Tyler Wright: Red Wings trying to be trend setters at draft

Redder Winger

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Good f***ing hell.
But it's hard to look at the Red Wings 2017 draft class and say it fits that identity of skill and speed, the foundation on which the Red Wings championship teams were built. There was a lot of size, character and players who compete. Wright explained the reason why.

“When the Penguins come in and go small, with speed and no one can catch them, everyone tries to play catch up,” Wright said, defending the 2017 draft. “Where is the NHL going? We're on the other side of that. We're trying to be trend setters.”
The stakes are high for Tyler Wright, and the Red Wings

Crazy stuff.
 

jkutswings

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I understand the concept of starting a new trend, rather than chasing an existing one, but with the way the league continues to legislate physical play out of the product, it reduces part of the advantage of size more and more with each passing year.

I mean sure, big skilled guys will, on average, match up well against small skilled guys. But big skilled guys are the complete players that EVERYBODY wants, and are usually snatched up at the very top of the draft anyway.

Today's NHL is never allowing a return to something as extreme as Philadelphia's Broad Street Bullies, and I think a small guy with speed and skill will, on average, have a better chance at panning out than a big guy whose skills are less certain.
 

newfy

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I think a lot of fans were saying this at the past draft. At least theyre building towards an identity of some kind. As for the no more Broad Street Bullies thing, ya thats true. But a team like the 07 Ducks, 2011 Bruins etc can still win in todays league. Theyre drafting size but not all big slow players. Mantha has wheels, Rasmussen was one of the fastest at the combine etc.
 

BinCookin

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I understand the concept of starting a new trend, rather than chasing an existing one, but with the way the league continues to legislate physical play out of the product, it reduces part of the advantage of size more and more with each passing year.

I mean sure, big skilled guys will, on average, match up well against small skilled guys. But big skilled guys are the complete players that EVERYBODY wants, and are usually snatched up at the very top of the draft anyway.

Today's NHL is never allowing a return to something as extreme as Philadelphia's Broad Street Bullies, and I think a small guy with speed and skill will, on average, have a better chance at panning out than a big guy whose skills are less certain.

I mean i wanted to run 4 scoring lines for years... its clearly not in line with anyone in the NHL, and maybe their is an obvious reason why not. I do not know if tyler is the one who pushed for Rasmussen... but maybe avoiding slow players is a bigger issue than just getting the fastest players... plus AA and Larkin are already fast enough.
 

Claypool

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I think a small guy with speed and skill will, on average, have a better chance at panning out than a big guy whose skills are less certain.
What data are you using to make this claim?

According to NHL.com of the 777 skaters that played an NHL game this season only 88 of them are 5'10 or under. Of the 76 goalies that planed an NHL game this season only 8 are 6'0 or under.
 

jkutswings

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What data are you using to make this claim?

According to NHL.com of the 777 skaters that played an NHL game this season only 88 of them are 5'10 or under. Of the 76 goalies that planed an NHL game this season only 8 are 6'0 or under.
I think we have different definitions of 'small' and 'pan out'. I didn't mean guys who just make it into the NHL, but players who genuinely make an impact, since that's what we need from Wright, regardless of strategy.

Thea average height of a human male today is 5'10". The average height of an NHL player is 6'1". Just doing a quick check of top 10 scoring, it ranges all the way from Johnny Gaudreau at 5'9, to Blake Wheeler at 6'5", with several players at the 6'1" average.

So no, a guy at 5'4" likely isn't going to be a professional hockey player, but I wasn't talking about that degree of extremes. My point was that skilled players of any size within a deviation or two on the bell curve will do just fine. I mean, a decade ago, I don't think a guy like Cam Atkinson would've even made most rosters, let alone be coming off a 35-27-62 season.

Every year it seems like 1-2 guys get drafted early because they're skyscrapers, even though they have major red flags in their game, and those players have a very very high bust rate. If I'm using a first round pick (and likely a top 5-10 one, at that), I'm taking the guy with the most skill, whether he's 5'10", 6'2", or 6'6".
 

Winger98

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In the end, you have to have skill to win. Everything else is just window dressing. Want to bring up the Ducks being big? Yeah, but part of that bigness were two Norris caliber D, a Vezina caliber goalie, and an elite center. They didn't win because of their size or style, they won because they had premium skill at the positions that matter. Ditto Boston. Ditto LA.

We won with two smaller centers and Lidstrom because the ability was there. Chicago has won with Toews, Kane, and Keith. That has been the problem with Rasmussen and the last draft in general. They aren't necessarily bad players, but none look to be the sort of horse needed. Personally, I would love to see Rasmussen progress and become a big, game changing #1 center (or high end second line center), but it's going to look bad if a guy like Vilardi or Liljegren do it and Rasmussen settles into a third line center/PP specialist.
 

jkutswings

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Some interesting data on the size of current top 2018 prospects, according to Tankathon:

The top 5 overall range from 5'11" to 6'2", with an average of 6'1".
The top 10 overall range from 5'9" to 6'2", with an average of 6'0".
The entire (31 player) first round ranges from 5'9" to 6'5", with an average of 6'1".
 

turkleton85

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In the end, you have to have skill to win. Everything else is just window dressing. Want to bring up the Ducks being big? Yeah, but part of that bigness were two Norris caliber D, a Vezina caliber goalie, and an elite center. They didn't win because of their size or style, they won because they had premium skill at the positions that matter. Ditto Boston. Ditto LA.

We won with two smaller centers and Lidstrom because the ability was there. Chicago has won with Toews, Kane, and Keith. That has been the problem with Rasmussen and the last draft in general. They aren't necessarily bad players, but none look to be the sort of horse needed. Personally, I would love to see Rasmussen progress and become a big, game changing #1 center (or high end second line center), but it's going to look bad if a guy like Vilardi or Liljegren do it and Rasmussen settles into a third line center/PP specialist.


i don't want to go into this direction again, because i actually start to like rasmussen as a prospect, but you could also add that vilardi himself is in the size range of kopitar and barkov, not small by any means
 

TheMule93

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There is no one way to win a cup. Detroit wins a cup and suddenly the trend is puck possession. Chicago won similarly. LA and Boston win cups and suddenly you need to be big and heavy to win a cup. Pittsburg wins a cup and suddenly you need to be super fast.

Just get good players and whatever their playstyle is will be your "trend". Look no further than Edmonton... McDavid comes in and is a super fast player, suddenly that is their perceived team identity despite most of the rest of the roster not being particularly fast.

Its stupid for Wright to target size like this. Target actual good players instead, please.
 

turkleton85

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There is no one way to win a cup. Detroit wins a cup and suddenly the trend is puck possession. Chicago won similarly. LA and Boston win cups and suddenly you need to be big and heavy to win a cup. Pittsburg wins a cup and suddenly you need to be super fast.

Just get good players and whatever their playstyle is will be your "trend". Look no further than Edmonton... McDavid comes in and is a super fast player, suddenly that is their perceived team identity despite most of the rest of the roster not being particularly fast.

Its stupid for Wright to target size like this. Target actual good players instead, please.


agree. Wright sure sounds selfish and naive - you set a trend by winning. Until then, i would keep my mouth shut because you look like a fool and probably have a hard time getting a new job when it backfires
 

Dotter

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So what does Wright do, he picks a 6'1" center who is currently ranked the fastest skater in the NHL and is our best player with 29 points in 34 games. How dare he draft those kind of "trend setters" -bums for this team!? Clearly there was a 5'9" guy available who is better! Clearly!

And what the hell was he thinking, he drafted Svech instead of the much needed Dman when the amazing Noah Juulsen was available.

Honestly, I think many here are taking comments out of context and using it to have something to complain about during our wonderful "down time" with the xmas break coming up after tomorrow. Like @TheMule93 said, any team that wins a cup is a "trend setter". No one "type" of team wins the cup. It's a mixture of talent and horses. I think Larkin is talented. I think Cholo is talented. I think Svech is talented and I think Ram is talented. I believe they are all being groomed to be top players to help round out the core... who all [hopefully] bring something special to the team.

Another "what have you done for me lately" thread since Larkin was picked 3 years ago and Cholo, Svech and Ram aren't on the team yet?
 

Pavels Dog

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I don't see him saying that they're chasing size and only size and nothing else but size. Trying to be trend setters is absolutely the way to go, and I've been saying it for a while. If we're building a team of small, skilled forwards we need to actually acquire more skill than teams like Edmonton, Toronto, Winnipeg and a few others that have been tanking and have landed generational talents. Do we really think Martin Necas will line up as the #1C against Matthews, McDavid or Crosby and come out on top? It may be equally silly to think Rasmussen could do it, but at least he has some tools that those guys don't have and never CAN have. Same thing with Larkin, his speed and exceptional work ethic is on track to making him the kind of player that's a pain to play against. Sure there are others that have more fancy hands, but Zetterberg didn't shut down Crosby because he has fancy hands.
The real way to win is to find what other teams could be overlooking. Like how some teams recognized Russia was being overlooked a bit and landed players like Kucherov and Tarasenko. Like how Nashville seems to corner the market on D-men.
Dylan Larkin was being overlooked because he was playing behind Eichel and people didn't see his skill for his speed. He's now looking fantastic. Time will tell in regards to other picks but people are blatantly misrepresenting our drafting if they say it's all about size. Cholowski was undersized, Hronek was undersized, Saarijarvi, and we've picked up Hicketts as well. It seems we MIGHT be building more on size, speed and grit up front, but saying Mantha/Svech/Larkin/Ras don't have skill seems false.

Try something that other teams aren't trying and either you'll crash and burn or you could become the team that others then try to follow. But trying to just do exactly what everyone else is doing is how you become a mediocre team that doesn't quite have the tools to set yourself apart from the pack but you're doing enough of what others are doing that you're not terrible either.
 

Bench

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This is a template teams have tried to capture for years. As people have said: Ducks and Kings were the darlings of the NHL copycat until the new speed shift.
 

Lampedampe

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I've Always always seen the 2017 draft as a draft where red wings just went for big needs. We lacked big bodies on the back-end, they went and got a plethora of those. We needed centres, and especially size down the middle, they went and got it.

If you look at recent drafts they've gone for speedy and skilled players, defensemen especially. But you can't just have those players, I'm a true believer that you need big and tough guys to enable the small and skilled, winning puck battles, tire out the opponent etc.

I will say however that I'm not the biggest fan of the 2017 draft but I do a 100% understand and accept what they were going for.
 

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