Would you sign a petition to replace Ken Holland?

[Unfriendly Ghost]

Point is its a good collection of wingers who are prime aged (or younger) and have track records of scoring goals.

Fixed.

But you have to admit, winger is the least valuable position in today's game. It's nice, but only having great talent on the wing is a difficult way to win.

and, personally, I'm not ready to pencil Larkin in as a scoring line center until he shows me in the NHL. I'm a massive fan, but it's a wait and see thing for me. Center is more than just being faster and working harder than your opponent. It's a much more nuanced position, and playing scoring line center in the NHL is a tremendously tough job.

 

[A1Portable]

And pray tell, just who do you think built the 2008 Detroit Red Wings? You do realise the cap era didn't start in 2010??

The 2008 team was built with star players signed before the implementation of the salary cap in 2005-06. As those contracts have expired, the salary cap has prevented Holland from replacing those free agents with other free agents, as he used to do before the implementation of the salary cap.

Now that there is a salary cap, Holland has to build the Wings primarily through the draft, and Holland has demonstrated with his inept drafting that he cannot build a championship team in the salary cap era. Holland is also terrible at making trades and deciding when not to re-sign aging players. As a result, the Wings have been in slow, steady decline for several years.

 

[kabidjan18]

This is like the "we need to miss the playoffs!!!!" thread...

14 teams wish they could've made the playoffs, 1 is whining "dang it we made it a 25th time in a row..."

100% of fanbases have fan sections who hate their team's GMs because fans love to rush to judgment without all the information. Rings don't satisfy people, peek at the Blackhawks thread after every regular season game they lose, Holland's work speaks for itself, some of ya'll cats will never be satisfied and that's cool, I think most of us don't mind making the playoffs though...

 

[Shaman464]

This is like the "we need to miss the playoffs!!!!" thread...

14 teams wish they could've made the playoffs, 1 is whining "dang it we made it a 25th time in a row..."

100% of fanbases have fan sections who hate their team's GMs because fans love to rush to judgment without all the information. Rings don't satisfy people, peek at the Blackhawks thread after every regular season game they lose, Holland's work speaks for itself, some of ya'll cats will never be satisfied and that's cool, I think most of us don't mind making the playoffs though...

Yeah, those 5 games and 4 loses really made me happy.

 

[kabidjan18]

Yeah, those 5 games and 4 loses really made me happy.

Well would you rather be watching some other team on the screen during playoff time?

Some people really don't seem to get that hitting the restart button is literally, hitting the restart button. Lottery teams hit the restart button every 2 years. When you scrap everyone, and you "restart", you literally "restart." The restart button isn't some acceleration pedal, the restart game is turning off your console without saving and starting the level all over again. There's no reason to restart and not be in playoff, yes playoff, contention for years. We're about 2 trades and 2 prospects growing up from being a great team, or, there's the very attractive idea of dumping all our assets and cycling through a series of truly inept GMs and become the next Toronto, begging our teams to lose for the lottery...

 

[jkutswings]

I would be perfectly content with The Detroit Red Wings missing the playoffs for the next 5 years in a row, provided I saw what I believed to be an accumulation of young talent at all positions that had reasonable odds of turning into mostly very good, and occasionally elite players. That's called BUILDING.

What they're doing now is DECAYING, because Datsyuk is gone, Zetterberg and Kronwall SHOULD be gone, Richards and Quincey aren't worth bringing back, Franzen and Ericsson are (for different reasons) on bad contracts, and guys like Tatar and Nyquist have essentially reached a plateau of above-averageness.

COULD Larkin and Mrazek and Athanasiou and Mantha BECOME a major portion of the next core? Sure, but none of those players are a sure thing, and even if they do all pan out, it won't be for at least another 2-3 years. By then, the Wings will be missing the playoffs anyway, so why delay the inevitable, when you could be stocking up on better draft picks, to have everybody hit their prime at the same time?

It's baffling to me, why people would want to continue to tread water, when the track record is very clear that they have absolutely no shot at DOING ANYTHING once they get into the playoffs. Just rip off the band-aid and go full-on for the future. I'm not saying you go scorched earth on 100% of the roster, but there are several vets that just don't have a place here anymore, so stop prolonging the inevitable.

 

[jkutswings]

Well would you rather be watching some other team on the screen during playoff time?

I was actively rooting for Tampa Bay, if that gives you any perspective on how certain I am that this team needs to rebuild.

 

[kabidjan18]

I would be perfectly content with The Detroit Red Wings missing the playoffs for the next 5 years in a row, provided I saw what I believed to be an accumulation of young talent at all positions that had reasonable odds of turning into mostly very good, and occasionally elite players. That's called BUILDING.

This is you in a nutshell and it's extremely ignorant. You're rooting for a team in the National Hockey league, the highest and most lucrative hockey league in the world and soon to be a league with more than 30 teams. You call people out for assuming that our prospects will develop, but you make the ludicrous assumption that if we give it 5 years (or any definite range of time), we will have a championship contender. As long as we hit restart and give it a little time, everything will be good.

Ken Holland is fired. Another GM is hired to replace him, and by luck or by lack of skill, this GM is a poor GM. He may only stay for two years, but the damage is done. Edmonton hasn't seen the playoffs in 10 years, Carolina in 7, Toronto has made it once in 13 years and not this year, Florida hasn't beat the first round in 18 years, Winnipeg 15, Columbus 14, Buffalo 8, Colorado 7, Arizona has been past the first round once in 19 years, New Jersey has been to the playoffs once in the past 6 years (5 years ago) and been past the first round only that once in 9 years.

There is no guarantee, and there never is in any competitive business that simply throwing time at something will create an upward trajectory.

We can either begin to rebuild, replace, and retool internally, as a perennial powerhouse should, or we could walk the route of the teams named above. I personally prefer the former, and from your poll it seems that people who prefer the former make up the majority.

 

[SoupNazi]

We don't need a bunch of parallel threads discussing Holland's work.