BTP
Registered User
- Apr 28, 2013
- 4,294
- 5,574
I feel no sympathy. Fans had 25 years of pure fun.
Red wing fans should be overjoyed. Toronto had one awful year and that's all it took.
Glad to see the wings are adopting the tank approach that has worked out really well for the Oilers, Arizona, and Buffalo...
Wait...
Wait?
Definitely.They didn’t get Reilly, Nylander, and Marner from their draft picks during great years.
Definitely.
We had to endure some rough years in recent memory to be able to draft those guys. We had a good string of draft years in the top 5-10 though.
Rielly 2012 #5
Gauthier 2013 #21 (okay not so much)
Nylander 2014 #8
Marner 2015 #4
Matthews 2016 #1
Those 5 years are pretty much the Leafs building blocks. Definitely didn't suck just 1 year and bam all good.
Indeed. The thing that is most annoying, is that we all knew this rebuild should have been taking place in 2014 or 2015, everyone that is except Ken Holland who was holding on to a meaningless playoff streak that kept going nowhere.Every franchise has their ups and downs. Detroit was competitive for decade after decade to the degree that few sports teams in history could match. It’s impossible not to expect a decline at some point.
Why does Holland still have a job?
Because Mike Illitch was incapacitated for years and because Chris Illitch doesn't seem to give a ****.
Seven. Ah-Ah-Ah.
View attachment 148057
My concern as that this draft has some great forwards -- Hughes, Kakko, Cozens, Dach -- but the Wings' most pressing organizational need is defense. We could use more forward talent as well, in a division with plenty of elite forwards, etc, but defensemen generally take longer to develop and each year we pass on D, my fear is that we're kicking the can further down the road.
In a perfect world a rebuilding organization would add high-potential defensemen early on in the rebuild, and then 2-3 years later add forwards (including the coveted #1C) so that everyone is hopefully ready to make an impact at the same time. Instead we've found ourselves with an abundance of wingers, who probably matter least in the grand scheme of things.
Mike Illitch was always loyal to a fault though, so I don't think it would be different even if he were still at the helm.
Mike Illitch created a winning franchise. I guess we'll never know what he would've done at this juncture, but I don't think "ignore horrible decisions and settle on being a basement team" would be it.
Yeah, but at the same time, Illitch was loyal to so, so, so many guys, including Holland, when Yzerman started knocking on the door of a GM job. But I mean, that franchise has a loooong history of promoting from within, and guys almost never, if ever, move on on bad terms. I mean, after Scotty Bowman, I think Dave Lewis is the only coach they ever actually fired. Part of that is because Holland is also loyal to a fault, but it seems like that's true throughout the entire organization.
honestly for me(and I suspect a bunch of other people born in the late 80s-early 90s or so) it's hurt for more than half a decade at this point
this is actually a refreshing change of pace,the Wings haven't been good enough to win anything in a long time now but at least now they're finally bad enough to have a real chance at some elite talent
i'll take bottoming out over purgatory any day