Detroit Redwings Downfall

[NailsHoglander]

The quadrants are just usage. The Y axis is quality of competition based on relative CF%. The X axis is OZ starts (which is largely by overrated by people because it ignores the vast majority of starts being NZ or on the fly). So you don’t want your D to be in any of the quadrants because it doesn’t actually indicate how well they’re playing. What matters more is the color. Blue good. Orange bad. Blue top left be best as they’re playing well against top competition with fewer OZ starts.

Well that makes sense seeing Myers as the dark red dumpster fire ball that he is

 

[Pizza!Pizza!]

No matter how bad Detroit gets, we're still better than Chicago.

 

[Juha]

Just looking at Lyon's numbers alone - he's improved from a 3.04 and .904 to a 2.85 and a .908 and he's the number 2 guy.

Talbot was 2.50 and .913 on a team that played a 1-3-1 almost exclusively in LA. He's at 2.67 and .921 here with Detroit so clearly Lalonde has made some strides to the team's defensive game.

Derek has been running these systems:

OZP: 2-3 - they used to call this center lock or middle lock. Ron Wilson ran this system to a Stanley Cup appearance with the Caps back in 98.. 2 man pressure with D pinches down either wall to keep pucks alive.

OZP: Off-Puck Movement - Lalonde had been tailoring the offensive game to Kane's ability to hold the puck and create, with other players moving to create space and lanes. Debrincat just seems to get more lazy by the day and Kasper is an excellent choice to be the energy combined with his other skills... It's a lot for a young guy to carry two players that don't do anything off the puck.

Teams key on Larkin/Raymond so if others aren't going to score.. trouble. The bottom 6 is absolute shit and that's on Yzerman.

OZ FC: 2-3 where they aren't quite as aggressive with the D until a battle is created , if one is created. The Wings don't really have the personnel across the roster to be good at this.. I question whether they have the roster to make any system work.. it is a pile of generally incompatible parts.


All the systems below are actually working quite well, teams don't have free sailing at the Wings through the NZ . The D zone is generally decent overall.
NZ FC: 1-2-2 or 1-1-3
DZ BO: Weak-Side Winger Wide
DZC: Man on Man/Collapsing

I would like to see the coach that could do much better with this roster... maybe there is one and I guess we may see soon enough.

Great post. Very informative and interesting. Thank you.

 

[SympathyForTheDevils]

Draft picks alone won't make the Wings a contender. Something else has to go in their favor. Either someone steps up in a big way internally, they sign a free agent (which isn't as easy), or make a trade.

In TB, Point and Cirelli and Kuch were not first rounders. Drafted in rds 2 and 3 and became key and important pieces. As were the deals to bring in McDonaugh, Serg, and Cernak.

Hedman/Stamkos are better cornerstones than Raymond/Seider, but that's how the draft fell.

Agreed.

Frankly, I think all those bad teams saying they're "rebuilding through the draft" to justify sitting on their hands for years while the team is rotting are just f***ing themselves. The typical draft reward for a bottom-10 season is not Crosby or McDavid or Ovechkin; it's something like a future good player (top-6/top-4) and maybe a future depth piece. And to obtain that "prize" all they had to do was suck for an entire year. A year during which their older players get worse, and their younger players get one year closer to UFA. That process isn't a reliable way to build a contender, though it can work, if your drafting/development is really outstanding for a few years, or you're terrible for so long that you eventually luck into a superstar or two.

IMO active rebuilds have a better chance of success. Good GMs are constantly hunting for good pieces, and taking risks to obtain them. Look at Florida: they did the "basement team sitting on their hands" thing for a decade, and got their lottery picks, and some of those lottery picks became great players, and those players entered their prime, and... they still sucked. It didn't bring them anywhere. What turned them around was a mix of both brilliant low-cost acquisitions (Forsling, Montour, Bennet, Verhaeghe) and bigger swings that worked out (Reinhart trade, Tkachuk trade, Bobrovsky). NJ is another recent example of a pretty active rebuild that worked out well.

Despite criticizing him in this thread, I don't think Yzerman has really been terrible in Detroit, but I do think he's been too placid.