I think the reason he's playing well is because he isn't playing that much. He's playing 17.5 minutes a night and is on the 2nd unit of the PK. He shouldn't be playing much more than that.
GDT: Battle for last (Buffalo 7 PM)
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I think the reason he's playing well is because he isn't playing that much. He's playing 17.5 minutes a night and is on the 2nd unit of the PK. He shouldn't be playing much more than that.
Mount Suribachi
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Exactly. This team was a perennial 8 seed with one of the best coaches in hockey. Take him away, and take away our 3 best players - what do you expect?
jkutswings
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Relative to last season, you can point to several downgrades in talent, but the head coach (mediocre as he is) hasn't changed.
I agree that Blashill is doing a bad job, but it's not his fault that they STILL don't have defensemen slotted according to talent, or that their best forward has been injured for this losing streak, or that Mrazek is going through yet another Jekyll and Hyde routine.
They haven't had the talent to win a Cup for at least 3 years, probably more like 5, and each year the slide continues. Bring on the lottery and fix this thing the right way.
I won't call 'em a good team. But I don't consider them being a talentless bunch of players either. To me the coach is not less of a problem than the roster.
Especially the blueline is not good at all. But many decisions & the lack of a working game plan make it even harder.
If we won't make the playoffs, it's too bad that our roster is - despite of his coaching - still too good to finish dead last and get some nice picks.
Especially the blueline is not good at all. But many decisions & the lack of a working game plan make it even harder.
If we won't make the playoffs, it's too bad that our roster is - despite of his coaching - still too good to finish dead last and get some nice picks.
Why? Ouellet is a dime a dozen and hasn't been great. Getting him in the game does nothing more than microscopically progress his painstaking improvement, if he's even had any. Smith, on the other hand, needs games so he can be pitched at the deadline. And before anyone says Smith has no value, just cut it out. Junk defenseman have been landing picks at the deadline for years. Cory Cross anybody?
References:
Larsen got a 5th.
Kindl got a 6th.
Mike ****ing Weber got a 3rd.
Justin Schultz, who probably had the worst PR of any player I can remember last season, got a 3rd.
Marincin got a 4th.
Eric "Last Legs" Brewer got a 3rd.
Nick Schultz got a 5th.
Meszaros, after barely having a place in the league anymore, got a 3rd.
The league started a week late this year due to the World Cup, so the target point this season is about December 1st.
Pavels Dog
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Compare our roster to some that Babcock had the last few years. He got more out of a team that had Legwand as the #1C, Sheahan as the #2C, Andersson as the #3C and Emmerton(?) or some garbage like that as the #4C than Blashill is getting out of this team.
Pavels Dog
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For a while, Sheahan/Andersson took turns as our #1C, then Legwand came in for a bit. Probably close to 20-30 games without Z or Dats? Definitely AT LEAST as many games as we've played so far this season. So if we can't make any conclusions from a stretch like that, we can't make any conclusions about this season either.Holy strawman. How many games was that for?
ArGarBarGar
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Most people are extending this season from the last couple of seasons where the team has gotten worse, their top players have gotten older/retired, and the young players have yet to make enough of an impact to pick up the slack.
The current iteration of the Wings should be of no surprise to anyone. Top it off with an inexperienced coach and you get a potential bottom-feeder if the stars align.
we are at around the same number of games played at this point as last season. may have started a week late but the schedule is just compressed a little bit more. season ends second weekend in april like it does every non olympic year
How many bad teams are actually a talentless bunch?
Arizona has a whole host of young skill, along with Duclair, Domi, and OEL.
The Isles have Tavares, Leddy, Nelson, Strome, Hamonic...
The Avs have MacKinnon, Landeskog, Duchene, Johnson, Barrie, Rantanen, Soderberg...
Calgary has Gaudreau, Giordano, Hamilton, Brodie, Frolik, Tkachuk, Bennett, Monahan...
And, of course, the worst team of the past decade had talent coming out of their ears.
Considering how many coaches have done **** poor with talent, and how many coaches have been replaced with other coaches, only to do very little, you can make a pretty strong argument that its not so much talent or coaching as it is how well the team is structured.
As of now, the Wings have a lot of small, skilled "talent." Our big players either don't have much talent or are still figuring out the game. Our veteran goal scorers, sans Vanek, are all tiny. Our centers are either slow and skilled or fast and, again, still figuring things out. Our defense is a mixed bag of defensive defenseman who aren't that great as defense and offensive forwards who aren't that great at offense (sans Green) and one rookie who, again, is figuring it out.
So what is the system that some coach is going to get out of this team? We don't have the defense to play a defensive style (especially in terms of how weak our top 9 forwards are defensively), and even if we played the simplest game possible, we don't have the forwards who can make up for it. We can't play a run-and-gun style - we don't have the PMDs for it. We can't play a crash-and-bang style, we don't have skilled big boys nor any snipers. We can't play a puck possession game - we suck at possession.
There is very little this team can do cohesively not so much of the lack of talent but because of where we lack the talent. A coach isn't going to be able to change that.
jkutswings
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Mike Babcock is a better coach than Jeff Blashill. The current roster is also less talented than when Babcock coached here.
In other news... water is wet.
Embrace the suck, regardless of what percentage of the pie each factor causes. High-end talent is the only way out of this, and high draft picks are the statistically best way to acquire high-end talent.
Go Buffalo.
In other news... water is wet.
Embrace the suck, regardless of what percentage of the pie each factor causes. High-end talent is the only way out of this, and high draft picks are the statistically best way to acquire high-end talent.
Go Buffalo.
Unfriendly Ghost
Kasper
Are the Wings trying to showcase Mantha? This is... unlike them. And it's unlike Blashill in particular, who has never seemed very impressed with Mantha.
Frk It
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That was the center rotation in 12-13 when Dats and Z were hurt, as far as I can remember.
KasperTheGrittyGhost
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Mount Suribachi
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Well, as I already pointed out, Babcock is one of the top-3 coaches in the game, many peoples choice for #1. Almost any other coach would be a downgrade from there. And FWIW, I though Babs deserved the Jack Adams that year.
And yeah, 13-14 we had a lot of injuries. Yeah Dats and Z missed a lot of games. But look at the roster we had
Datsyuk - 45Gp, 37 PTS
Zetterberg - 45GP, 48 PTS
Franzen - 54GP, 41 PTS
Alfredsson - 68GP, 49 PTS
Nyquist Explosion - 57GP, 48 PTS
Kronwall - 79GP, 49 PTS.
So, despite missing them for long stretches, we still had two #1C's. Far better than any C on our current roster.
That years Franzen was on fire, Alfie was a joy to watch despite his 41 year old back, and Nyquist Explosion was electric. All three were better than any forward on our roster now.
Kronwall was brilliant that year, arguably his finest season as a Wing. And far better than any D on our roster now.
That team had five forwards and a defenceman better than then players on our current roster. I'd take 45 games of Datsuk and Zetterberg over 80 games of Nielsen and broken down Zetterberg.
And despite having a far superior coach, and far superior talent, where did that team finish? 93 points, and 8th. If that's getting "more" with a clearly superior roster, then getting the "average" with the same roster would be missing the playoffs. So where do you think getting the average with an even worse roster leaves us?
We don't have a top 2 defencemen. Some would consider Mike Green our best defencemen right now, yeah? He was a #5 on a team who had a good blueline in Washington his last season there. Whatever Dekeyser is, he may be a #3 at his best. Realistically he's a 4 (Brad Stuart type of role).
Up front, we don't have anything remotely close to resembling an elite forward. Several teams have 2-3 forwards better than anything we have. Our two elite forwards are no longer and nobody is coming close to replacing them at the moment.
Goalies are a crapshoot to me, but you have to have something elite in the other two categories to be legitimate contenders.
Pronger/Neidermeyer (2 of the top 3 defencemen at the time)
Lidstrom/Datsyuk/Zetteberg
Crosby/Malkin
Keith/Kane/Toews/Hossa
Chara/Bergeron/(Thomas)
Doughty/Kopitar/(Quick)
Those are the core pieces that have won the last 10 Cups. You can go back much further and it's almost always the same story (outside of a few anomalies.) You need elite players to win. Elite.
Teams have had elite pieces and still never won in that time frame as well (Vancouver/SJ/TB.) But with those pieces that were at least legit contenders.
We do not have elite players (let alone 1) and thus we are not contenders. And at the moment we are far from it.
That's why it boggles my mind/makes me giggle how some of you are barking up the wrong tree with a vengeance. None of it really matters until we have elite pieces.
Holy strawman. How many games was that for?
What a crock.
Detroit went without Datsyuk and Zetterberg for 21 games total that season. And their record with Sheahan/Andersson getting the top 2 center spots was 1-4-1. Their record was 9-9-3 during those games, with 6 of their wins coming against non-playoff teams and 3 of those wins coming against the 2 worst teams in the NHL at the time.
And that was with the World's Best Coach at the helm.
Edit: Actually, it was rarely Sheahan or Andy as the 1C. Frannzen was the one slotted as the 1C for the majority of the games without Z and D.
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I wasn't arguing about contending actually. Discussion was just about making the playoffs.
And combine our roster with a coach like Blash and the streak coming to an end is what you most likely get.
Sheriff Bert
Blash is Trash
If we can't win tonight, it's about time we tear it down. Holland needs to realize that we cannot compete anymore with the same model that worked for him 8 years ago. The league has gotten younger, faster, and more skilled. While we have some players with promise, they can't convert on the opportunities.
We should go into the new arena with a bright future. Get a D prospect that will actually amount to something, phase out the long term, high risk contracts on "Holland Guys". Hell, let's get a new GM and coach altogether if they don't want to comply. I would be pretty upset if I was moving my team into a beautiful new arena if they weren't going to be able to compete.
It's going to be a brutal night if the Wings lose in my home town. My friends will never let me hear the end of it.
We should go into the new arena with a bright future. Get a D prospect that will actually amount to something, phase out the long term, high risk contracts on "Holland Guys". Hell, let's get a new GM and coach altogether if they don't want to comply. I would be pretty upset if I was moving my team into a beautiful new arena if they weren't going to be able to compete.
It's going to be a brutal night if the Wings lose in my home town. My friends will never let me hear the end of it.
Chance on Chance
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