When does the Yzerplan start getting criticized?

[BB88]

He has been back for 4 seasons, and the teams future looks way better than when he returned.

That’s really not something to praise about.
It should be automatic that after 4 years with top 5/10 picks their future should look way better.

Detroits lineup and system lack high end forwards.
Larkin- Raymond- Kasper just isn’t enough in the East

 

[Iwishihadaspacebar]

He has at least 2 more years before criticism could be justified in my view.

The young D players look very promising and if they continue to progress, they'll be very strong there. The forwards are going to be the focus for the next two years.

He has made a couple of strange signings like Chiarot and Copp but at least the latter is a solid player to help the kids. They are offset by the likes of Kubalik and Perron, both of whom will likely be traded next season for decent returns.

With free agency looking very light this year, it'll be harder to make major improvements this off season, hence my view of two years.

 

[Conbon]

traded a 1st the 23rd overall (Wyatt Johnston), a 2nd the 48th overall (Artem Grushnikov), and a 5th round pick to move up 8 places to draft Cossa instead of Wallstedt.

This has the potential to look really bad

 

[Underdogoil]

Bizarre thread.

Bizarre cause we calling out Yzerplan?

 

[John Mandalorian]

Bizarre cause we calling out Yzerplan?

Or maybe you should worry about your own team.

 

[Pavels Dog]

That’s really not something to praise about.
It should be automatic that after 4 years with top 5/10 picks their future should look way better.

Detroits lineup and system lack high end forwards.
Larkin- Raymond- Kasper just isn’t enough in the East

And who do you suggest they should have drafted instead to make their future look way better?

 

[Underdogoil]

Or maybe you should worry about your own team.

Just returning in kind the remarks wings fans gave us Oiler fans after signing Holland

 

[John Mandalorian]

Just returning in kind the remarks wings fans gave us Oiler fans after signing Holland

You should spare the victim complex. Oiler fans are antagonists more than they’re victims.

 

[Hobnobs]

From in the playoff race to back in the bottom 10 of the League within a month

Yes, with a seriously long injury list.

Just returning in kind the remarks wings fans gave us Oiler fans after signing Holland

Yes, because that has worked out well for the Oilers

Or is all forgotten now because he made the Ekholm trade?

 

[Hobnobs]

They still look at least 4 years away from doing anything. Gotta wonder how long the Wings owners let this go on before making change.

That would still be a a lot shorter than the Oilers rebuild

Let’s take a look at some of his decisions. Long post alert.

2019 Draft: Moritz Seider at 6 was a great pick. But some big misses with that 2nd round pick and pretty much nothing with every pick after Seider. That can be forgiven because you got a #1 D.

19-20 Season: He was able to accumulate a lot of draft capital at the trade deadline and taking on salary. Got a great value trade in Robby Fabbri. Ended the season 31st in the NHL.

2020 draft: Solid pick in Raymond despite sophomore slump this year. Wallinder looks good but all the other picks are still up in the air. No significant signings in the offseason.

20-21 Season: Anthony Mantha trade got them Vrana (eventually lost for nothing), 1st round pick (they used this to trade up to get Cossa), and a 2nd (Dmitri Buchelnikov). Ended the season 27th in the NHL.

2021 Draft: Traded a 2nd round pick and Panik for Leddy for some reason. Acquired Ned for Bernier and a 3rd (really good trade). Drafted the best player available in Edvinsson. Looks like a great pick. He then traded a 1st the 23rd overall (Wyatt Johnston), a 2nd the 48th overall (Artem Grushnikov), and a 5th round pick to move up 8 places to draft Cossa instead of Wallstedt. He drafted Buium 36th (could be a good pick), Mazur 70th (great pick), and Savage 114th (great value player there).

21-22 Season: Resigned Fabbri 3x$4, Vrana 3x 5.25, and Hronek 3x$4.4. Acquired Sundqvist and Walman for Leddy and Witkowski (easily won that trade). Ended the season 25th in the NHL.

2022 Draft: Drafted Marco Kasper 8th overall and looks like agreat pick. Every other puck he made is still up in the air at this point.

22-23 Season: Attempted to expedite the rebuild by trading for Husso for a 3rd round pick signed for 3x$4.75 (.899 sv% this year), signed Kubalik 2x$2.5 (43 points so far this year good value), signed Perron 2x$4.75 (50 points so far this year), and signed Chairot 4x$4.75 (looks like a terrible signing), and a signed Copp 5x$5.625 (41 points so far this year). This season has had its ups and downs but no real progression in the standings.

My conclusion is: he’s done a good job. There isn’t much more he could’ve done. His biggest mistake was attempting to speed up the process. Detroit was absolutely horrible before he took over. What more is he supposed to do in just 3 full seasons?

It should be noted is that most people in here criticizing are fans of some of the worst run teams in the NHL. It's a thread from the perspective of projecting.

The thread can be summed up with

 

[A55P2]

It's hard to turn it around this fast. Detroit should still be tanking to get top prospects honestly. I mean the whole roster is clearly not top tier in the NHL, just look at those names. We've known most of these guys for years. Perron, Kubalik, Copp, Maata. All good players, but they can't be your top guys it won't cut it.

They're gearing up to be a middling team. We've had that for years with the Canadiens and it sucks because you can't make a serious push (except that one time during COVID for us) and you also have a hard time finding prospects that makes a great impact on your team.

 

[General Disarray]

In a vacuum it's probably comparable to other rebuilds. They started a similar time as Ottawa and are probably not far behind them. They're behind Buffalo but Buffalo had a decade of collecting high end prospects. The Seider pick was a home run, the Wallstedt pass may cost them. I can understand passing on Sanderson when you already have Seider but if he turns out to be better than Seider then uh oh. Selling high on Hronek even in a wildcard race was smart but then why did he buy those free agents to get them competitive in the first place only to end up back to the basement after that run. For a team that has no high end forwards, this was the draft to tank one more time.

The problem is Yzerman is hyped up as some god so in that context he hasn't been the wizard he is hyped up to be. So he's gonna have a lot of criticism.

 

[Canes]

I don't know, you're going to have to ask him why he's comfortable building the rosters he has.

 

[ACC1224]

He didn't get a McDavid/Matthews/Hughes layup to build around. Hopefully for the Wings they get some lottery luck in this draft.

(Plus Marner.)

Not a good plan then.

 

[Oneiro]

I'd be getting worried as a wings fan...

This season gutting the team pre-deadline for meh returns, was really questionable. Playoffs were well within reach until then, hard to see the rationale unless he's going hard after some big trade targets this summer because there's not much available via ufa & those futures won't help much in trying to make playoffs next year.

His Tampa tenure was GM mastery, this go around, not so much.

No, it's perfectly rational. This Wings team wasn't going anywhere in the playoffs and they lost critical games before the deadline.

There are likely 4-5 more years to go before we're even close to talking about them like the Wings of old. It takes a sharp GM to see that because most GMs and fans start sweating when things don't happen fast enough.

 

[JimmyApples]

He was great in Tampa, but that’s also the Florida effect. No state tax + players wanna play there. Nobody wants to play in Detroit.

 

[Hobnobs]

He was great in Tampa, but that’s also the Florida effect. No state tax + players wanna play there. Nobody wants to play in Detroit.

I think you are confusing Detroit with Ottawa

 

[Chainshot]

He was great in Tampa, but that’s also the Florida effect. No state tax + players wanna play there. Nobody wants to play in Detroit.

He inherited a very good 1OA and 2OA combo in Tampa that he doesn't have in Detroit. He then did well to leverage his clout with Russians and having scouts who could turn up quality UDFA's too. It's still early. He has the opportunity this year and next to really build out their pipeline so it seems two or maybe three more years to know how this is going to work out.

 

[JimmyApples]

I think you are confusing Detroit with Ottawa

I probably would have said the same thing about Ottawa (compared to Tampa), but not sure why I’d bring up them in a thread about the failing “Yzerplan”

 

[General Disarray]

I think you are confusing Detroit with Ottawa

Players will chose Detroit before Ottawa but both teams are in the undesirable category

 

[Hoek]

I don't get what he did with some of his moves this season. Thought he would be more patient (in fact he was probably patient to a fault before) but other than that he's done a solid job. Just didn't come into as great of a situation as he did here in Tampa.

 

[LarKing]

I find it really funny how much more concerned fans of other teams are with Yzerman than actual Wings fans are.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

Holland's patience is so impressive, he has signed RNH and Kane to long term team friendly deals because he used it

I think he has done a good job there. Though he still gets criticized a lot on this board. Expectations around Holland at the end in Detroit were impossible. He had his mandates from ownership to continue the playoff streak and he tried to follow accordingly. For some reason people expected him to walk in to Chris and Marion Ilitch throw down his sword piss on the carpet and demand a rebuild over his dead body.

Holland warned doing a rebuild in Detroit would likely take 10 years. Well we are entering around year 8 here depending on how you want to look at it.

Yzerman hasn't caught breaks and covid wasn't really an event that helped him. I think they would have liked to unload Bertuzzi a little earlier and couldn't because of his circumstances at that time.

The Wings haven't had any lottery luck. They have had a few high profile failures. I hated the Zadina pick at the time because of his lack of explosive athleticism, made worse by passing on Hughes, who for the record would fit with Seider like a glove. All in all I don't have a ton of real critiques that I think are reasonable. I actually didn't have a ton for Holland that mostly were hindsight scenarios.

Being a GM in the NHL is extremely difficult. You need to be great, but you do also need fate to smile on you from time to time. You build your organization around you and you develop people and players. I think Holland who along with Nill and Devellano taught Stevie what he knows all believe in this construct. I think it is happening in Detroit and realistically when Yzerman dropped in 5 years was probably hopeful in terms of starting to come out of where they were. His decision to reload his core won't build him more time from what I have been told. So this starts to get real over the next couple years. Now I happen to believe in a lot of what he has on the farm and I think he is good at trading and making tough decisions. But he has about 24 months before the heat starts to ratchet up, even with his God like status in Detroit.

 

[Tanknation]

He has been back for 4 seasons, and the teams future looks way better than when he returned.

I would hope so. They have been bad and drafting high.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

Wallstedt is supposed to be better than Cossa right now for those saying it. It was a ceiling argument and explosiveness that they identified much like Hockey Prospectus. Goalies in the first is voodoo so Yzerman walked himself out there, not totally surprised with how Vasy worked out in Tampa. We will see, I know people don't care about the ECHL, but you might want to look at what he has actually been doing on a team that was the best in the league over the last few months.

While I was certainly a little worried, it is nice to see him rebound like that. He is a physical freak, he is a few years off, but so is their timeline. So doesn't Cossa make more sense than the polished guy you didn't believe had the ultimate ceiling? That was the gamble, people are free to disagree but it is pretty early to declare that over.

This is not to pick on Minnesota but this is similar to the Rossi stuff where people started victory laps on AHL performance or other leagues. The questions have never been about what the player will be at other levels. Hell we saw Wallstedt perform well in a top 5 professional league before being drafted. It is how they profile in the best league in the world. How their faults play at that level, how that little tick less athleticism or size and reach impacts their ceiling.

One guy has a .910 save percentage and the other guy has a .914 save percentage. I know AHL vs ECHL, also worth noting save percentage is traditionally worse in the Coast.