Playoffs

[Syckle78]

^ that's funny because it's not us that go on expletive filled tirades, constantly ***** and moan about other posters or claim to be a better type of fan than others.

 

[jkutswings]

This is, has always been, and will always continue to be the argument.

The pro-tank people are perfectly willing, on the front end, for the team to suck for x years for the purpose of possibly getting back to an acceptable (to them) level of play at some future time. Their willingness to endure a tank that lasts longer than 3 years is debatable at best, and in the middle of said tank there are absolutely going to be defections, but whatever.

IMO, there's no actual evidence a tank does much beyond marginally improve the chance of a teams ceiling to be higher, and is rather more likely to just add x years of being really bad to a bunch of years of being in the middle of the pack.

In the teams opinion, they have wanted to:

-Make a bunch of money each year by being competitive in the real sense of the word, not the gerrymandered sense of the word used here wherein one must be a contender to be competitive. Check.

-Make around a half billion dollars from the city in free money by remaining good enough to have leverage to extract such from the typically stupid legislators who hand out such largesse while vital services circle their own drains. Check.

-Not take a galactically cynical pile of poo on everyone with half a functioning brain by quitting on anything remotely resembling a winning team .000001 seconds into the aforementioned new arena, doing tremendous damage to their brand. In progress.

It is entirely possible that the team will stink in spite of their best efforts to not stink. It is also entirely possible that the team will stink and their protestations of trying to not stink are abject lies told specifically to gull people, namely the likewise aforementioned stupid legislators who, after being so resoundingly exposed as stupid might try something retributive via legislation, to the teams harm.

For many people, being a fan of a team that is at least trying to win and be competitive in the real sense is enough. Maybe not for most fans here, who seem to believe in a notion perilously near 'Cup or bust', but those hyperexaggerated levels of expectation are not reflected either across the specific fandom of the Wings, or other pro teams in Detroit, or with pro teams generally, or even in ~95% of competitive teams, pro and otherwise.



Well, obviously.

Look, of course there are people who want to tank. Holland's language is a combination of typical PR speak along with some goofy rhetorical devices, and almost certainly at least a sprinkling of outright lies.

Where "you guys" and "those guys" will constantly fail to find intellectual common ground is that "you guys" are already disheartened and p'd off. To "you guys" there's no real downside to a tank because even if it fails you won't dislike what the team is doing any more than you already do. So, if the Wings fire Holland and hire some other schlomo under whom a tank is attempted and fails to accomplish your goal, an eventuality approaching something near 90+%, you'll just switch out Holland's name for Herr Schlomo and demand he be fired next. Nothing really changes. Your level of 'entertainment' remains constant, and effectively zero. I mean, we saw precisely this with the 'Fire Babcock' nonsense. Blashill arrives, and after a (very) short honeymoon? Fire Blashill. Lather, rinse, repeat.

On the other hand, for "those guys", the ones who actually derive either entertainment or profit from the team by being fans with less exalted expectations or those entrusted with actual financial goals, there are most assuredly downsides to a tank. A tanking team is typically wholly unpalatable to watch, and the impact to profit numbers can be immediate and substantial.

This issue gets chewed over endlessly because "you guys" are a strong majority here and demand "those guys" agree with you, and if they don't they are pro-Holland shills, contrarians, they don't want the team to win, are stinky doo doo heads of the lowest order, et cetera.

Enh. It's stuff to keep the boards going along during a time of limited topics, obviously, but it's largely just an instance of a large group of people talking past a small group of people.

While I understand the concept, you're still painting fans as if it's a black and white issue. One group is Cup or Bust; the other group is fine with whatever the Wings decide to do.

In reality, everybody has their own location on the spectrum of fan expectations and satisfaction level. As team success declines, each fan has their own tipping point. We've already seen a noticeable decline in TV ratings; it will be interesting to see what happens next season.

 

[Pavels Dog]

I see a lot of critics of Holland and the team's/organization's direction say they barely watch games anymore.

That is revealing imo. Of course things look pretty bleak if you only watch the boxscores. "Oh, Larkin didn't score at a PPG pace, guess he sucks". "Mantha isn't a 50 goal scorer, he sucks". "Howard had a bad win/loss ratio, goaltending didn't matter for this team". etc/etc.

If you're not watching, you're not seeing the development of the players, you're not seeing the context. If you miss the games where Athanasiou looks like a dynamic star player, a gamebreaker, it may seem like he's just a bottom 6 scorer for life. If you don't see all the games where Mantha isn't only the best or 2nd best (Z) player on the team, but one of the best on the ice, period, then you might keep living in the imaginary bubble where his potential is only Nyquist/Tatar level. If you didn't watch the team lose countless games straight up because of goaltending and powerplay then obviously the team's issues may seem insurmountable.

Like sure, the team sucked last season. And it's likely to be bad again this year. But there is hope, there are positives. Our 20-23 year olds are not done developing. League worst goaltending and powerplay are issues that CAN be improved.

 

[Heaton]

I see a lot of critics of Holland and the team's/organization's direction say they barely watch games anymore.

That is revealing imo. Of course things look pretty bleak if you only watch the boxscores. "Oh, Larkin didn't score at a PPG pace, guess he sucks". "Mantha isn't a 50 goal scorer, he sucks". "Howard had a bad win/loss ratio, goaltending didn't matter for this team". etc/etc.

Nah, you're being extremely hyperbolic, no one has said any of those things. And the people criticizing the team generally focus on Ericsson, Abdelkader, Helm, Nielsen etc... You don't need to watch every game to know these players since we've all seen them for years.

If you're not watching, you're not seeing the development of the players, you're not seeing the context. If you miss the games where Athanasiou looks like a dynamic star player, a gamebreaker, it may seem like he's just a bottom 6 scorer for life. If you don't see all the games where Mantha isn't only the best or 2nd best (Z) player on the team, but one of the best on the ice, period, then you might keep living in the imaginary bubble where his potential is only Nyquist/Tatar level. If you didn't watch the team lose countless games straight up because of goaltending and powerplay then obviously the team's issues may seem insurmountable.

Like sure, the team sucked last season. And it's likely to be bad again this year. But there is hope, there are positives. Our 20-23 year olds are not done developing. League worst goaltending and powerplay are issues that CAN be improved.

Yeah, no. The people you're trying to 'get' still posted in almost every single GDT. People are watching and paying attention, you don't need to watch every single game, every single season to be able to evaluate things. And really, I find it ironic that we're trying to discredit looking at highlights as a bad way to form an opinion when the majority of people defending or criticizing the Wings draft have relief on a few short YouTube clips and scouting reports. Can't have it both ways.

 

[The Zermanator]

I see a lot of critics of Holland and the team's/organization's direction say they barely watch games anymore.

That is revealing imo. Of course things look pretty bleak if you only watch the boxscores. "Oh, Larkin didn't score at a PPG pace, guess he sucks". "Mantha isn't a 50 goal scorer, he sucks". "Howard had a bad win/loss ratio, goaltending didn't matter for this team". etc/etc.

If you're not watching, you're not seeing the development of the players, you're not seeing the context. If you miss the games where Athanasiou looks like a dynamic star player, a gamebreaker, it may seem like he's just a bottom 6 scorer for life. If you don't see all the games where Mantha isn't only the best or 2nd best (Z) player on the team, but one of the best on the ice, period, then you might keep living in the imaginary bubble where his potential is only Nyquist/Tatar level. If you didn't watch the team lose countless games straight up because of goaltending and powerplay then obviously the team's issues may seem insurmountable.

Like sure, the team sucked last season. And it's likely to be bad again this year. But there is hope, there are positives. Our 20-23 year olds are not done developing. League worst goaltending and powerplay are issues that CAN be improved.

I hope you're not suggesting that a bottom 5 team (really bottom 3 if you look at more important metrics like ROW instead of shootout wins) somehow passes the 'eye test'?

AA? Cool, he's got some great attributes. He tops out as a rich man's Carl Hagelin if we're lucky, IMO. He has amazing speed and hands but if that was all you needed to be a dynamic star player he'd already be one. Obviously other parts of his game will have to develop for him to become that. But the skills he'll have to develop are not the ones that come naturally to him like skating and stickhandling, which makes it more of a challenge and far less certain.

Mantha? Awesome. Best player in our org after Zettergerg, IMO. But like with AA, star gets thrown around way too much. You have to actually do it first. Many of us believed Tats/Nyquist/Sproul and Co were going to be stars at one point. We overvalued our prospects for a long time. Part of that I think was the halo surrounding Holland and the org for many years. 'Oh Detroit drafted him? Must be a late round gem.' Now that the veneer is chipping away and it's becoming increasingly apparent (at least to most of us) that the emperor has no clothes, time to pump the brakes on the prospects a little bit. Look at the difference between Larkin's rookie and sophomore seasons.

But this is all beside the point, it's great that our 20-23 year olds are developing, but we've been down this road before with players who amounted to nothing. Either way, you haven't addressed two things. #1C, #1D. This team is going nowhere without them. And the way Holland's running things, we won't be getting either for a while.

Cups (or playoff series) are not won on the wing.

 

[HockeyinHD]

While I understand the concept, you're still painting fans as if it's a black and white issue. One group is Cup or Bust; the other group is fine with whatever the Wings decide to do.

I think the most accurate generalization is that one group is Cup or Bust and the other group is fine at this time with Holland trying to make the playoffs. If he misses the playoffs another time or two then the difference between tanking and missing the playoffs by a lot or trying and missing the playoffs by less narrows to a point where there's not much to choose between them.

In reality, everybody has their own location on the spectrum of fan expectations and satisfaction level.

Well, sort of. The problem is you either tank, or you don't. I don't believe there is really much of a spectrum in the pro-tank crowd because it's impossible to be for a tank without being really, really for it and over a multiple year timeframe. You can't want the team to tank now, but if they start out hot spend a bunch of assets at the TDL. To the degree there's nuance, it's mostly on the pro-trying side between folks wanting the team to be aggressive with short term adds vs. those wanting the team to largely tread water and 'rebuild on the fly' unless something amazing wanders past.

As team success declines, each fan has their own tipping point. We've already seen a noticeable decline in TV ratings; it will be interesting to see what happens next season.

It helps the Wings out quite a bit that the Lions will likely suck again, the Tigers are going to be bad and maybe even get worse for a few more years, and the Pistons are stuck in a suckitude that feels like it started the day Chuck Daly retired.

In that market for sports bucks, Detroit can have a pretty significant leg up if they even twitch in the direction of being decent.

And all of that said, by getting what they've already gotten the Wings have done a huge amount of work towards insulating themselves from any kind of devastating financial impact, even if they do suck. We'll never know the exact numbers, but I have to believe that the team will make a lot more profit per fan in a new building with a better lease and a larger concession share, so that percentage increase (whatever it is) offsets a similar percentage decrease in total butts in seats.

Even setting aside the tremendous increase to franchise value, the teams got to be able to weather ~20% decrease in attendance and not lose much in total gate receipts. I always hear that old deal at the Joe sucked for them. Really bad.

 

[HockeyinHD]

^ that's funny because it's not us that go on expletive filled tirades, constantly ***** and moan

2 words away...

about other posters or claim to be a better type of fan than others.

I think you're confusing 'better' with 'different', along with 'moan' with 'mention'.

IMO it's not pejorative at all to say someone is a fan of winning hockey rather than (or even just more than) hockey in general. That's an obvious conclusion, because teams who do well have more fans than ones who don't. People have limited time and attention, so a lot of things that 'break the tie' for those limited fan resources are front-facing things like success, price, convenience, etc.

Heck, the kind of "real" fan that watches every game and buries themselves to the neck in team stuff without any regard at all to the trajectory of the team itself is, what, maybe .1% of fans overall? All of us have our attention affected by superficial stuff like that.

Mentioning how and why that kind of obvious stuff exists isn't moaning about it any more than pointing out there are clouds in the sky expresses disapproval for their presence.