Poll: Who/What do you blame for missing the playoffs?

[K1900L]

Lack of high end talent, individual mistakes by veterans, questionable usage of some players (Seider f.e.).

 

[rbartnik]

How about not taking care of your own business when it was most important. Like EVERY game. When you're a fringe team you can't ever take a night off.

Examples:

vs Washington 2-0 (yes i know 2-1)
vs the Pens 6-3
vs Arizona 4-1
vs Buffalo 7-3
vs Arizona at home 4-0

Pick one. Essentially 5 nights of no shows and here we sit complaining about Philly pulling their goalie while tied.

How about blowing a 4-0 lead to Sharks (with two SHGs against) and losing 6-5 in OT? There's the one point they needed.

 

[PelagicJoe]

I blame the a-hole Bruins for being useless against Washington the other night.
I blame Ovechkin just for being lucky.
I blame us for not beating Washington last week and having an absolutely shitty March.
I blame Torts for pulling the goalie and being incompetent.

 

[WingFanSD]

team defense was shit. team is slow, they cant handle the fast teams. blueline overall was shit. i hope perron, kane, ghost are gone. hope they can get rid of petry as well.

 

[wingerdinger]

1. Lalonde overplaying Lyon during his awful stretch and not giving him a break to collect himself was the biggest mistake imo.

2. combo of yzerman and lalonde playing czarnik so much down the stretch with a large chunk of that time having czarnik center debrincat and kane

3. not splitting up debrincat and kane sooner.

 

[dj4aces]

I mean... one could argue Stevie's roster composition is to blame. One could blame the coach being slow to adjust. and make changes that some of us feel were necessary. Some can even blame goaltending. In the end, we missed the playoffs because we lost a game -- pick a game -- in overtime instead of winning it. That's it. One dumb little point.

The biggest and most glaring factor? Defense. An option that's strangely missing from the poll. We were fine at forward, Seider-Walman was good until Walman got hurt, then Seider-Chiarot actually looked good. Even then, we had a top D playing with at least a second pairing D all season long. We handcuffed Seider to defensive zone starts and barely gave him a chance to showcase anything else, and it was all by necessity.

Petry isn't the guy we needed, and Holl? That guy is like finding that part you need to fix something around the house on Amazon and just buying it because it's there, only to discover after you get it that you already have a dozen of those parts already, so you just throw it in the junk drawer. In the end, no matter what happens, we need improvements on D. Build our defense around Seider. Maybe strongly encourage Petry to retire. If there's a team willing to take Holl's contract, by all means, make it happen. Maybe our next PP QB shouldn't be so one dimensional... so, as great as he was with the PP, maybe don't sign a Ghost-like player. At the end of the day, our D needs to improve, and Stevie has his work cut out for him.

Just a thought.

 

[cvaicunas]

How about blowing a 4-0 lead to Sharks (with two SHGs against) and losing 6-5 in OT? There's the one point they needed.

There's so many of those examples this season... 82 game season, and it we can still boil it down to several key mistakes. How about that OT loss to Seattle early in the season. Veleno misses a wide open net, Sprong takes a bad penalty at the end of the game that leads to a goal against, and then over time. Chiarot holding onto the puck on a PK late against the Preds recently. The list can go on and on.

It's certainly not on the Bruins or Torts, that's just crazy. The Wings lost this themselves.

 

[ShelbyZ]

I think Charlie Lindgren got some pay back from when the Wings lit him up for 8 goals at the end February.

Followed that game up with a really solid March, and for the rest of the season he specifically went 5-1-0 against the Caps competition for the WC2 spot (2 games each against DET, PHI and PIT).

Flyers definitely looked like the better team last night, but Lindgren was what kept the Caps in it, even though he was playing 2 nights in a row (though he probably wasn't that fatigued after the Bruins mailed it in the previous night). I guess the Bruins get some blame too.

 

[Mort Divine]

The decision not to buy anything at the TDL was ultimately a move that might have cost us the playoffs but for longterm roster construction it absolutely was the right move.

The failure by the coaching staff during our Larkinless skid was by far the biggest issue and likely the #1 sign that our coaching staff needs to be addressed.

 

[OldnotDeadWings]

How about not taking care of your own business when it was most important. Like EVERY game. When you're a fringe team you can't ever take a night off.

Examples:

vs Washington 2-0 (yes i know 2-1)
vs the Pens 6-3
vs Arizona 4-1
vs Buffalo 7-3
vs Arizona at home 4-0

Pick one. Essentially 5 nights of no shows and here we sit complaining about Philly pulling their goalie while tied.

The Wings had exactly zero "no-shows" in their last three games vs. Washington, what turned out to be their three most important games of the season. You need to adjust your definition of a "no-show" if it includes outshooting a team 43-23. Wings also made a habit this year of showing up in the third period, leading the league with 11 comeback wins. They showed up late in the season in Florida, getting three points in two games most people thought they had no chance in. They showed up late in the season vs. Buffalo, shutting down the Thompson line in an otherwise blah but "must-win" game.

This was an inconsistent, mediocre team that had a number of piss-poor efforts, especially when Larkin was out. Every team in the league had no-show games over the course of the season. Focusing on a few as the cause of missing the playoffs is just cherry-picking to suit a narrative.

 

[The Red Line]

It sucks that they missed but they still met or exceeded everyone's expectations. If we finished 10 points lower but didn't have multiple losing streaks somehow less people would complaining which is crazy.

I get they got the hopes up, but they fell short, it is what it is. There's a lot of positives to take from the season and plenty of room for improvement next year.

 

[redwings8831]

 

[kook10]

Certainly they suffered from a "lack of quality", as the Brits would say, but I voted for coaching. We were so close that I feel like they could and should have got it done. In particular, there seemed to be an insistence on sticking with things too long in general. We rode the goalies too long, we rode Mo too hard, we didn't start on time, and we didn't make timely adjustments when tactics or strategy were clearly failing. Just as the January/February rebound seemed to be strategically successful, with more conservative play and tighter D (looked like maybe they moved to a zone instead of man-to-man) there seemed to be a shift back to the old ways and we were chasing all over the place, right until the end. Obviously it didn't work, but I also fear it didn't serve the younger players well in a multitude of ways.

 

[WingedWheel1987]

Atrocious defense.

Awful forechecking.

 

[ShanahanMan]

Atrocious defense.

Awful forechecking.

For forechecking I’d say yes minus the 1st line. That Raymond/Larks/Debrincat line looked absolutely lethal down the stretch and did some great aggressive forechecking.

The rest of the lines, yeah, dump/chase turn puck over, skate to our zone to defend.

 

[Hockeyville USA]

How about blowing a 4-0 lead to Sharks (with two SHGs against) and losing 6-5 in OT? There's the one point they needed.

The crucial one extra point (two point swing in this case) is the OT game against Washington in DC where DeBrincat throws a grenade pass into Seider's skates, where if the pass is tape to tape, it's an OT win for the Wings. 20 seconds later, Strome scores to give the Capitals 2 points, Red Wings only get 1.

Capitals Red Wings final 2 matchups:

Capitals: 4 points
Red Wings: 1 point

There's your most crucial differences.

 

[Leadzedder]

Yzerman roster construction is why we were even close.

 

[OldnotDeadWings]

The crucial one extra point (two point swing in this case) is the OT game against Washington in DC where DeBrincat throws a grenade pass into Seider's skates, where if the pass is tape to tape, it's an OT win for the Wings. 20 seconds later, Strome scores to give the Capitals 2 points, Red Wings only get 1.

Capitals Red Wings final 2 matchups:

Capitals: 4 points
Red Wings: 1 point

There's your most crucial differences.

There are hundreds of micro things that made a difference, in the Washington case a bad pass. The over-riding macro issue for the Wings is bad team defense, They'll finish either fifth or sixth worst in the league in GA 5v5. The bottom four are SJ, Chicago, Columbus and Ottawa.

 

[Man Purse]

Petry shouldn't be in the Top 6 next year.

but he was 3rd in D scoring without any power play time

 

[aar000n]

Lalonde's leadership or lack of this team has talent and he has a resting confused look.

 

[norrisnick]

but he was 3rd in D scoring without any power play time

The guy who was 1st in D scoring shouldn't be in our top 6 either.

 

[GMR]

View attachment 853772

There's no telling how things change if Detroit gets two points out of that game instead of one. You're talking about something that happened in like January. Detroit also won a few games they shouldn't have.

 

[lilidk]

1. Lalonde overplaying Lyon during his awful stretch and not giving him a break to collect himself was the biggest mistake imo.

2. combo of yzerman and lalonde playing czarnik so much down the stretch with a large chunk of that time having czarnik center debrincat and kane

3. not splitting up debrincat and kane sooner.

Lalonde also put too much on Seider shoulders

 

[wingerdinger]

Lalonde also put too much on Seider shoulders

Our second pairing's inability to take any of the load off of Seider's shoulder is/was the bigger issue.

 

[FMichael]

The decision not to buy anything at the TDL was ultimately a move that might have cost us the playoffs but for longterm roster construction it absolutely was the right move.

The failure by the coaching staff during our Larkinless skid was by far the biggest issue and likely the #1 sign that our coaching staff needs to be addressed.

This.

No additions/subtractions at the deadline hurt our playoff chance, but it is in fact better for the long term since Yzerman didn't give any picks/prospects away.

Speaking of Yzerman - my only real fault per say would have been hiring Lalonde, but he'll be here for the remainder of his contract - I'd be shocked if he was let go (but pleased)...As for trades/UFAs - well keep in mind this team is getting better every season and the roster on paper is a poop-ton better than it was a few years ago (there's only so many 'quality' players available each summer).