The Legacy of Ken Holland

[cupcrazyman]

I thought i walked by Ken Holland at the Sarnia Sting game today vs Niagara Ice Dogs.

 

[SpookyTsuki]

I thought i walked by Ken Holland at the Sarnia Sting game today vs Niagara Ice Dogs.

Do any wing prospects play for them

 

[Retire91]

It would be awesome to have this updated, I think the last few years add a big part of the legacy it would also be powerful to see year 20. a 20 year GM.

 

[Dotter]

It's amazing, when you look at, how few 1st round picks he had to draft with. He traded them off to help stay a contender and it's now finally showing the effects.

Coupled that in with Jiri Fischer having heart problems, Grigorenko having a car accident, the epic 2007 draft busts... all the while staying top of the league til recently. Add in the fact that other NHL teams got better at drafting, so no more Lidstrom, Fedorov, Datsyuk, Zetterberg gems.

When you put everything in context, Ken Holland is still proven to be the worlds best NHL GM. The "what have you done for me lately" mentality is short sighted in the context of things.

If he didn't trade off all those picks to keep the team winning championships and staying contenders, then we'd see a much better team right now. If Jiri Fischer didn't have heart troubles, then we'd see a much better team the past 4 years. But to go back in history and say "you shouldn't have traded those picks to keep the team competitive" is just flat out unfair. We got to see the benefit of those trades, and now we get to feel the backlash from those trades. The best thing KH did after the cap era was he vowed not to trade draft picks, and beside KFQ, he hadn't traded a 1st rounder (except for trade down in the draft). How can you blame him when you know everything in context?

Is it a scorched earth vs rebuild on the fly debate? Because I don't think that is a worthy debate. Especially when you have an ownership that wants to win, win, win. I personally think scorched earth rebuilds are cop outs and doesn't prove to work.

 

[Frk It]

When you put everything in context, Ken Holland is still proven to be the worlds best NHL GM. The "what have you done for me lately" mentality is short sighted in the context of things.

You think Ken Holland is currently the best GM in the NHL?

 

[Dotter]

You think Ken Holland is currently the best GM in the NHL?

The way the nu:NHL is structured the "best GMs" are considered by a combination of tanking for draft picks and getting lucky at landing a generational talent by winning the 1st overall lottery.

The nu:NHL is designed to remove "savvy-ness" out of the game. It's too bad, because it makes the game in its entirety boring. It's becoming a cookie-cutter system to the point NHL has adopted the school system of "no child left behind", has now become "no NHL team left behind".

It's like "oh, you're bad at your job?, that's okay we'll help you become a contender... here, take a couple McDavid, Crosby and Matthews".

The current "best" GM is merely the guy who fell in a pile of dogpoo and came out smelling like roses.

 

[Frk It]

The way the nu:NHL is structured the "best GMs" are considered by a combination of tanking for draft picks and getting lucky at landing a generational talent by winning the 1st overall lottery.

The nu:NHL is designed to remove "savvy-ness" out of the game. It's too bad, because it makes the game in its entirety boring. It's becoming a cookie-cutter system to the point NHL has adopted the school system of "no child left behind", has now become "no NHL team left behind".

It's like "oh, you're bad at your job?, that's okay we'll help you become a contender... here, take a couple McDavid, Crosby and Matthews".

The current "best" GM is merely the guy who fell in a pile of dogpoo and came out smelling like roses.

Where is this nu:NHL crap coming from? One of the worst teams has always received the top pick in the following draft. By reading your posts you'd swear this is a recent development when it's been in place for over 40 years.

Obviously when a really touted guy is coming up you are going to get your normal shenanigans and tomfoolery among the worst to try and jockey for the potential star. It's been the case for a long time and probably won't ever change.

I mean you realize currently if you finish dead last there's an 80% chance you do not get the 1st pick, right? Seems more than reasonable to me.

Know what's really gonna make you mad... before 1995 there wasn't even a lottery! How scandalous! They've actually put several things in place to deter teams from tanking compared to how it used to be.

The absence of the Cap was in it of itself somewhat of a deterrent of tanking, but only because you could just poach star players drafted/developed by other teams if you couldn't do it yourself. Which doesn't seem like the answer to me. Then all the small market teams essentially become the developmental league for the select few that spend more money than everyone else and you become the MLB, which I despise for this exact reason.

 

[Dotter]

The nu:NHL ensures bad teams can win too. Prior to the salary cap era teams could win without depending solely on drafting and developing, and GMs were more dependent upon being savvy. Bad clubs failed, good clubs flourished.

Now it's all dependent on what handful of teams in the NHL get lucky enough to draft generational talent.

The solution, in my mind, is to change the restricted free agent status so drafted players are UFA by the age of 22 or 23. So it puts more pressure on GMs to do good faster instead of holding out longer to compile more top picks from tanking.

And if/when these top drafted players see their drafted team is a sinking ship, they can jump ship to the highest bidder. That can also hurt bad GMs who want to overpay.

I would also like to see relentless offer sheets going on in the NHL. Have it where clubs don't have as much to lose if they win a offersheet to help encourage it.

I don't like watching the way TMLs are rebuilding. I want to see more savvy-ness from GMs. The Shanaplan is exactly what the NHL does NOT need. I want to see organizations win from skill top to bottom, not by playing the failed system.

While my suggestion may not be for everyone, I am appauled by the nu:NHL and how tanking has become the "cool" thing. I want "winning" to be the cool thing. Anyone can be a loser, not everyone can be winners.

 

[Frk It]

We have a very different idea of what constitutes savviness, I suppose.

You have to be far more savvy now than you did pre-Cap, IMO.

 

[Dotter]

Shanahan proved losing on purpose is easy. His motivation to lose on purpose was to draft top generational players. He was rewarded for purposely losing. How is that savvy?

It would be awesome if Marner, Nylander, Matthews and etc were UFA in a year or two so other teams can make Shanahan try harder and accelerate the 'rebuild' process quicker.

It would be awesome if Ottawa or Jets or whoever was eligble to offersheet Marner and Nylander in July costing them a lot less than four 1st round picks. Maybe two 1st round picks

 

[The Zermanator]

Shanahan proved losing on purpose is easy. His motivation to lose on purpose was to draft top generational players. He was rewarded for purposely losing. How is that savvy?

It would be awesome if Marner, Nylander, Matthews and etc were UFA in a year or two so other teams can make Shanahan try harder and accelerate the 'rebuild' process quicker.

It would be awesome if Ottawa or Jets or whoever was eligble to offersheet Marner and Nylander in July costing them a lot less than four 1st round picks. Maybe two 1st round picks

It's savvy because his team is in a much, much better position than ours is. That's all there is to it. What is all this talk of nu:NHL? It's the actual NHL. Ken Holland is not the GM of the Wings in this imaginary, ideal league of yours. He's the GM in the actual NHL, your so-called nu:NHL. And Ken Holland's team has been spiraling downward for years. Brendan Shanahan's team is on a big upswing. Shanny has leveraged the rules of the NHL much better than Ken Holland these last few years. I'm sure it's much more exciting to be a Leafs fan right now. The state of the team will be what ultimately determines Holland's legacy. And now mediocrity is increasingly creeping into Holland's reputation of eilteness.

If I were him I would either fundamentally change course, or retire to preserve my legacy. Sometimes it's just time.

 

[The Zermanator]

Also I would add I don't see how losing on purpose is somehow worse than banging your head against a wall with a strategy that has been revealed to have major flaws. Guess what? Pretty soon the Leafs are going to be getting pretty competitive and we're still going to be languishing. Looks like they're on a quicker path to winning. So who wants to win more exactly?

Holland will always have his glory years to hang his hat on, but every season that this water-treading continues is another mediocre season in his legacy.

 

[Dotter]

You and I differ in that regard. I cannot get on board with the new "cool" way of rebuilding with the loser mentality loophole which rewards bad GMs and bad franchises for sucking hard. I just can't.

Bettman's nu:NHL - "No NHL team left behind" act.

Haha, I think that 2001 "No child left behind" slogan pretty much sums up what the nu:NHL has become. Except one is for children, the other is for competitive sport franchises with multi-millionaire owners that aren't good at hockey.

 

[Heaton]

You and I differ in that regard. I cannot get on board with the new "cool" way of rebuilding with the loser mentality loophole which rewards bad GMs and bad franchises for sucking hard. I just can't.

Bettman's nu:NHL - "No NHL team left behind" act.

Haha, I think that 2001 "No child left behind" slogan pretty much sums up what the nu:NHL has become. Except one is for children, the other is for competitive sport franchises with multi-millionaire owners that aren't good at hockey.

This is how it's always worked, the Wings had good drafting, but they also drafted Yzerman 3rd overall. Then they traded for Shahanan and other players.

Doing nothing, drafting in the middle of the pack and staying status quo has never worked for any team in the history of the league.

 

[The Zermanator]

This is how it's always worked, the Wings had good drafting, but they also drafted Yzerman 3rd overall. Then they traded for Shahanan and other players.

Doing nothing, drafting in the middle of the pack and staying status quo has never worked for any team in the history of the league.

Yes exactly, they started building a new core with Yzerman and filling it out with Lidstrom, Fedorov, etc. And this was the pre-cap era when Holland could also buy elite talent.

They struck gold drafting Datsyuk and Zetterberg so late and just at the right time that they could eventually take the baton from the old guard. Probably a good 10 years get shaved off the streak without drafting those two, which involved a lot of luck especially in Datsyuk's case.

So apart from that anomalous stretch of incredible draft luck, this whole Golden Age of the Detroit Red Wings started with a terrible team (the Dead Things) drafting high and accumulating elite talent in Yzerman to build around. Perhaps Holland should look at it as a reboot rather than a rebuild.

 

[obey86]

This is how it's always worked, the Wings had good drafting, but they also drafted Yzerman 3rd overall. Then they traded for Shahanan and other players.

Doing nothing, drafting in the middle of the pack and staying status quo has never worked for any team in the history of the league.

Yes, it has never worked except for the Bruins and the Red Wings in the past 9 years.

 

[Frk It]

Yes, it has never worked except for the Bruins and the Red Wings in the past 9 years.

Bruins drafted top 10 5 times from 2000-2011.

 

[TatarTangle]

What is your gut feeling when Holland's contract is drawing to an end?

 

[obey86]

Bruins drafted top 10 5 times from 2000-2011.

And none of the players they drafted high played a major role in their Stanley Cup win:

*Dougie Hamilton was drafted after they won the cup.
*Phil Kessell wasn't on the team
*Lars Johnson played 8 NHL games in his career
*Zach Hamill played 3 games the SC year and the next season was waived to the AHL and then traded for a guy with 2 career NHL goals
*Seguin has minimal impact and in 2011 was the 12th leading scorer on the team with 22 points and 15th leading scorer in the playoffs.

Their top 11 scorers that season were drafted 63rd, 50th, 45th, TRADE, TRADE, FA, FA, 71st, FA, FA, TRADE.

The Wings 2008 Stanley Cup team got about as much impact from #4 pick Steve Yzerman and #10 pick Martin Lapointe as the Bruins did from their top 10 picks for their run.


If the Bruins are proof that you "need high draft picks to win", then the Wings might as well just throw their top 5 pick in the toilet next season because I guess it doesn't matter whether the top 5 drafted player actually contributes to the team or not...all that matters is that a top 5 pick actually happened?

 

[Frk It]

And none of the players they drafted high played a major role in their Stanley Cup win:

*Dougie Hamilton wasn't on the team.
*Phil Kessell wasn't on the team
*Lars Johnson played 8 NHL games in his career
*Zach Hamill played 3 games the SC year and the next season was waived to the AHL and then traded for a guy with 2 career NHL goals
*Seguin has minimal impact and in 2011 was the 12th leading scorer on the team with 22 points and 15th leading scorer in the playoffs.

Their top 11 scorers that season were drafted 63rd, 50th, 45th, TRADE, TRADE, FA, FA, 71st, FA, FA, TRADE.

The Wings 2008 Stanley Cup team got about as much impact from #4 pick Steve Yzerman and #10 pick Martin Lapointe as the Bruins did from their top 10 picks for their run.

Ah so a large part of their team came via trades, something Holland doesn't do.

Also Lucic pick came from the Samsonov trade, which was another top 10 pick.

 

[Heaton]

Yes, it has never worked except for the Bruins and the Red Wings in the past 9 years.

If we could only find another top 3 defensemen of all time we should be able to pull off Holland's plan!

 

[Frk It]

If we could only find another top 3 defensemen of all time we should be able to pull off Holland's plan!

Yeah and just have to find a Russian that no other team is able to see because a plane lights on fire. NBD.

 

[WingedWheel1987]

Wings don't win the cup in 08 without Lidstrom.

The Wings had the 2nd/3rd best defenseman of all time patrolling the blue line for 20 years, and he played at an elite level the vast majority of that 20 year career.

Wings don't have a single top pairing defenseman on the roster.

Looking at the 08 Wings as proof you don't need high draft picks to win is very disingenuous.

Sure they won the cup without high draft picks, but they also possessed a player that literally only needed a warm body to create the best top defensive pair in the NHL. You can't point to that roster and argue the current Wings can replicate their success.

 

[obey86]

Ah so a large part of their team came via trades, something Holland doesn't do.

Also Lucic pick came from the Samsonov trade, which was another top 10 pick.

Would you even want the Wings to make big trades when they are nowhere near the Cup like they are now? The Wings have made trades over the years, not huge ones, but they have made trades. Actually, looking closer, Nathan Horton and Gregory Campbell (same trade) were the only players of those I listed that were acquired via trade. So the difference between how the Bruins approached building the team vs. the Red Wings is essentially one trade. Whoopty do.

Lol, ok. I guess the Wings should draft top 10 just so they can trade their top 10 pick for a 2nd rounder? The Wings can accomplish the same thing by trading back in the first round to acquire an additional 2nd round pick, like they did last year.

If we could only find another top 3 defensemen of all time we should be able to pull off Holland's plan!

Meh. It's about as likely as drafting two generational talents back to back (Pittsburgh) or drafting 3 top pairing defensemen #15, 2nd round, and 2nd round (Blackhawks). You typically need to be good and get a ton of luck to win a cup.

Wings don't win the cup in 08 without Lidstrom.

The Wings had the 2nd/3rd best defenseman of all time patrolling the blue line for 20 years, and he played at an elite level the vast majority of that 20 year career.

Wings don't have a single top pairing defenseman on the roster.

Looking at the 08 Wings as proof you don't need high draft picks to win is very disingenuous.

Sure they won the cup without high draft picks, but they also possessed a player that literally only needed a warm body to create the best top defensive pair in the NHL. You can't point to that roster and argue the current Wings can replicate their success.

Yeah, most teams aren't going to win a cup without their best player. Not sure what your point is.

The Bruins best player (Chara) was a free agent. The Blackhawks best player (Keith) was a 2nd round pick.

Wings have either of those guys in their primes in 08 and 09, they are still Stanley Cup contenders.

 

[Frk It]

Would you even want the Wings to make big trades when they are nowhere near the Cup like they are now? The Wings have made trades over the years, not huge ones, but they have made trades. Actually, looking closer, Nathan Horton and Gregory Campbell (same trade) were the only players of those I listed that were acquired via trade. So the difference between how the Bruins approached building the team vs. the Red Wings is essentially one trade. Whoopty do.

Lol, ok. I guess the Wings should draft top 10 just so they can trade their top 10 pick for a 2nd rounder? The Wings can accomplish the same thing by trading back in the first round to acquire an additional 2nd round pick, like they did last year.

My point was that not all their top 10 picks were inconsequential to their team building like some have made it seem.

One trade? Yeah, only a huge gigantic one unlike anything Holland has pulled off post-cap.