What do you think of Yzerman these days?

[HisNoodliness]

I feel like a lot of our other threads have turned into arguing about how we feel about Yzerman, the direction of the team and such. So here's your opportunity to argue that directly, and a poll to see how we're feeling collectively.

If you think he's killing it, what do you love? If you have concerns, what are they and what do you think should be done differently?

Click to read more...

 

[lilidk]

I still believe in Yzerman, but some of his moves Not so good. We expected magician, but got only good GM. Too much expectations, my guess

 

[saska sault]

I like very much betterer than Holland.

 

[Realgud]

Star GM.

Every single GM makes mistakes.

 

[minimal]

Ask me when we have a finished product

 

[HisNoodliness]

My personal vote was "Good GM." I have some issues with the team and I think there's some inefficiencies in our strategy, but I get where Yzerman is coming from with each move. I'd have been solidly in the Great GM camp two years ago.


Drafting: he's doing very well in the first round. Seider and Raymond are obviously big hits. Edvinsson looks like a very likely hit. Everyone else is at least keeping pace with reasonable expectations. I am worried about our second+ round drafting and our priorities in the draft. I think we prioritize size, responsibility and character too much. The fact that we're yet to have a non-first make the team in the Yzerman era and that very few of our later picks are trending well worries me.


Development: I think our development in Europe has been great. It seems like whatever Kronwall and Lindstrom are doing seems to be working. I don't feel like the Griffins have been great for development with a lot of players seeming to stall out there. I also think we're slow burning these guys too much. To me, Edvinsson did everything you could expect to make the team last year, and wasn't on the team. Berggren should have played more. AlJo should have played more. Kasper and Mazur should have gotten a cup of coffee. I think it serves players' development better when they get NHL exposure. If they're not ready to thrive, send them down after 9 or 10 games, but let them experience what they're going to need to learn. It also makes it easier to work in future rookies. What are we going to do if Wallinder has a crazy camp and earns an NHL spot? 3 rookies on the defense? Keep one of our better D in GR all year? Let AlJo's career die without ever having gotten a real look?


UFAs/RFAs and the Cap: I think his UFA winger decisions have been great. He has acquired skilled wingers rather easily and at a bargain. One thing that makes me okay with Yzerman's draft strategy has been how well he's done at acquiring skilled wingers through FA (and trade). I think we've slightly overpaid on centers, but that it's generally made sense to do so. I think we've had consistently bad pro scouting of defenseman and that we've significantly overpaid them. This is probably my biggest fear for the roster. Our prospects better turn out to be really good on the back end because I am scared of Yzerman bringing in a pro D. We've also generally overpaid on goalies. I don't hate the bets that we've made, but they haven't turned out to be worth their contracts.

The Athletic rated us 23rd for contract efficiency last year. Sure that's heavily influenced by us being a mediocre team, it's one year out of date and we can argue the problems with Dom's value model. It still generally supports the idea that we're not killing it in terms of contracts. If we keep paying everyone 0.5-1.5mil too much, that could ultimately rob us of the one or two extra good players that we need to contend. We're already paying in futures to move out suboptimal contracts and we haven't even made the playoffs yet. I really fear this. The biggest boon we have here is that all of our bad contracts are short. It's only an issue if we keep making these mistakes.


Trades: my thoughts on pro scouting roughly transfer to here, but I want to say that Yzerman consistently does well in trades. Maybe I don't like the players he targets sometimes, but I'm confident that he'll negotiate a good price.

 

[Winger98]

I like him more than when he first came back from Tampa. His first round picks look good, our cap structure looks good, and I think we are well positioned to try to make trades if they present themselves.

 

[izlez]

Good GM, I don't always like his decisions, but I still think the strategy makes sense​

Same as when we hired him.
Also of note, the strategy is still what he learned from Holland

 

[norrisnick]

An amalgamation of the top 3. My opinion of Yzerman hasn't changed during his Wing tenure. He's been as advertised.

 

[Oddbob]

I think a bit from the top 3, though I chose 2. I don't like some of his signings and would have preferred he made our blueline better this offseason via UFA, which to me was our weakest position by a landslide. That said, I think with most GMs on rebuilding teams you have to give a long long leash to see how their gameplan looks. If you switch too early cause you are impatient, then you can be changing just when things could potentially come very good.

To me, as long as he keeps adding good pieces that fit age wise he is fine so long as we start to slowly get better.

End of the day, every GM has what we deem as UFA blunders so judging him too harshly for Holl, and Copp for example doesn't make a lot of sense as they get made by all of them. I will say I want to see more of our youth getting an actual chance to play rather than just getting games because someone got hurt. A middling vet team is not exciting to me at all.

 

[RRhoads]

I don't like the Holl, Copp, and Compher contracts.

 

[Run the Jewels]

Star GM. Sure, he had lots of talent in Tampa and on the Team Canada teams he managed, and so this is clearly a different challenge, but you don't luck into the success he's had over and over again. He's not a f***kin' unicorn, he makes bad free agent signings, but I don't think you can name a GM who has a perfect record.

 

[ShanahanMan]

He’s had I think the same number of hits and misses in terms of signings, so basically cancels out.

I think it’s all gonna come down to one thing. Do Ed, Kasper and Danielson hit?

If they meet expectations, I think he’s in the clear. If they bust or fail to meet expectations, that pretty much guarantee his tenure will be a failure.

 

[Axel Sandy Pelikan]

My personal vote was "Good GM." I have some issues with the team and I think there's some inefficiencies in our strategy, but I get where Yzerman is coming from with each move. I'd have been solidly in the Great GM camp two years ago.


Drafting: he's doing very well in the first round. Seider and Raymond are obviously big hits. Edvinsson looks like a very likely hit. Everyone else is at least keeping pace with reasonable expectations. I am worried about our second+ round drafting and our priorities in the draft. I think we prioritize size, responsibility and character too much. The fact that we're yet to have a non-first make the team in the Yzerman era and that very few of our later picks are trending well worries me.


Development: I think our development in Europe has been great. It seems like whatever Kronwall and Lindstrom are doing seems to be working. I don't feel like the Griffins have been great for development with a lot of players seeming to stall out there. I also think we're slow burning these guys too much. To me, Edvinsson did everything you could expect to make the team last year, and wasn't on the team. Berggren should have played more. AlJo should have played more. Kasper and Mazur should have gotten a cup of coffee. I think it serves players' development better when they get NHL exposure. If they're not ready to thrive, send them down after 9 or 10 games, but let them experience what they're going to need to learn. It also makes it easier to work in future rookies. What are we going to do if Wallinder has a crazy camp and earns an NHL spot? 3 rookies on the defense? Keep one of our better D in GR all year? Let AlJo's career die without ever having gotten a real look?


UFAs/RFAs and the Cap: I think his UFA winger decisions have been great. He has acquired skilled wingers rather easily and at a bargain. One thing that makes me okay with Yzerman's draft strategy has been how well he's done at acquiring skilled wingers through FA (and trade). I think we've slightly overpaid on centers, but that it's generally made sense to do so. I think we've had consistently bad pro scouting of defenseman and that we've significantly overpaid them. This is probably my biggest fear for the roster. Our prospects better turn out to be really good on the back end because I am scared of Yzerman bringing in a pro D. We've also generally overpaid on goalies. I don't hate the bets that we've made, but they haven't turned out to be worth their contracts.

The Athletic rated us 23rd for contract efficiency last year. Sure that's heavily influenced by us being a mediocre team, it's one year out of date and we can argue the problems with Dom's value model. It still generally supports the idea that we're not killing it in terms of contracts. If we keep paying everyone 0.5-1.5mil too much, that could ultimately rob us of the one or two extra good players that we need to contend. We're already paying in futures to move out suboptimal contracts and we haven't even made the playoffs yet. I really fear this. The biggest boon we have here is that all of our bad contracts are short. It's only an issue if we keep making these mistakes.


Trades: my thoughts on pro scouting roughly transfer to here, but I want to say that Yzerman consistently does well in trades. Maybe I don't like the players he targets sometimes, but I'm confident that he'll negotiate a good price.

Bad contracts for an extra 750k-1.5m kill you when they are long term.

Honestly, Walman was paid to go away as a useless player when Yzerman was looking at it and gearing up for maybe going after Stammer day one of FA.

The Wings are not hamstrung from picking anyone up nor in extending long-term those RFAs they choose to.

The “biggest boon” you quote is the exact reason the contracts are a shade too much. It’s by design so we have the flexibility to turn the roster over very quickly because the Wings currently only have like 8 players under contract as close in the future as two years from now.

If you trusted Yzerman as a star GM in Tampa, nothing he’s done in his time in Detroit should change that mindset.

He took a dumpster fire, capped-out team with no assets in the minors and several worthless assets on immovable deals and has the team with a very promising prospect pool and a couple really great keystone pieces. Anyone freaking out about the time frame is not being realistic. Without massive lottery luck (which Detroit hasn’t had), an unforeseen player booming a la Tage Thompson turning into an elite player (Detroit hasn’t had) or a team giving you a Herschel Walker or Eric Lindros type deal (which Detroit hasn’t had)… you build slowly and steadily.

 

[Michael Brand Eggs]

He's had a couple of hiccups (that likely won't affect the team when it's time to contend), but overall has been very good. It's just that nobody wants to wait for his draft picks to make the team. Lots of opinions out there about selling the farm for established guys. Apparently nobody actually listened to that whole patience thing he was preaching.

 

[Retire91]

I think the anti Yzerman camp is mostly complain just for the sake of complaining.

It was unfortunate to miss the playoffs by one stink'n point, but it's also another season where they overperformed relative to expectation.

By every measure the organization has improved each year he took over, and even though they have been losing seasons.

We could have prime Pollock, Bowman, and Lamoriello working as a triad GM and the anti-yzerman crowd would still complain.

 

[Ulysses31]

somewhere between good n great i think; in a vacuum he's between good to great, compared to his NHL GM peers great/star

 

[Frk It]

My main criticisms of him are I think we could have squeezed more value out of the amount of draft capital we have had (mostly in rounds 2-7), and I feel at this point the blue line and situation in net should be better than they are. (Also think he went overboard with crowding the blue line with redundant players last off-season).

But I think he has done a lot more good than bad. I think the drafting in round 1 has been pretty stellar. Raymond and Edvinsson were the top players for me when we picked them. Seider was a heck of a pick. Cossa is coming around nicely. Kasper and Danielson bring some really nice elements down the middle.

I think there has been a good amount of pretty savvy moves up front. Fabbri, DeBrincat, Kane, Sprong, Perron, etc. All of those moves were pretty low cost and were additions that helped the team. I liked the Compher signing a good deal. The Copp signing was the only bad one I can think of we have done up front, and I think he might look better next year if he gets either Kane or Tarasenko on his line with him. Maybe he even plays well enough to where we move him at the deadline.

I am a bit surprised the only notable trade we have seen thus far as far as acquiring a player is the DeBrincat trade. With the amount of picks/prospects we have had, I was thinking we would see something else.

All in all I would say he has done a good job and I am comfortable with the direction we are in at the moment. But that is pretty fluid and could go either up or down a notch over the next year or so.

 

[The Zermanator]

Went with great GM. I don't know that you can actually declare someone a "Star GM, guaranteed to build a contender", there are too many unknowns and possibilities to say a GM is building a surefire contender. That said, Yzerman is great because his hits have been home runs and his misses have had a limited impact (if any).

Drafting: He's knocked it out of the park here, building one of the best pools of young talent in the league. And that's with terrible lottery luck too. Don't see how he could have done much better here. He seems to have hit with all the picks a rebuilding team can't afford to miss on (top 20 picks).

Trading: He's brought in a lot more value than he's shipped out. Whether it was a trade to move out a player with value like Hronek (netting ASP), a trade to move out a player with limited value like Mantha (netted us Cossa), or a hockey trade to bring in a good established player like Debrincat, Yzerman has come out ahead in his trades far more often than not. There's literally a meme of Yzerman on the phone with the caption "Stay calm, this is a robbery".

Free agency: This one's a little more of a mixed bag. We've all discussed the Chiarot, Copp and Holl signings ad nauseum so I won't get into that in much detail. But I'd say Holl is the only one he should not have signed at all. 1-1.5 million less per year to Chiarot and Copp and suddenly those contracts look decent. So the net 'damage' is a couple of contracts overpaid by a million a year, big deal. If we were contenders and every million of cap space counted, that's one thing. But at this point we haven't been limited by cap space to any significant degree, and there's a good chance all those contracts expire before they cause any problems. And to say a word in defense of Yzerman here, I can see the logic in what he was doing. He wanted to raise the floor of the team by bringing in some proven vets. And he clearly accomplished his goal there, with the team a point away from missing the playoffs. Now the young talent will progressively replace these players over the next couple seasons. It's really not a terrible situation with those contracts, all things considered. Then on the other side of the coin, you have the good signings like Kane, Perron, Compher, Tarasenko, etc. Barring slight overpays and a bad signing, I think Yzerman has dealt with free agency about as well as he could have, given the available options.

I don't think any GM would have done a better job in Detroit since 2019 than Yzerman, and I wouldn't trust any GM more than Yzerman going forward. I'm not going to quibble about the little things, he doesn't have a crystal ball. But his mistakes are small and his successes are big, sooner or later that's going to lead to success. I don't know about anyone else here, but I'm still 100% bought in to the Yzerplan.

 

[Our Lady Peace]

I went with Other, and this summarizes exactly where I'm at with draft/trade/FA/contracts. There's a lot of bone headed GMs and personnel in the league. Given virtually nothing to work with since the start, Yzerman and his group have stuck to a plan with building a uniquely skilled/hard working/two-way core

Draft/development: Star GM

Trading: Great GM

Free Agency: Good GM

Contracts/cap management: Good/Great GM

Went with great GM. I don't know that you can actually declare someone a "Star GM, guaranteed to build a contender", there are too many unknowns and possibilities to say a GM is building a surefire contender. That said, Yzerman is great because his hits have been home runs and his misses have had a limited impact (if any).

Drafting: He's knocked it out of the park here, building one of the best pools of young talent in the league. And that's with terrible lottery luck too. Don't see how he could have done much better here. He seems to have hit with all the picks a rebuilding team can't afford to miss on (top 20 picks).

Trading: He's brought in a lot more value than he's shipped out. Whether it was a trade to move out a player with value like Hronek (netting ASP), a trade to move out a player with limited value like Mantha (netted us Cossa), or a hockey trade to bring in a good established player like Debrincat, Yzerman has come out ahead in his trades far more often than not. There's literally a meme of Yzerman on the phone with the caption "Stay calm, this is a robbery".

Free agency: This one's a little more of a mixed bag. We've all discussed the Chiarot, Copp and Holl signings ad nauseum so I won't get into that in much detail. But I'd say Holl is the only one he should not have signed at all. 1-1.5 million less per year to Chiarot and Copp and suddenly those contracts look decent. So the net 'damage' is a couple of contracts overpaid by a million a year, big deal. If we were contenders and every million of cap space counted, that's one thing. But at this point we haven't been limited by cap space to any significant degree, and there's a good chance all those contracts expire before they cause any problems. And to say a word in defense of Yzerman here, I can see the logic in what he was doing. He wanted to raise the floor of the team by bringing in some proven vets. And he clearly accomplished his goal there, with the team a point away from missing the playoffs. Now the young talent will progressively replace these players over the next couple seasons. It's really not a terrible situation with those contracts, all things considered. Then on the other side of the coin, you have the good signings like Kane, Perron, Compher, Tarasenko, etc. Barring slight overpays and a bad signing, I think Yzerman has dealt with free agency about as well as he could have, given the available options.

I don't think any GM would have done a better job in Detroit since 2019 than Yzerman, and I wouldn't trust any GM more than Yzerman going forward. I'm not going to quibble about the little things, he doesn't have a crystal ball. But his mistakes are small and his successes are big, sooner or later that's going to lead to success. I don't know about anyone else here, but I'm still 100% bought in to the Yzerplan.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

I think he is a great GM with the good GM explanation…

 

[SoupNazi]

Went with Great for the same reasons as @The Zermanator. You really can’t declare a star GM “guaranteed” because shit happens and even a hockey savant isn’t guaranteed to build a contender.

 

[ricky0034]

I think he is a great GM with the good GM explanation…

this is pretty much how I feel but swap great and good with good and okay

 

[FMichael]

ok

 

[tabness]

still really just think of him from his playing days to be honest not as interested in the gm evaluation stuff