If you HAD to keep one, who?

Heaton

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So out of curiosity for those who think Holland is doing a good job lately. Holland himself said that tear down rebuilds take 10 years, that must mean Holland's plan to get this team rebuilt should be much quicker than 10 years. How many years away are we?
 

TheMule93

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May 26, 2015
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So out of curiosity for those who think Holland is doing a good job lately. Holland himself said that tear down rebuilds take 10 years, that must mean Holland's plan to get this team rebuilt should be much quicker than 10 years. How many years away are we?

Also, when did we start? I feel like Holland has been mentioning "rebuild/retool on the fly" for at least half a decade at this point
 

Frk It

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Jul 27, 2010
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When it regresses your young players, yes. Yes it is.

Larkin looks like he is developing just fine to me. Bertuzzi looks like he is developing just fine to me.

Maybe some of that "regression" is because the players just aren't that good, or it's natural regression. Is it Blashill's fault that Nyquist went from shooting 14-18% to 7-9%?
 

Winger98

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Feb 27, 2002
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So out of curiosity for those who think Holland is doing a good job lately. Holland himself said that tear down rebuilds take 10 years, that must mean Holland's plan to get this team rebuilt should be much quicker than 10 years. How many years away are we?

I vote to keep Holland, though I don't think he's necessarily been doing a good job - I just think Blashill is far worse. I give Holland about three more seasons to see everything come together, and five more to be a consistent contender to make noise in the playoffs (Not necessarily Hawks level Cup contender, but not the one series and done thing we were doing for so long). Now if we get to this point three years from now and the prospect pipeline is still mediocre, we don't have anyone coming up for the blueline that looks more than a second pairing guy, etc., I'd be fine seeing him fired and replaced with whoever.

I consider the rebuild starting in earnest when we missed the playoffs, and then it takes a few years to just suck long enough to make a series of high picks, and it then takes a few years for those guys to really click. If he gets fired for building such a poor club in the first place I'd totally understand it, but if we're letting him take a shot at an actual rebuild, I don't think he can be fully judged on that yet.
 

Frk It

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Now if we get to this point three years from now and the prospect pipeline is still mediocre, we don't have anyone coming up for the blueline that looks more than a second pairing guy, etc., I'd be fine seeing him fired and replaced with whoever.

That's setting the bar awfully low, don't you think?
 

Pavels Dog

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So out of curiosity for those who think Holland is doing a good job lately. Holland himself said that tear down rebuilds take 10 years, that must mean Holland's plan to get this team rebuilt should be much quicker than 10 years. How many years away are we?
1-10 years.

Imo with a true "tear down" you're locking yourself in for a looong rebuild. What we're doing isn't far from a legit tank (worst record post TDL), but we're keeping enough actual NHL talent on the roster for it to be realistic that we could make the playoffs within 1-2 years if things bounce the right way.

But the difference between Dahlin and some 4-10 ranked D-man could be huge. There's a big difference between Rasmussen turning into a solid bottom-6er or a quality top-6er. Do any of Cholowski, Hronek and Saarijarvi become more than 2nd pairing players? Does Filip Larsson or Petruzzeli give us goaltending? Are we seeing Larkin's ceiling or can he keep improving? Is Mantha a 20+20 player or does he have 30 or 40 goal seasons in him?

The variables are countless. Right now we're in a good spot. We are min-max'ing pretty nicely the quality of the roster, the amount of draft picks we have and the lottery position we end up with. Beyond that, any rebuild has a huge element of luck.
 

Winger98

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That's setting the bar awfully low, don't you think?

I think it's realistic. I don't see a lot of middle ground with the draft/prospects if we're drafting in the top third. If Holland manages to just tread water with that type of draft positioning over the next few years, he's screwed up, imo.
 

Flowah

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Nov 30, 2009
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That's setting the bar awfully low, don't you think?
It means within 3 years we should see prospects projecting to be top pairing d-men.

Sounds good to me.

Defense is where the Wings have been complete garbage and if we shore that up I think we're at least a playoff team. Maybe more if Larkin and Mantha take a couple big strides.
 

Frk It

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I think it's realistic. I don't see a lot of middle ground with the draft/prospects if we're drafting in the top third. If Holland manages to just tread water with that type of draft positioning over the next few years, he's screwed up, imo.

Yeah, I guess the question is just how long do you want to tread water for? I think we have been treading water long enough already.
 

Flowah

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Yeah, I guess the question is just how long do you want to tread water for? I think we have been treading water long enough already.
I think if you wanna go by that metric, Holland should be out already.

We haven't been truly competitive since at least 2012. That's 5+ years. And there's not much in sight that says we're going to be competitive any time soon.

That's at least 5 years of mediocrity with no light at the end of the tunnel.
 
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SirKillalot

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Sure, I will give you that Holland has built a Stanley Cup roster. What Holland has not done, however, is build a Stanley Cup champion roster from the position this team is at today: lacking anything mildly resembling a true number one defensemen (hell, even a legit top-pair defensemen), either on the big club's roster or in the prospect pipeline. We are not asking Holland to do something he has done already (which appears to be the reasoning behind your pick of Holland). We are asking him to do something substantially more difficult.

I see your point but don't quite agree. That 2008 team was vastly different from that 2002 team. That being said, he had a several pieces in place. Number One D-man (Generational Lidstrom), two very good goalies (One all of fame in Hasek and Franchise "legend" Osgood), and 2-3 superb role players (Draper, Maltby, Holmstrom and more in reality). In addition the development of two number one center-men (Datsyuk, Zetterberg). Trading for the 2nd defenseman (Rafalski, or did Detroit sign him?), 3rd defenseman (Some say 2nd, Schneider) and 4th defenseman (Stuart). The development of another 2nd/3rd defenseman (Kronwall) and role player (Franzen). Holland is very able to build a team. However, the drafting haven't been done at a top level during the last 6-7 years. Surprisingly enough, most trouble on the d-men side even though drafting several d-men prospect who on paper were better prospects and won awards in juniors/college, that potential forwards.

Blashill is a good coach with a very incomplete roster in terms of talent level. He's won at every level before, just as Babcock. For that reason, I think of the two I would keep Blashill. Holland has become very conservative and it seems hard for him to shake things up a bit.

Larkin needs to develop into that number one center. Mantha that number one winger. That's the biggest problem the last years. The development of players haven't been on the same level as before. I mean, sure the franchise develop NHL-players. But, very few impact players. Mostly roster/role players. A bit like Nashville have done for years, though they figured out the d-men.
 
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odin1981

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Also, when did we start? I feel like Holland has been mentioning "rebuild/retool on the fly" for at least half a decade at this point

I would say the rebuild started this year. We finally started to sell off assets that wouldn't help us to get more picks for really the first time. Last year the team had a lot of injuries and what I got off of interviews from team management was more seeing it as a fluke that we missed the playoffs.

If over the next 3 years the organization can rebuild the defensive pipeline which will take on average 3-5 years for those picks/players to get enough exp we as fans will more than likely be looking at a 6-8 year rebuild. Hopefully we can time our center prospect picks right (as well as maybe 1 elite winger) in years 4 and 5 to then hit on them similar to how Toronto hit on Matthews once the d is established with 1-2 years of playing in the NHL and learning as well as improving.
 

Winger98

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Yeah, I guess the question is just how long do you want to tread water for? I think we have been treading water long enough already.

If it was my choice, the past few years would have been different. At least one of Helm/Gator would have been moved instead of re-signed. I wouldn't have signed Daley. Etc. But it is what it is. At this point, with the contracts the Wings have in place, I don't expect a lot of wheeling and dealing to be possible until those deals are winnowed down to their final years. And since we missed the playoffs, I have to believe the focus has finally shifted farther towards rebuilding than just remaining a playoff team. So, I'm willing to give Holland some rope right now to see how he handles it. If he fails, we can bring in a new guy at just the time a lot of those lousy deals are either off the books or coming off, effectively giving him a relatively clean slate (outside of Holland giving Dan Hamhuis a five year deal this summer).
 

Flowah

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Blashill is a good coach with a very incomplete roster in terms of talent level. He's won at every level before, just as Babcock. For that reason, I think of the two I would keep Blashill. Holland has become very conservative and it seems hard for him to shake things up a bit.
I think a lot of people don't get that:
  1. Babcock barely made the playoffs with the Wings his last couple years.
  2. He missed his first year with Toronto as well. Bad roster = bad results, even with a great coach that many think should have won at least 1 Jack Adams so far.
I'm not sure what people expect out of Blash. The roster's gotten worse, not better, since Babs left.

I am in no way saying Blash is even a good coach. I just think it's near impossible to assess how good a coach he is with this roster. Is there a coach on the planet that could make these team better? How much better? 4? 5? 10 more points in the standings? Certainly not a playoff team. I hate his IT decisions and his stubbornness in attaching Nyquist/Z at the hip, but ultimately, Babs did stuff like that too and I'm not sure it necessarily makes either of them a bad coach.
 
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Pavels Dog

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I think a lot of people don't get that:
  1. Babcock barely made the playoffs with the Wings his last couple years
100+points and being in playoff position 100% of the season = barely make the playoffs?

Year before that he made it with tons and tons of key injuries, running guys like Andersson and Sheahan as #1C.

Also he made Toronto a top possession team immediately, they just had zero goaltending and far, far worse skaters than we had.
 

lilidk

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Bring Marco Sturm, let him make decision about some players , particular Mantha and DD, team will be much better next year . Holland made a lot of mistake , but he did some good trades too. His biggest problem is drafting , looks like we don't have good scouts . For last 5 years the only Larkin is great draft , but i have filing that he learned his lesson and we will have better drafts this year
 

Sparty

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You only get rid of Blashill if there's someone out there worth replacing him with. Barry Trotz is probably gone if they don't get out of the second round, but I don't know of any other current coaches who might get fired. Is that someone worth targeting or not? Probably better to wait until you're a contender.

There were so many coaching changes last year that I don't think anyone is going to make moves after just one year (Mtl, Bos, NYI, StL, Ari, FL, Van, Ana, Dal, LA). Not only that, but it probably costs a lot more to hire a new coach now because of the Babcock deal.

Don't make a change just to make a change, especially with this roster.
 

Henkka

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I think Jeff Blashill is not our biggest problem. Either is Ken Holland. Either is Tyler Wright.

Our biggest problem is lack of PRIME TALENT. And that was caused by the bad drafting between 2005 to 2011. Players from those drafts, these currently 25 to 31 old NHLrs should be our current IN-PRIME players, guys who would be carrying this team, if we would be any good. But we aren't.

Drafting Kindl at 2005 , drafting Emmerton/Matthias at 2006 2nds, drafting Smith at 2007 1st, drafting McCollum at 2008 1st (my GOD!) , drafting Ferraro as 2009 top pick, drafting Sheahan at 2010, drafting Jurco/Ouellet/Sproul as triple 2011 2nds, that is our current problem. Full list of mediocre picks as our top picks. You can have a failure top pick once in a while, here and there, but not all the time, every year. That kills the success.

People who are looking for the latest 5 years of drafting, are looking just totally wrong place. Major of those players have not developed yet. We'll see them pretty soon, but just looking on the last 5 years, tells nothing. Add extra 2 years, and our bad scouts will start looking suddenly good. Because we are just entering on an era, where Tyler Wright's work as a scouting is coming out.
 
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Redder Winger

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I think Jeff Blashill is not our biggest problem. Either is Ken Holland. Either is Tyler Wright.

Our biggest problem is lack of PRIME TALENT. And that was caused by the bad drafting between 2005 to 2011. Players from those drafts, these currently 25 to 31 old NHLrs should be our current IN-PRIME players, guys who would be carrying this team, if we would be any good. But we aren't.

Drafting Kindl at 2005 , drafting Emmerton/Matthias at 2006 2nds, drafting Smith at 2007 1st, drafting McCollum at 2008 1st (my GOD!) , drafting Ferraro as 2009 top pick, drafting Sheahan at 2010, drafting Jurco/Ouellet/Sproul as triple 2011 2nds, that is our current problem. Full list of mediocre picks as our top picks. You can have a failure top pick once in a while, here and there, but not all the time, every year. That kills the success.

People who are looking for the latest 5 years of drafting, are looking just totally wrong place. Major of those players have not developed yet. We'll see them pretty soon, but just looking on the last 5 years, tells nothing. Add extra 2 years, and our bad scouts will start looking suddenly good. Because we are just entering on an era, where Tyler Wright's work as a scouting is coming out.

If you look at who we drafted and where we drafted them, outside of McCollum, it was par for the course.

Even Kindls and Smiths and Ferraro... that's what you get when you draft at 19 and 27 and 32.

Look at all our "early picks."
Look at the 5 guys drafted before and after.
We could have done better. But we could have done worse, too.

We did pretty well with our depth picks. Tatar. Nyquist. Athanasiou. Mrazek. Howard. Helm. Abdelkader.
The problem is we traded away a lot of picks, reducing our ability to get lucky and hit a homerun with a late first.
 

lilidk

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Mar 4, 2008
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I think Jeff Blashill is not our biggest problem. Either is Ken Holland. Either is Tyler Wright.

Our biggest problem is lack of PRIME TALENT. And that was caused by the bad drafting between 2005 to 2011. Players from those drafts, these currently 25 to 31 old NHLrs should be our current IN-PRIME players, guys who would be carrying this team, if we would be any good. But we aren't.

Drafting Kindl at 2005 , drafting Emmerton/Matthias at 2006 2nds, drafting Smith at 2007 1st, drafting McCollum at 2008 1st (my GOD!) , drafting Ferraro as 2009 top pick, drafting Sheahan at 2010, drafting Jurco/Ouellet/Sproul as triple 2011 2nds, that is our current problem. Full list of mediocre picks as our top picks. You can have a failure top pick once in a while, here and there, but not all the time, every year. That kills the success.

People who are looking for the latest 5 years of drafting, are looking just totally wrong place. Major of those players have not developed yet. We'll see them pretty soon, but just looking on the last 5 years, tells nothing. Add extra 2 years, and our bad scouts will start looking suddenly good. Because we are just entering on an era, where Tyler Wright's work as a scouting is coming out.
we didn't have high drafts those years and rented players , wasting pics and now Holland doing just opposite
 

Run the Jewels

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That sounds good in theory, but a bad coach is not what you want if you plan on developing young players. We can get all the high draft picks we want, but if our coach is doing a bad job, the picks mean nothing.
There's no clear philosophy when drafting and then guys like Helm & Abby are kept far too long well after the value has dropped significantly.

Holland purposely went out and signed Neilsen and Daley to get back into the playoffs. We're well past the cap when you factor in LTIR. The clear intention was to compete for a playoff spot.

We are quite possibly the worst team in the league. I mean, we're really in the conversation. Holland had been a total failure these last 5 or so years. I'm no Blashill fan, I'm simply laying the failure at Holland's feet. He's the boss. He's the guy who said he'd never rebuild and then created an expensive roster that is without question one of the worst teams in the league.

Bring in a GM who is up to the task and then see what Blashill can do. Like I said before I'm not a Blashill fan, I'm simply willing to get new leadership and see how that plays out.

Plus if you get elite talent that will be much more enjoyable to watch than current mix of past their prime vets and young players who were largely reaches when drafted because our current GM thinks he's smarter than everyone else.
 

Henkka

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I'm simply laying the failure at Holland's feet. He's the boss. He's the guy who said he'd never rebuild and then created an expensive roster that is without question one of the worst teams in the league.

Holland also has a boss, who could give some direction for the team building.
 

Run the Jewels

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Holland also has a boss, who could give some direction for the team building.
Nah, the organization had given Holland free reign to do his thing. I think that approach would be appealing to a quality GM candidate who would replace Holland. I don't want a guy in his mid 60s who's gone on record saying he doesn't want to do a rebuild lead a rebuild.
 

Flowah

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Nov 30, 2009
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100+points and being in playoff position 100% of the season = barely make the playoffs?

Year before that he made it with tons and tons of key injuries, running guys like Andersson and Sheahan as #1C.

Also he made Toronto a top possession team immediately, they just had zero goaltending and far, far worse skaters than we had.
13-14 season, last wildcard spot.
14-15 season, we were 3rd in the division, but you need more context. We were closer to missing than the #2 spot in the division. We lucked out that the Atlantic was complete garbage that year, 2 points from having to go to tiebreakers for last WC spot. You can spin it as 100% of the season we were in the playoffs. It was still mighty close. Literally 1 less regulation win and we're out. I don't know about you but that's not solidly making the playoffs to me...

You can talk about injuries. And then you can talk about still have Datsyuk on the team versus Blashill not having him.

A top possession team.... who still solidly missed the playoffs. Far worse skaters? You dream. Bozak, Kadri, Reilly, Phaneuf, PAP, JVR, Nylander. They had decent players. Some of whom are still around and doing great this season. It's not like our team was full of superstars in their prime. Probably because they got a guy like Matthews.
 

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