Steve Yzerman is not a good GM.

[Albatros]

What did he inherit five years ago?

Bertuzzi-Larkin-Mantha
Helm-Glendening-Athanasiou
Hirose-Nielsen-Ehn
Abdelkader-Rasmussen-De la Rose

DeKeyser-Hronek
Daley-Green
Cholowski-Bowey

Howard
Bernier

Prospects: Zadina, Veleno, Larsson, Lindström, McIsaac, Kivenmäki

Compared to now...

DeBrincat-Larkin-Raymond
Tarasenko-Compher-Kane
Rasmussen-Copp-Berggren
Motte-Veleno-Fischer

Chiarot-Seider
Edvinsson-Petry
Määttä-Gustafsson

Talbot
Lyon

Prospects: Sandin-Pellikka, Kasper, Danielson, Brandsegg-Nygård, Cossa, Augustine, Mazur, Wallinder, Söderblom, Johansson, Plante

I get the criticism of some individual moves, but overall that's really solid especially given their lack of top draft picks.

 

[Mr Positive]

I do wonder if the futures of teams like Montreal, Detroit, Buffalo and Ottawa are really so bright. As an Oiler fan I've seen a rebuild spinning it's wheels. It raises the question about when the expectations go up. How much leash does Yzerman have in terms of getting his team into the playoffs? Do his defenders turn against him if the Wings miss this year? Does he have until 2026?

 

[Bleedred]

Based on the kind program Steve Yzerman built in Tampa, I would have imagined the Detroit build to have looked more like the young, high octane New Jersey Devils of today than what he's got in Detroit. At the very least, the whole build looks like it's missing that signature Jack Hughes type offensive star in the role of the next Yzerman, to go along with Mo Seider on defense. So stylistically it doesn't seem to be there, and it's missing that star power that you'd expect from a reborn Red Wings program.

That said, I also think the margin between genius and mediocre can be quite thin. For a lot of years it didn't really look like Jim Nill was doing anything particularly noteworthy in Dallas. Until it became apparent he hit on a number of lottery tickets from the 2017 draft and ended up securing Heiskanen, Oettinger and Robertson in one weekend of work. Detroit has bought a lot of lottery tickets over the years. Don't know if it'll all pan out though.

I honestly think they would have been better off finishing badly enough the last three years (particularly the two years before this last one) instead of just skirting NHL.500 all year. They may have been able to get that superstar forward.

Between that and the fact that Yzerman keeps splurging on weirdo UFA signings is enough to really criticize him. It's not the fact that the team isn't good enough yet.

 

[tucker3434]

GM’s are given too much credit and blame. Their job is 80% luck. Be smart like Joe Sakic and retire a genius or you’ll eventually end up looking like an idiot.

 

[theVladiator]

At the end of 16/17 MacKinnon's career high was 63 points his rookie year and Rantanen was coming off a 22 point season. They also lost the lottery going from first to fourth that season.

This idea that the Avs were already a formed contender is laughable. None of their important players had become difference makers on the ice at that point.


I never said it did. But that 16/17 team was far from what they are now.

Also keep in mind MacKinnon's career high in points by 16/17 was 63 and Rantanen's was 22. Neither one was even close to the players they are today.

The growth in the 17/18 season is when MacKinnon and Rantanen became true impact players.

I do not think anybody claimed here that Avs were already a formed contender in 16-17. People are just pointing out Avs have started on their rebuild road quite a few years prior to that. Avs made the playoffs 3 times from 06-07 to 16-17. How can people say their rebuild started in 16-17 and keep a straight face?

 

[OccidentalOctopus]

Is it that time of the year again already?

What an absolute troll thread.

 

[Lazlo Hollyfeld]

That sounds like a whole lot of nothing.

What concerns me with Detroit is that teams on the same timeline as them such as NJ are already competing, and now teams that have begun rebuilding recently like CHI and SJS are leapfrogging over them in the rebuild. When is it going to be Detroit's window to win? It's going to be Bedard's and Celebrini's league before you know it.

As i see it, Detroit is heading slow and steady towards bubble team territory.

Oh yes those GMs did a masterful job at using their #1 picks to take talents like Bedard and Celebrini.

If only Yzerman hadn't pissed away the Wing's #1 pick and used it to draft a talent like Bedard instead....

 

[T REX]

It hasn't been a great performance with him at the helm, but to be fair, Detroit has had awful lottery luck. They spent a lot of the last decade being terrible and have zero top 3 picks to show for it.

Hard to turn around a team in a rebuild when you get that sorta luck.

This right here...They had zero lottery luck. None. So, he's a bad GM? SMDH.

JBB wouldn't have won jack without Yzerman stocking the shelves. He'd have a job the day after he was fired in Detroit.

 

[T REX]

In Tampa, he inherited 20 year old Stamkos and Hedman, along with MSL and Lecavalier, and got lucky enough to draft Kucherov at 58OA his second year in the job, got Vasi at 19OA the following year, and Point two years later at 79OA. Seems to me that it's much easier to covince someone to play for your team when you own their rights for the first 7 years after drafting them.

Yeah...all luck. SMDH. He was "lucky". LOL.

I can't...seriously...

 

[IWantSakicAsMyGM]

2017 is used because it is the 48 point season that's about as low as it gets.

Yzerman never started with a team THAT bad.

They were a 48 point team because their head coach rage quit in August, and then their 1D and 1G both were injured for most of the year, not because there was a complete lack of talent requiring a rebuild. If anything, they were already multiple years into the build by that point, but with everything going on it was a perfect storm that led to the team being a dumpster fire. But they still had someone like Duchene that they could trade for a haul, while keeping what quickly became the best line in hockey (Landy-Mack-Rantanen).

Yzerman started his tenure in Detroit with Dylan Larkin, and not much more that's worth more than a 2nd.

 

[EpochLink]

It’s gonna be a party ya’ll

 

[Frank Drebin]

This right here...They had zero lottery luck. None. So, he's a bad GM? SMDH.

JBB wouldn't have won jack without Yzerman stocking the shelves. He'd have a job the day after he was fired in Detroit.

If it wasn't luck that he was able to draft a HOF Conn Smythe and multiple art ross winner with his second pick, third round in 2011, a HOF, conn smythe and vezina winner with his second pick in the first round in 2012 and an all star 50 goal scorer with his fourth selection, third round in 2014 that skill should have surface since in the past decade, yes?

Vasi, Kuch and Point were drafted at 19, 58 and 79 respectively. Yzerman has picked earlier than 19 every single year since he joined the Wings. Where are the superstars?

Yeah he drafted a good supporting cast but without those three fluke picks there would be no cups in tampa.

 

[FissionFire]

The Avs went from 48 points to Cup champs in five years. How many more years does Yzerman need?

I mean that team already had a 1st overall (MacKinnon) and 2nd overall (Landeskog) and Rantanan (10th overall) on the roster, all under 25 to build around. Yzerman’s best player was Larkin, who isn’t even in the same conversation as those guys. The highest drafted player on the roster he inherited was Zadina at 6th overall who was already trending into bust territory. Nobody else on that team was picked higher than Larkin at 15. People really don’t get how dreadfully barren the roster he took over was.

 

[IWantSakicAsMyGM]

Yeah...all luck. SMDH. He was "lucky". LOL.

I can't...seriously...

With some of those draft picks, he absolutely was lucky. Am I supposed to believe that he somehow knew Kucherov would be the best winger of this era, and still chose Namestnikov in the 1st round? Or did Kucherov blow past even the most generous projections, because the Bolts had some luck on their side?

And Point fell to the third round, and was the 4th player picked by the Bolts. Were they just biding their time, since they knew everyone else was going to pass on Point, or did they get lucky that he developed the way he did?

 

[zar]

Take away his no-state income tax advantage and he “all of a sudden” falls from grace.

Shocker.

 

[Ezekial]

If it wasn't luck that he was able to draft a HOF Conn Smythe and multiple art ross winner with his second pick, third round in 2011, a HOF, conn smythe and vezina winner with his second pick in the first round in 2012 and an all star 50 goal scorer with his fourth selection, third round in 2014 that skill should have surface since in the past decade, yes?

Vasi, Kuch and Point were drafted at 19, 58 and 79 respectively. Yzerman has picked earlier than 19 every single year since he joined the Wings. Where are the superstars?

Yeah he drafted a good supporting cast but without those three fluke picks there would be no cups in tampa.

Still took 9 years after he drafted Kuch, 8 years after he drafted Vasi at 19 and 6 years after he drafted Point for them to win that cup. So maybe it's still early to say he's bad or only drafted supporting cast players.

 

[MTL Dirty Birdy]

I mean as an average hockey fan that doesn’t know much about how the team looked when he inherited the GM position, yeah one could say he hasn’t had success because they haven’t made the playoffs.

But then if you dig deeper you can see how the team did not have any stock pile of prospects and regardless of horrible lottery pick luck, still managed to replenish a rather anemic prospect pool.

He isn’t trying to put together a bubble playoff team. He’s building a Stanley cup winning team. Again if you take a bit of a deeper look you can see what he’s trying to accomplish by who he’s been drafting: lots of character guys. Fast. Bigger size….

Is the process taking longer than most hoped? I would agree to the average hockey fan, yes it seems like the team hasn’t been progressing fast enough.

If you check the teams stats over the past few seasons, they have constantly improved while being able to properly develop some of the prospects year after year.

Will the team regress this year? In all honestly this isn’t the roster that’s going to be winning the next cup for the franchise, pending a small miracle, this is the roster to help insulate some of the younger players on the team, while creating the basis of a winning culture styled attitude; being a true pro and allowing some extra time for the younger players not yet on the big team to develop for the new future. So if it regresses…. It’s not the end of the world.

The Walman trade happened because of a locker room altercation that took place during the season. He put himself in a bad position moving forward this year, hence why he was given away. Trading him also created more cap flexibility for signing Stamkos who Detroit was highly rumoured in being interested in.

At the end of the day winning a championship is the ultimate goal, and if you compare Detroit to the majority of the league, they have all won the same amount of cups in the past 10 years. If you look even closer at their division, teams not named Tampa or Florida haven’t had much if any success progressing deep into the playoffs at all.

So at the end of the day I guess the question really comes down to if you’re satisfied as a fan just making the playoffs and losing after a round or maybe 2, or if your goal is a few steps further and less short sighted, of actually winning a Stanley Cup.

Really solid post!

 

[IWantSakicAsMyGM]

Take away his no-state income tax advantage and he “all of a sudden” falls from grace.

Shocker.

Out of morbid curiosity, how would everyone having the same income tax laws have changed the fact that Detroit was coming off a 26 year playoff run and the cupboards were completely bare, with Larkin being the only semi-decent piece left?

Or, how would it have changed Tampa's success, given the fact that they drafted the majority of their core players, and traded for a lot of the bigger role guys? I'd assume that players would still be likely to sign with the team that drafted them, and would want to play for a winning team with other good players, so I'm not sure Tampa would be impacted all that much.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

Is it that time of the year again already?

What an absolute troll thread.

It's not a troll thread, I know, because I made it.

 

[Frank Drebin]

Still took 9 years after he drafted Kuch, 8 years after he drafted Vasi at 19 and 6 years after he drafted Point for them to win that cup. So maybe it's still early to say he's bad or only drafted supporting cast players.

Point is he won in tampa on the back of 5 superstars, 2 inherited in Hedman and Stamkos, and the aforementioned 3.

Without those superstars, no cups.

 

[MTL Dirty Birdy]

You don't sign place holders to eye sore contracts though. Literally any veteran who's been around forever can teach a young guy how to be a pro. Does Copp have some kind of revolutionary insight in how to be an NHL player? He's played and had some 3rd line, bordering or low end 2nd line type success. What is he doing that's worth almost $6 in cap space for 5 years?

And honestly. if the goal is decades of contention with a few Cups mixed in there, I would argue that's more unlikely to happen than a 4 year window of true contention with 1 Cup win. What Detroit did from the mid-90's to 2010 or so is ridiculous, and you can't plan for it.

You’re right that any good vet can teach young players. E problem was and still is that not every vet wanted to play for a dumpster fire team years away from making the playoffs. This team will take a big step from one season to another once all their prospects mature and get to the NHL. Makes me think of the Habs 10-12 years ago when PK, Patches, Gallagher and Price all came in

 

[MTL Dirty Birdy]

Lots of teams do it namely, Colorado from 2017-2022, Pittsburgh from 2004-2009

Vegas was winning from literally day 1, I mean I don't expect that from Yzerman.

But yeah It's been done several times

Pittsburgh had a generational player in Crosby and Malkin. Colorado has another elite player in Mack/Rantanen/Makar. Detroit has no talent on the calibre of any of those guys.

 

[IWantSakicAsMyGM]

Point is he won in tampa on the back of 5 superstars, 2 inherited in Hedman and Stamkos, and the aforementioned 3.

Without those superstars, no cups.

As the GM of Tampa, Yzerman never actually won the Cup. He took the Detroit job in 2019, the off-season before Tampa won their first.

 

[Venzio X]

Point is he won in tampa on the back of 5 superstars, 2 inherited in Hedman and Stamkos, and the aforementioned 3.

Without those superstars, no cups.

Bold statement. Team doesn't win cup without 5 best players.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

I mean, whatever let's you sleep at night.

I have no problem sleeping at night and if I did it wouldn't be because Yzerman is a bad GM.

Yzerman being a bad GM is simply factual at this point the results speak for themselves