It seems like you don't disagree with me on many things... I guess perhaps my tone?
Choosing the worst posters of any fan base to generalize is never a good idea. I don't doubt we have a lot of Red Wings posters that are smug about other teams being in a perpetual rebuild, but why are you at all using that as a point to talk about? There are Red Wings fans making good points about why we aren't really worried about our rebuild thus far, but you're taking the worst of the worst to generalize the entire fan base. Obviously we have a bit of a losing culture because like you said, we haven't really done anything winning-wise in many years. No arguments from me there, other than I'm not sure why you would take the worst posters and paint the rest of us with that brush. The part about Larkin, not really sure what you're getting at. Should we have traded our young captain/best player just so we can maybe move up one draft slot? At some point you need to stick with the players you have, yeah?
Fair point about the worst posters, but I would say it does get mentioned quite a bit from quite a number of posters both here and elsewhere about "losing cultures", "perennial rebuilds" etc... and far from just naked fanbase bashing, it was really a lead-in to a lot of what I discussed regarding some of what I deemed a halfway approach in the rest of the post, with not being a "losing culture" mentioned. About Larkin specifically, he is a talented player that was extended throughout his UFA years. He is to date not a "winning player", which granted is not his fault, but when it comes to culture/teaching players to win etc. is rightfully or wrongfully not something he has much experience imparting as he hasn't seen much winning. Could they have traded him at high value? Should they have? I'm not saying there's easy answers here...
Who thinks the Red Wings are a young team? We're building to be able to bring in more and more young pieces, but if you're seeing people say that then why are you even entertaining the post? You know it's wrong, I know it's wrong, but again you're using these 1% of posters to say it's "popular belief". It's no secret that most of our young talent that we're hoping to be on the roster to compete with are developing to be more ready when they make the team vs throwing them to the wolves. Again, I don't really see the point you're trying to make other than trying to attack the fan base because of this "popular belief" that we're a young team, which can easily be proven against by just looking at the roster.
Perhaps nobody, but the discussion as it relates to Yzerman that comes back to the upward climb in the standings... it does seem to connect "Wings Yzerplan rebuild" with that, maybe even if just implicitly. Point there is that the Wings possibly making the playoffs is only slightly connected to recent draft picks/rebuild moves and a big chunk of it has to do with short/medium term veteran free agents.
So basically...what every single team, in every single sport, across every single time frame, has needed to ask themselves at some point? Nobody ever knows how their prospects are truly going to turn out. Ideally, yes they will upgrade the nhl vets that we have, that's the entire point of why we drafted the players, and it's why teams draft players in the first place. The HOPE that they pan out to be able to take a roster spot from somebody on the team. No, they won't all turn out how some of us are hoping. Some prospects will do better than any of us expected, some will do much worse than we expected. That's the reality of drafting and building a team in any sport, this isn't something unique to the Red Wings. As for the first part, I don't blame some posters for lashing out about the lotto luck. It gets extremely frustrating hearing all the time that we simultaneously didn't tank hard enough for top tier talent, while also not exiting the rebuild as soon as other fan bases wanted us to. I don't agree with some of the things people will say in response, but do keep in mind it gets a tad annoying hearing that constantly from other fans.
Yeah, of course, every team goes through the same thing. The better the better the odds of landing superstars. That's just the cold hard reality. When it comes to lotto luck, understood it was bad. However, that far from makes it a guarantee that it'll be bad going forward. I think it's fair to say the Wings did consciously make a decision to remove themselves for the running for top 5 draft capital the past couple years. Of course 1st is great, but it doesn't always need to be first, see like the Avalanche getting Makar at 4th overall). The lower you go, the harder the odds become of landing a superstar, and it's legitimate question as to whether the Wings will have enough high-end talent in their system. Of course all of this could one day be moot if they get their own versions of Vasilevskiy, Kucherov and Point in the last 1st, 2nd and 3rd round. Same can of course be said for any team regardless of where they are in the standings.
How do you suggest we should have gotten Bedard, Carlsson, Fantilli, or Celebrini? What's the point in accumulating talent for the future if as soon as these players start performing, we trade them for the next shiny toy? Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to get any of these players. But is the cost moving on from Larkin, Seider, Raymond, not acquiring Kane or Debrincat, just for a chance at drafting them? I'd say no, especially when as you already mentioned, we haven't exactly had great lottery luck. And from my pov it seems like Yzerman thought we had a lot of talent accumulated in the system and he wanted to start slowly turning around the course of the main roster. Ideally, the mixture that you mentioned is what happens. I think in a perfect world we have the right prospects at the right time taking over for the vets as they're leaving the team. That plan won't work perfectly, and nobody should pretend it will, because as we've already touched upon, prospects don't always work out. In saying that, I still feel more comfortable knowing there's at least a plan in place for the roster make up in a few years as opposed to just throwing away every season trying to go for the new shiny toy. To your last point, if we only have a couple prospects out of the bunch that we drafted that do anything, then that's a failure on Yzerman and our scouting/development department. But we aren't there yet, so it's hard to take your point seriously when you're just throwing out a (very negative) guess as to what the future will be for this team.
I do not believe that Seider and Raymond are so good that they are active tank blockers on their own, but of course can act as tank blockers when surrounded by a group of veterans such as the Wings the past couple years. The way to tank would have likely been to sign overpaid veterans for 1-2 year deals instead of solid veterans for 4-5 year deals. I agree that Yzerman did seem to decide that the talent accumulated in the system was in many ways good enough that it be allowed to ferment while the NHL roster be upgraded in the meantime. The accuracy of that approach is probably the thing that will most define his tenure in Detroit. I agree it's good to see a "plan", I can see the plan and described it below, I think there are genuine questions of whether it's the sort of plan that will result in a Cup contender or a team that is perennially "ok" for the next 5-10 years.
Going to ignore the first few sentences since it seems like you recognized half way through typing it that you didn't actually have a point. I am very curious as to your next point, though...who in the Red Wings organization wants a veteran playoff team right now? What possible moves have we made that could make any reasonable fan of the NHL think that's what we're going for right now? I guess if you looked very surface-level at some of the signings you might think that, but it should be pretty clear looking at the organizational makeup that they're more stop-gaps that aren't a detriment long-term. You even mentioned it in the next half of your sentence!! You need players on the NHL roster, you can't just throw in every prospect and aim for top draft picks year after year. So what's the issue with letting our prospects get more time so that they can have less of a struggle when they start to compete for an NHL spot? As somebody in the thread already mentioned, competition isn't a bad thing. I'd rather the top prospects know that if they aren't putting the work in to succeed. they won't take the spot from the veterans who have been putting in that work. To your last point, I actually slightly agree, but probably not in the way you're thinking. Larkin is turning 28 this year, and I would have loved to have him in his prime while we're competing for a cup. In that sense, some of these years are somewhat wasted. Except then you run into the issue of, how do we explain to our captain when it comes time to re sign that until all of our prospects are ready for the nhl, we won't add any help and will compete for a bottom 5 pick every year? Doesn't seem super helpful to the culture of the room, and from my pov I think it would be more beneficial to them to see some sort of progress, whether to help the team bond together to try to reach new heights or to at least give them some hope that they're not stuck on a bottom-feeding team. In that regard, I think this season has been pretty successful. I didn't think we'd contend for a playoff spot for the next two years, and while I would have loved higher draft picks in those years leading up to it, I'd also rather have a few years where we can plug in more prospects over time and get them used to play meaningful games, instead of the season ending for the players (since why would the players care about a high draft pick) within a few months of the season starting.
Point at the start was pondering various options. As far as a veteran playoff team, maybe ownership? They certainly cared a lot about that postseason streak, it's difficult to say as we aren't privvy to those conversations but it wouldn't be the first time an ownership group said "we'd like to see a bit more on ice progress" after the frustrations with some of those early rebuild (when Holland was still GM) draft selections not pan out. The culture/room/competitive landscape, etc. that all sort of circles back to my original point. I guess I'm skeptical of that. In successful rebuilds, we see teams be bad until they aren't, often through an interjection of elite high-end talent (often acquired with high draft picks). When rebuilds aren't successful, I think there's a kneejerk reaction to say "ah, bad culture, too much losing, that's what did them in"... when maybe the talent drafted just wasn't good enough. Anyways we're not in the room, I think for instance, the 2023-24 Blackhawks have had a pretty decent culture (a guy like Nick Foligno taking a de-facto captain role and taking it upon himself to be Bedard's mentor, players mostly playing hard night in and out - not that they have much choice when they are scraping by to stay in the League, better performing veterans like Jason Dickinson being eager to re-sign instead of looking to book a one-way ticket out to a better team, etc.) but of course there's frustration during extended losing streaks like you'd expect...so I think the whole culture thing really ebbs and flows based on given teams and isn't entirely tied to a team's spot in the standings.
