That's really good to know. My intention was never to insult you guys.
The way I see it, last year's performance is unacceptable to any fan base (pace for 47). In most given year, worst teams get around 58-64 ish (I believe Buffalo had 54 on year it was criticized by people to be tanking for McDavid)? I could be wrong, but it shouldn't be far off
I earnestly feel last year was difficult to swallow.
No shit it's unacceptable. You'll have some of the more die hard "burn it to the ground" guys like "yeah, give me that sweet 1OA".
But the Wings had 47 points or were on pace for 47 points because they had a dogshit roster AND bad luck. They lost DeKeyser pretty early on. They lost Mantha right somewhere in the middle to Jake Muzzin wanting to be Jake the Snake Roberts. By the nature of missing DeKeyser and guys like Ericsson, Daley, and Green being pylons at best or riding buses in GR at worst, Filip Hronek as a rookie was our #1D and he's got his own defensive issues. By the nature of Mantha going AWOL after Muzzin mugged him, we had 2/3rds of a top line and a second line that had Robby Fabbri. Athanasiou's one trick didn't bring us any success this year. He showed he wasn't a 30 goal scorer.
Jimmy Howard had probably the worst season a "starting" goalie has ever had. 2-23-2, .880 something, 4.20 GAA. That's mindblowingly bad.
You can't just look at the numbers of wins and losses and compare to Buffalo and say "Oh, Detroit is too!" The Wings were a bad team going into the year that had bad injury luck during the year.
E: Just look at the signings this year. You'll poopoo them... But Bobby Ryan is a damn sight better than whatever shlock was in our third line wing spot (Helm, Nielsen, G. Smith, Perlini, Erne). Madison Bowey was a tirefire on D, so if Jon Merrill is remotely defensively responsible we upgraded there. Staal now is a better defenseman than Jonathan Ericsson or Trevor Daley (I know, that's not saying much). DeKeyser should be back healthy.
Vladislav Namestnikov should perform better than -45 and 24 points. This offseason was the Wings improving.
They were that loaded with dogshit contracts that were not signed to be rebuilding moves. If they had just signed guys like Daley? Sure. But those were moves made by a "stay competitive" Kenny Holland.
