, he would have been getting daps too. You know how I know? Because Holland traded Tomas Tatar for a 1st, a 2nd, and a 3rd and people praised him for it. He traded Nyquist for two seconds and people were okay with it. People don't hate Holland when he does good things. He got credit for good moves. Most of this topic is just him getting credit for the very bad moves he made.
Lil Sebastian Cossa
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That doesn't mean he didn't want to re-sign in Detroit. That just means that the Blackhawks were a hell of an opportunity. Hawks in 09-10 were basically the Wings of a couple years prior. On cusp of absolute greatness. They were skyrocketing up and Detroit was slowly drifting down.
better Red than Dead
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Here’s another one not on the list, when they signed Krupp to his contract in 1999, they never insured it, meaning when he went down with his back injury the Wings had to pay it out of their pocket. That was on Holland. That is why they hired private investigators and sued him. I’ll never forget that, who does that??
GMR
Registered User
Hossa would have sold his mother to fur traders to win the Cup. Screw that guy. I'm glad Detroit didn't re-sign him.
Frk It
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Do you actually believe these completely arbitrary numbers you pull out of thin air?
Frk It
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InjuredChoker
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note how all of those teams started rebuilding before we did, had lottery luck or just pure luck (sharks falling off a cliff giving the senators a high pick). also, our current rebuild started during the 16-17 season; yzerman was hired 2019. he's had 2 years to work with and we can't basically evaluate how he's fared in high-end talent acquisition until we actually see them wearing winged wheel. so about year from now earliest. we can evaluate a bit how well we acquired talent during our rebuild pre-yzerman (17-19). early returns during those year look like solid at best, meh at worst.
re: your earlier point that yzerman made some bad mistakes at tampa (notably signing callahan, which made no sense whatsoever even without hindsight), he clearly learned from those mistakes. he didn't signed washed up or soon-to-be washed up vets to large long-term deals after callahan. 2010 was his first season in tampa and he started it off by drafting brett connolly. but he probably hadn't seen connolly or other top prospects play since he wasn't in charge of amateur scouting with us before he took the job. and even if he had, drafting is mostly on chief scouting (actually mostly luck but anyway). what the GM can do is hire smart chief scout/scouting staff. yzerman recognized immediately that the scouting department in tampa was trash and made big changes. and since then tampas drafting has been among the best in the business. compare our drafting to tampas drafting since 2011. heck, remove all of tampas first rounders and they still come ahead of us.
That's interesting because Yzerman got rid of the scouting director that produced the Seider pick.
I agree that Murray did an amazing job in Tampa. The fact that he passed on following Yzerman here is part of my scepticism of the Yzerman regime.
I'm aware those teams started their rebuilds before us. I'm merely comparing the success of those endeavors.
So this is an interesting question because there's so many different lenses we can look at it:
- Worst individual move, in a vacuum: The Abby deal by a mile. It was an absolutely terrible signing from the moment the ink was dry, and became utterly indefensible when Abby (inevitably) declined.
- Worst individual move, with context: Either letting Hossa walk or the final Datsyuk contract. Letting Hossa walk because of how much better his career turned out to be than Mule's (especially because he would have been a huge help in our top 6), but that's using hindsight to judge that move. On the other hand, the whole Datsyuk situation was pretty much a poison pill that Holland willingly swallowed, and led us to missing out on Chychrun and using that money we freed up to sign Neilsen.
- Worst move in a big picture sense: Keeping Babcock around for as long as we did. Babcock is a terrible human and also a pretty mediocre coach for the modern game, and I think he held us back a ton both on the ice and off with making another push for the Cup while we still had Pav & Z, and more importantly, Lidstrom.
Lil Sebastian Cossa
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I'm aware that Johnny had a 5 mile headstart on me in the marathon. But I'm just comparing the success of where we stand. It doesn't matter if I've covered 10 miles and Johnny 6... he's still ahead of me and clearly, all that matters is an arbitrary valuation at some random time.
Frk It
Mo Seider Less Problems
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