Tell me how we realistically fix our defense...

[Unfriendly Ghost]

Do you?

[Stuff]

Yeah, you do. I do want to point out that a fair amount of those defensemen you mention have been traded are highly-drafted defensemen. You seem to be glossing over that fact, as you never mention the draft status of the guys who got traded. Young stud defensemen have significant value (Seth Jones, Dougie Hamilton). The fact that they've been traded doesn't change anything.

Anyway, you point out that many very good defensemen weren't drafted in the early first round. The traditional argument is that your best chance of getting those defensemen is by having early picks. So, you say, why couldn't we just draft those defensemen where they go (which, again, has not necessarily been the early first round)?

I think this is flawed logic. It's great that there are a number of good defensemen who are not early picks. But just because there is a surprisingly large group of them in existence across all teams does not tell us anything about your chance to draft one from that group. Those players are distributed across a bunch of drafts and a bunch of rounds, which makes your odds of actually drafting them quite low per pick. And even taking into account those late round boom picks, research done on this topic*** indicates that you're much, much, much more likely to draft a top 4 defenseman with a top 5 pick than even a top 15 pick.

The other problem is that to follow that strategy, you would pretty much need to draft nothing but defensemen (because, as we've established, these defensemen are not easy to draft, and you would need every pick to try to land one). If you look at the teams who ended up with the late round defensemen (and especially the picks they were taken with), very many of them were still very early picks. A lot of them were second round picks by non-playoff teams with tons of picks in that draft. You get the room to take chances on these players by having a ton of picks. So if this is really the philosophy you want the Wings to follow, you should encourage them to rebuild, like those teams were doing when they drafted those players, and get a ton of picks. That's pretty much in agreement with what I said. But if you try this strategy any other way (e.g. the Holland plan), you'll probably get burned. The Wings forward group is not strong enough to get away with this, and of course the Wings' draft position would be relatively weak in terms of landing that coveted top 4 defenseman anyway. So more picks good, but later picks bad.

Do not be fooled. Having a ton of picks is absolutely no substitute for drafting high. The Wings certainly need to draft more defensemen (and they could stand to have more picks), but sacrificing draft position to do it is an awful idea. And, certainly, the idea that the Wings are better off drafting defensemen where they are than in the top 5 is absolutely ridiculous.

***https://bluebulletreport.com/2016/03/21/expected-draft-value-of-a-first-round-defenseman/

https://bluebulletreport.com/2016/04/01/expected-draft-value-of-a-second-third-round-defenseman/

There's been other work on this topic, and for the most part the conclusion has been the same. I can find it later if people want. Some very bored people/ardent hockey fans/both actually do academic work on this stuff.

In other words, a team with one mid-first round selection would almost be as likely to select a defenseman that has a career ATOI of 18:30 minutes/game or better than a team that selects two defensemen in the second round and two defensemen in the third round.

Now consider that you're much more likely in turn to get a player from the top 5 than the top 15...

Edit: This one is for all NHL players, but the different in likelihood of making the NHL plummets depressingly quickly as you go through the first couple of picks. There's a nice graph in there that I'll try to embed.

http://myslu.stlawu.edu/~msch/sports/Schuckers_NHL_Draft.pdf

 

[Satrebil]

Yeah, you do. I do want to point out that a fair amount of those defensemen you mention have been traded are highly-drafted defensemen. You seem to be glossing over that fact, as you never mention the draft status of the guys who got traded. Young stud defensemen have significant value (Seth Jones, Dougie Hamilton). The fact that they've been traded doesn't change anything.

Anyway, you point out that many very good defensemen weren't drafted in the early first round. The traditional argument is that your best chance of getting those defensemen is by having early picks. So, you say, why couldn't we just draft those defensemen where they go (which, again, has not necessarily been the early first round)?

I think this is flawed logic. It's great that there are a number of good defensemen who are not early picks. But just because there is a surprisingly large group of them in existence across all teams does not tell us anything about your chance to draft one from that group. Those players are distributed across a bunch of drafts and a bunch of rounds, which makes your odds of actually drafting them quite low per pick. And even taking into account those late round boom picks, research done on this topic*** indicates that you're much, much, much more likely to draft a top 4 defenseman with a top 5 pick than even a top 15 pick.

The other problem is that to follow that strategy, you would pretty much need to draft nothing but defensemen (because, as we've established, these defensemen are not easy to draft, and you would need every pick to try to land one). If you look at the teams who ended up with the late round defensemen (and especially the picks they were taken with), very many of them were still very early picks. A lot of them were second round picks by non-playoff teams with tons of picks in that draft. You get the room to take chances on these players by having a ton of picks. So if this is really the philosophy you want the Wings to follow, you should encourage them to rebuild, like those teams were doing when they drafted those players, and get a ton of picks. That's pretty much in agreement with what I said. But if you try this strategy any other way (e.g. the Holland plan), you'll probably get burned. The Wings forward group is not strong enough to get away with this, and of course the Wings' draft position would be relatively weak in terms of landing that coveted top 4 defenseman anyway. So more picks good, but later picks bad.

Do not be fooled. Having a ton of picks is absolutely no substitute for drafting high. The Wings certainly need to draft more defensemen (and they could stand to have more picks), but sacrificing draft position to do it is an awful idea. And, certainly, the idea that the Wings are better off drafting defensemen where they are than in the top 5 is absolutely ridiculous.

***https://bluebulletreport.com/2016/03/21/expected-draft-value-of-a-first-round-defenseman/

https://bluebulletreport.com/2016/04/01/expected-draft-value-of-a-second-third-round-defenseman/

There's been other work on this topic, and for the most part the conclusion has been the same. I can find it later if people want. Some very bored people/ardent hockey fans/both actually do academic work on this stuff.

Now consider that you're much more likely in turn to get a player from the top 5 than the top 15...

Consider how much Ericsson skewed those stats...

 

[Bench]

I just want to see them move on from what hasn't worked. Bye Quincey, Smith at minimum. Ericsson is contract locked, it seems.

Kronwall, DeKeyser, Green isn't a totally awful base to start with. Keep those 3, try new bodies in the rest of the spots. Phase Kronwall down the lineup as needed.

Will that be better? It actually might not. But at least it's an attempt at getting better rather than running the same broken units over and over.

 

[Satrebil]

I just want to see them move on from what hasn't worked. Bye Quincey, Smith at minimum. Ericsson is contract locked, it seems.

Kronwall, DeKeyser, Green isn't a totally awful base to start with. Keep those 3, try new bodies in the rest of the spots. Phase Kronwall down the lineup as needed.

Will that be better? It actually might not. But at least it's an attempt at getting better rather than running the same broken units over and over.

That's a good start and feasible.

 

[Bench]

That's a good start and feasible.

Yeah, I'm trying to keep my expectations within the realm of possible. It's not too much to ask to let a UFA walk and to trade a guy with 1 year left on his deal, right?

At the very least, then if one of those great defender trades come along, you don't have to move bodies to make it work. Save some cap and play the prospects in those remaining slots rather than pay Quincey and Smith over $6 million combined. Marchenko can fill in with the top 4. Promote some of those other guys to the bottom pairings.

DeKeyser - Green
Kronwall - Ericsson/Marchenko
Whoever - Ericsson/Marchenko

Is that really all that worse than what has been thrown out there lately? Not really. It's basically the same guys getting minutes minus Quincey. You miraculously snag somebody like Yandle and suddenly things actually look kind of optimistic offensively at least.

This is all about fixing the blueline in stages rather than one fell swoop. Step one, cut the fat and reduce your blueline to the minimum components to allow flexibility and promotion from within.

 

[sarcastro]

I just want to see them move on from what hasn't worked. Bye Quincey, Smith at minimum. Ericsson is contract locked, it seems.

Kronwall, DeKeyser, Green isn't a totally awful base to start with. Keep those 3, try new bodies in the rest of the spots. Phase Kronwall down the lineup as needed.

Will that be better? It actually might not. But at least it's an attempt at getting better rather than running the same broken units over and over.

Are we assuming Kronwall's knees will heal up and he won't be a total pylon moving forward?

I'd love to believe that but at his age, it might be time to just hide him as much as possible.

 

[SpookyTsuki]

Are we assuming Kronwall's knees will heal up and he won't be a total pylon moving forward?

I'd love to believe that but at his age, it might be time to just hide him as much as possible.

He will play better next year. But might as well put him on third pairing. Or 2nd if Danny d or green moves up. Because he will be unreliable

 

[jkutswings]

The chances of us winning the Cup next year are incredibly slim. Embrace the retool. Get younger, more skilled. Less experience isn't always a bad thing. You aren't going to fix this defense overnight, but at least have some sort of organizational direction.

From your lips to Illitch's ears (since I still have my doubts that Holland's ears are even working these days).

 

[Bench]

Are we assuming Kronwall's knees will heal up and he won't be a total pylon moving forward?

I'd love to believe that but at his age, it might be time to just hide him as much as possible.

It it comes to that, it comes to that. Fortunately his cap hit is fairly friendly even if he's just a powerplay guy and offensive zone starter moving forward. He's in that group of keepers just because I don't see the Wings trading him, and even if what you're saying comes to pass, the market for a busted up defender in his mid 30s doesn't exactly seem great.

Three years left on the Kronwall deal at less than $5 million cap. No big deal, in my books. Four years left on Ericsson is a bit more painful to swallow, which is why I'm advocating the Wings free up as many spots as possible to account for their tied up assets.

 

[Satrebil]

Are we assuming Kronwall's knees will heal up and he won't be a total pylon moving forward?

I'd love to believe that but at his age, it might be time to just hide him as much as possible.

Are you suggesting that Kronwall is not an NHL defenseman at this point?

 

[Ezekial]

Yeah, I'm trying to keep my expectations within the realm of possible. It's not too much to ask to let a UFA walk and to trade a guy with 1 year left on his deal, right?

At the very least, then if one of those great defender trades come along, you don't have to move bodies to make it work. Save some cap and play the prospects in those remaining slots rather than pay Quincey and Smith over $6 million combined. Marchenko can fill in with the top 4. Promote some of those other guys to the bottom pairings.

DeKeyser - Green
Kronwall - Ericsson/Marchenko
Whoever - Ericsson/Marchenko

Is that really all that worse than what has been thrown out there lately? Not really. It's basically the same guys getting minutes minus Quincey. You miraculously snag somebody like Yandle and suddenly things actually look kind of optimistic offensively at least.

This is all about fixing the blueline in stages rather than one fell swoop. Step one, cut the fat and reduce your blueline to the minimum components to allow flexibility and promotion from within.

Honestly if we got Yandle and Kronwall/Ericsson were demoted to 3rd pairing together our D wouldn't be too shabby out the gate.

I'd rather Smith be in the third pairing over E but at this point I accept the inevitability that Ericsson is going to be on the ice.

 

[Cyborg Yzerberg]

There are options is the thing. Signing a guy like Yandle, Demers, Goglioski WOULD improve the team. Our biggest need is definitely for a top pairing option, but that needs to be addressed through the draft. And even despite the looming retirement and regression of the top 4 of the 2008 team, the only draft it was even remotely touched in was 2011.

 

[HIFE]

...UFA Yandle is incredibly intriguing. Just pretty sure he plays LD and I don't think we can commit to that kind of deal in our current position. He's the type of player that would do a lot for us, even with his defensive woes...

The only problem with Yandle is say he sees Green behind the net- they make eye contact and get lost in the moment admiring each others one-time passes and trim beards. We'll get delay of game penalties as they saucer pucks back and forth. They're basically the same player. I think if the consensus is to promote ALL the rookies to get a look and also acquire a bigger name D he has to be young(ish), better than DeKeyser and Green, and proficient offensively and defensively.

 

[BinCookin]

a bigger name D he has to be young(ish), better than DeKeyser and Green, and proficient offensively and defensively.

Sounds like a dream. I don't think we get one of those "realistically"

 

[Zetterberg4Captain]

Sounds like a dream. I don't think we get one of those "realistically"

why not?

 

[Reddwit]

Yeah, you do. I do want to point out that a fair amount of those defensemen you mention have been traded are highly-drafted defensemen. You seem to be glossing over that fact, as you never mention the draft status of the guys who got traded. Young stud defensemen have significant value (Seth Jones, Dougie Hamilton). The fact that they've been traded doesn't change anything.

Anyway, you point out that many very good defensemen weren't drafted in the early first round. The traditional argument is that your best chance of getting those defensemen is by having early picks. So, you say, why couldn't we just draft those defensemen where they go (which, again, has not necessarily been the early first round)?

I think this is flawed logic. It's great that there are a number of good defensemen who are not early picks. But just because there is a surprisingly large group of them in existence across all teams does not tell us anything about your chance to draft one from that group. Those players are distributed across a bunch of drafts and a bunch of rounds, which makes your odds of actually drafting them quite low per pick. And even taking into account those late round boom picks, research done on this topic*** indicates that you're much, much, much more likely to draft a top 4 defenseman with a top 5 pick than even a top 15 pick.

The other problem is that to follow that strategy, you would pretty much need to draft nothing but defensemen (because, as we've established, these defensemen are not easy to draft, and you would need every pick to try to land one). If you look at the teams who ended up with the late round defensemen (and especially the picks they were taken with), very many of them were still very early picks. A lot of them were second round picks by non-playoff teams with tons of picks in that draft. You get the room to take chances on these players by having a ton of picks. So if this is really the philosophy you want the Wings to follow, you should encourage them to rebuild, like those teams were doing when they drafted those players, and get a ton of picks. That's pretty much in agreement with what I said. But if you try this strategy any other way (e.g. the Holland plan), you'll probably get burned. The Wings forward group is not strong enough to get away with this, and of course the Wings' draft position would be relatively weak in terms of landing that coveted top 4 defenseman anyway. So more picks good, but later picks bad.

Do not be fooled. Having a ton of picks is absolutely no substitute for drafting high. The Wings certainly need to draft more defensemen (and they could stand to have more picks), but sacrificing draft position to do it is an awful idea. And, certainly, the idea that the Wings are better off drafting defensemen where they are than in the top 5 is absolutely ridiculous.

***https://bluebulletreport.com/2016/03/21/expected-draft-value-of-a-first-round-defenseman/

https://bluebulletreport.com/2016/04/01/expected-draft-value-of-a-second-third-round-defenseman/

There's been other work on this topic, and for the most part the conclusion has been the same. I can find it later if people want. Some very bored people/ardent hockey fans/both actually do academic work on this stuff.

Now consider that you're much more likely in turn to get a player from the top 5 than the top 15...

Edit: This one is for all NHL players, but the different in likelihood of making the NHL plummets depressingly quickly as you go through the first couple of picks. There's a nice graph in there that I'll try to embed.

http://myslu.stlawu.edu/~msch/sports/Schuckers_NHL_Draft.pdf

Full disclosure: no way I'm reading all that.

But I'm not glossing over the fact that a handful of these defenseman who were traded were highly drafted because I'm not arguing against getting good defenseman high. I'm arguing against your premise that you need to "rebuild and draft" when the very instances you suggest are somehow glossing over that proposal show that teams have repeatedly acquired high-level talents by trade!

Ergo, you can get high-level defenseman (hey! Maybe they're even top 3 picks) without rebuilding and drafting them. The fact that we could get Shattenkirk or Trouba doesn't challenge my argument because they're lottery picks - it reinforces it because we didn't have to draft them ourselves.

Also, I've seen those stats before I think. Posted in the prospects thread. Dont they base what is a good/great defenseman on games played? That's a good way to measure a large stable of data but it does skew the data. Like I pointed out earlier, those high pick defenseman more often end up middle pairing than top. That will make them look like healthy picks as data points but in reality they end up being an underpaying pick.

As for the having more picks argument not equating to better defenseman? Well duh, man. I'm not arguing that. Of course having more arbitrary picks doesn't substitute for getting better defenseman. We could stockpile 5th, 6th and 7th rounders and use them on defenseman. That would refute any more is better argument but it's also a strawman. You need to draft more in the top 3 rounds if you want more talent. But again, that has nothing to do with an arbitrary "rebuild and draft" strategy as the primary or sacred route.

Also, fun fact: last time the Wings had a defenseman on the roster who was a top 3 pick, he was acquired by trade. And he was a middle pairing guy.

 

[sarcastro]

Are you suggesting that Kronwall is not an NHL defenseman at this point?

The way his knees were at the end of the year? No.

If he gets healthy but is still slow? He could be a 2nd pp guy who plays sheltered es minutes.

He's not very good anymore. Certainly nothing like he was in his prime. His legs are shot.

 

[BinCookin]

The way his knees were at the end of the year? No.

If he gets healthy but is still slow? He could be a 2nd pp guy who plays sheltered es minutes.

He's not very good anymore. Certainly nothing like he was in his prime. His legs are shot.

Waive him for Sproul then?

 

[Frk It]

I'm not even sure playing Kronwall on the PP is a good idea.

I saw 2 huge issues with Kronwall on the point last year.

1) Loose pucks - He cannot get to loose pucks, which resulted in a lot of zone clearances where we have to re-enter the zone.

2) Shots blocked - His lateral mobility is shot, so he cannot move guys around to get off his shot. His shot is very easy to square up against and block, and seemed to be blocked a lot.

 

[Zetterberg4Captain]

Yeah, you do. I do want to point out that a fair amount of those defensemen you mention have been traded are highly-drafted defensemen. You seem to be glossing over that fact, as you never mention the draft status of the guys who got traded. Young stud defensemen have significant value (Seth Jones, Dougie Hamilton). The fact that they've been traded doesn't change anything.

Anyway, you point out that many very good defensemen weren't drafted in the early first round. The traditional argument is that your best chance of getting those defensemen is by having early picks. So, you say, why couldn't we just draft those defensemen where they go (which, again, has not necessarily been the early first round)?

I think this is flawed logic. It's great that there are a number of good defensemen who are not early picks. But just because there is a surprisingly large group of them in existence across all teams does not tell us anything about your chance to draft one from that group. Those players are distributed across a bunch of drafts and a bunch of rounds, which makes your odds of actually drafting them quite low per pick. And even taking into account those late round boom picks, research done on this topic*** indicates that you're much, much, much more likely to draft a top 4 defenseman with a top 5 pick than even a top 15 pick.

The other problem is that to follow that strategy, you would pretty much need to draft nothing but defensemen (because, as we've established, these defensemen are not easy to draft, and you would need every pick to try to land one). If you look at the teams who ended up with the late round defensemen (and especially the picks they were taken with), very many of them were still very early picks. A lot of them were second round picks by non-playoff teams with tons of picks in that draft. You get the room to take chances on these players by having a ton of picks. So if this is really the philosophy you want the Wings to follow, you should encourage them to rebuild, like those teams were doing when they drafted those players, and get a ton of picks. That's pretty much in agreement with what I said. But if you try this strategy any other way (e.g. the Holland plan), you'll probably get burned. The Wings forward group is not strong enough to get away with this, and of course the Wings' draft position would be relatively weak in terms of landing that coveted top 4 defenseman anyway. So more picks good, but later picks bad.

Do not be fooled. Having a ton of picks is absolutely no substitute for drafting high. The Wings certainly need to draft more defensemen (and they could stand to have more picks), but sacrificing draft position to do it is an awful idea. And, certainly, the idea that the Wings are better off drafting defensemen where they are than in the top 5 is absolutely ridiculous.

***https://bluebulletreport.com/2016/03/21/expected-draft-value-of-a-first-round-defenseman/

https://bluebulletreport.com/2016/04/01/expected-draft-value-of-a-second-third-round-defenseman/

There's been other work on this topic, and for the most part the conclusion has been the same. I can find it later if people want. Some very bored people/ardent hockey fans/both actually do academic work on this stuff.

Now consider that you're much more likely in turn to get a player from the top 5 than the top 15...

Edit: This one is for all NHL players, but the different in likelihood of making the NHL plummets depressingly quickly as you go through the first couple of picks. There's a nice graph in there that I'll try to embed.

http://myslu.stlawu.edu/~msch/sports/Schuckers_NHL_Draft.pdf

i think it would be beneficial to see a list of each teams top 2 dmen and where they were drafted, it would be a much better illustration of reality then a math problem

 

[sarcastro]

I'm not even sure playing Kronwall on the PP is a good idea.

I saw 2 huge issues with Kronwall on the point last year.

1) Loose pucks - He cannot get to loose pucks, which resulted in a lot of zone clearances where we have to re-enter the zone.

2) Shots blocked - His lateral mobility is shot, so he cannot move guys around to get off his shot. His shot is very easy to square up against and block, and seemed to be blocked a lot.

He could be useful as the passing point on the second unit, I think. He should not be shooting the puck very often, and they certainly shouldn't be running the pp the way they did most of the year with everyone passing him the puck over and over and over until he shot it into shin pads.

He still has reasonably good vision for setting plays up, but he should be the fourth shooting option with a strong qb on the other point.

Any shots he takes should be wristers aiming for tips, or one timers when he's sneaking down inside the circle.

 

[Unfriendly Ghost]

i think it would be beneficial to see a list of each teams top 2 dmen and where they were drafted, it would be a much better illustration of reality then a math problem

That's actually what the Blue Bullet article tracks. He didn't make those numbers up. But for the record, reality is one big math problem.

 

[Chris 84]

top 2 for everyone and draft position. exceptions are where more than 2 players can be said to be easily top 2 standard or when only 1 or even 0 are top 2 standard.


fowler 12 lindholm 6 vatanen 106
oel 6
chara 56
bogosian 3 ristolainen 8
giordano (undrafted) hamilton 9 brodie 114
keith 54 seasbrook 14
johnson 1 beauchemin 75
johnson 3 jones 4
goligoski 61 klingberg 131
sekera 71
campbell 156 ekblad 1
doughty 2 muzzin 141
suter 7
subban 43 markov 162
weber 49 josi 38
larsson 4 greene (undrafted)
hamonic 53 leddy 16
mcdonagh 12 yandle 105 girardi (undrafted)
karlsson 15 phaneuf 9
gostsisbehere 78
letang 62 daley 43 maatta 22
burns 20 vlasic 35
pietrangelo 4 shattenkirk 14
hedman 2 stralman 216
edler 91 hamhuis 12
carlson 27 alzner 5 niskanen 28
byfuglien 245 enstrom 239 myers 12 trouba 9

 

[Unfriendly Ghost]

Full disclosure: no way I'm reading all that.

But I'm not glossing over the fact that a handful of these defenseman who were traded were highly drafted because I'm not arguing against getting good defenseman high. I'm arguing against your premise that you need to "rebuild and draft" when the very instances you suggest are somehow glossing over that proposal show that teams have repeatedly acquired high-level talents by trade!

Right, but that's sort of like saying the fact that some people have bought Bugattis means that, with the right budgeting, anyone can. Those players went for seriously premium assets that the Wings don't possess. If the Wings had the pieces to acquire those guys without mortgaging the future, they probably wouldn't even be in this boat in the first place, because they'd have significantly higher roster quality. (Or at least some better prospects.)

Also, I've seen those stats before I think. Posted in the prospects thread. Dont they base what is a good/great defenseman on games played? That's a good way to measure a large stable of data but it does skew the data. Like I pointed out earlier, those high pick defenseman more often end up middle pairing than top. That will make them look like healthy picks as data points but in reality they end up being an underpaying pick.

As for the having more picks argument not equating to better defenseman? Well duh, man. I'm not arguing that. Of course having more arbitrary picks doesn't substitute for getting better defenseman. We could stockpile 5th, 6th and 7th rounders and use them on defenseman. That would refute any more is better argument but it's also a strawman. You need to draft more in the top 3 rounds if you want more talent. But again, that has nothing to do with an arbitrary "rebuild and draft" strategy as the primary or sacred route.

Also, fun fact: last time the Wings had a defenseman on the roster who was a top 3 pick, he was acquired by trade. And he was a middle pairing guy.

But given the data that I've shown you, these facts should worry you. You point out that the top four defensemen tracked end up middle pairing more often than not. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to conclude from the data that that's actually worse for your argument, not better. What that essentially means is that it's harder still to draft top pairing defensemen, but the general trend still applies, which means it's even more important still to have high picks in order to land them.

But how do the Wings get those high picks without rebuilding? You conclude that it doesn't have to be a rebuild, but what else would it be? You seem to want a trade, but let's not forget that the Wings don't need just one defenseman. They need several, and probably two top pairing guys to be competitive. Likely 3 top 4 defensemen in all. That's not the kind of haul you get through trading. When you take into account that the Wings would have to trade away their high picks in order to land those guys, you can see why that plan falls apart. Getting even one guy could mean that there's no longer any room to land the other 2 or 3. That's not even to get into cap space, as the guys we're talking about are extremely expensive. Shattenkirk is going to get at least 6.5 mil. That restricts other options as well, such as free agency.

I mean, really, I don't think there's any coherent way to rebuild this defense without doing it through the draft. And the only reliable way to do it through the draft would be to have higher picks. Anything else is gambling with terrible odds. It's like going to Vegas and taking your remaining cash to the tables because you need to make money to get home. That's not a rational way to achieve your goal. You're more likely to lose that money and have nothing to show for it than anything else.

Basically, this strategy is banking on a miracle defenseman somewhere. Somebody becomes a star out of nowhere and saves the Wings' butts. I don't see that happening.

 

[SoupGuru]

Simple.

Use your next two draft picks to get two top 4 defensemen. While they're developing in the minors next year, shore up the current defense by trading Quincey to Nashville for Weber. Add in Pulkinnen to sweeten the deal if necessary. Once that's done, Suter will want to come play with his former partner so you could get him for Smith and maybe Helm. If we need scoring from the back end we could probably get Doughty for Ericsson and Mantha.

It's simple enough. The fact that Holland hasn't even come close to pulling any of that off is evidence of how incompetent he is.