Please dissect it line by line. Should be easy if I "don't really know about" the things mentioned.
I'll dissect it paragraph by paragraph since a lot of it is just random word salad
It's interesting that Wing fans speak so smugly about "losing cultures" and perennial rebuilds. The Wings haven't made the Playoffs since 2015-16 and haven't won a Playoff series since 2012-13. So I'm not sure where this idea comes from that they're somehow removed that because they were a great team in the childhood of the posters making the comments I guess. Look at Dylan Larkin who was extended to be a long-term piece. He was in the Playoffs one time, as a Rookie, for all of 5 games. But I suppose some of that is just a fanbase lashing out and getting a bit defensive.
Choosing the worst posters of any fan base to generalize is never a good idea. I don't doubt we have a lot of Red Wings posters that are smug about other teams being in a perpetual rebuild, but why are you at all using that as a point to talk about? There are Red Wings fans making good points about why we aren't really worried about our rebuild thus far, but you're taking the worst of the worst to generalize the entire fan base. Obviously we have a bit of a losing culture because like you said, we haven't really done anything winning-wise in many years. No arguments from me there, other than I'm not sure why you would take the worst posters and paint the rest of us with that brush. The part about Larkin, not really sure what you're getting at. Should we have traded our young captain/best player just so we can maybe move up one draft slot? At some point you need to stick with the players you have, yeah?
So perhaps contrary to popular belief, they aren't a particularly young team and they spent the better part of the last couple of offseasons acquiring talent in their prime to shoot for the middle and hopefully get into playoff spot. They have about three roster players (Raymond, Seider, Edvinsson) that will project to be on the roster and significantly improved in three years, and Edvinsson is only recently in the NHL with 18 career NHL games to date. They do have a lot of prospects between the AHL/NCAA/Sweden, etc. of course.
Who thinks the Red Wings are a young team? We're building to be able to bring in more and more young pieces, but if you're seeing people say that then why are you even entertaining the post? You know it's wrong, I know it's wrong, but again you're using these 1% of posters to say it's "popular belief". It's no secret that most of our young talent that we're hoping to be on the roster to compete with are developing to be more ready when they make the team vs throwing them to the wolves. Again, I don't really see the point you're trying to make other than trying to attack the fan base because of this "popular belief" that we're a young team, which can easily be proven against by just looking at the roster.
Lashing out about lotto luck, no MacKinnon etc. doesn't necessarily change the fact that there are some serious questions about if the Wings have enough high-end talent, now and going forward to make a real go at it. Nobody knows how prospects like Kasper, Danielson, Sandin-Pellika, Cossa and the rest will turn out of course, but the "concern" becomes when they are going through their own NHL growing pains, are they significantly upgrading the NHL veterans that they'll be taking the spots of on the roster... or is that more or less going to keep them at the same spot they're at now.. in the middle and shooting for a low playoff bid?
So basically...what every single team, in every single sport, across every single time frame, has needed to ask themselves at some point? Nobody ever knows how their prospects are truly going to turn out. Ideally, yes they will upgrade the nhl vets that we have, that's the entire point of why we drafted the players, and it's why teams draft players in the first place. The HOPE that they pan out to be able to take a roster spot from somebody on the team. No, they won't all turn out how some of us are hoping. Some prospects will do better than any of us expected, some will do much worse than we expected. That's the reality of drafting and building a team in any sport, this isn't something unique to the Red Wings. As for the first part, I don't blame some posters for lashing out about the lotto luck. It gets extremely frustrating hearing all the time that we simultaneously didn't tank hard enough for top tier talent, while also not exiting the rebuild as soon as other fan bases wanted us to. I don't agree with some of the things people will say in response, but do keep in mind it gets a tad annoying hearing that constantly from other fans.
They may get a year where the mixture of "old" (last two years of free agent/acquisitions before their contracts expire or they decline) and new (a wave of prospects that come in ready to compete) intersects to form a deep and competitive team. Is that going to be worth the "cost" of keeping them out the running for players like Bedard, Carlsson, Fantilli last year or Celebrini this year and settling for a lower caliber of draft prospect in order to "not be a losing culture" and "teach the couple young guys that will matter long-term that are here how to compete"?
How do you suggest we should have gotten Bedard, Carlsson, Fantilli, or Celebrini? What's the point in accumulating talent for the future if as soon as these players start performing, we trade them for the next shiny toy? Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to get any of these players. But is the cost moving on from Larkin, Seider, Raymond, not acquiring Kane or Debrincat, just for a
chance at drafting them? I'd say no, especially when as you already mentioned, we haven't exactly had great lottery luck. And from my pov it seems like Yzerman thought we had a lot of talent accumulated in the system and he wanted to start slowly turning around the course of the main roster. Ideally, the mixture that you mentioned is what happens. I think in a perfect world we have the right prospects at the right time taking over for the vets as they're leaving the team. That plan won't work perfectly, and nobody should pretend it will, because as we've already touched upon, prospects don't always work out. In saying that, I still feel more comfortable knowing there's at least a plan in place for the roster make up in a few years as opposed to just throwing away every season trying to go for the new shiny toy. To your last point, if we only have a couple prospects out of the bunch that we drafted that do anything, then that's a failure on Yzerman and our scouting/development department. But we aren't there yet, so it's hard to take your point seriously when you're just throwing out a (very negative) guess as to what the future will be for this team.
Probably not... but if the goal is playoff revenue, then maybe. Should they have recognized Zadina was a bust, T. Bertuzzi wasn't going to be a long-term piece, etc. earlier and committed to more tanking instead? Perhaps. At the same time, maybe they'll get some major gems from their prospect pool that nobody sees coming. They've certainly made enough selections over the entirety of the Yzerman tenure that it's possible. It's the halfway approach that I don't love regardless. They want a veteran playoff team right now, with a bunch of young guys fermenting in the non-NHL in a rebuild in the meantime. The NHL does sort of allow that thing to happen, but there's also a lot of potential for these seasons to become fairly wasted, if it turns out that upward trajectories on a march towards progress through the standings is not linear and they hit a stumbling block in the next few years.
Going to ignore the first few sentences since it seems like you recognized half way through typing it that you didn't actually have a point. I am very curious as to your next point, though...who in the Red Wings organization wants a veteran playoff team right now? What possible moves have we made that could make any reasonable fan of the NHL think that's what we're going for right now? I guess if you looked very surface-level at some of the signings you might think that, but it should be pretty clear looking at the organizational makeup that they're more stop-gaps that aren't a detriment long-term. You even mentioned it in the next half of your sentence!! You
need players on the NHL roster, you can't just throw in every prospect and aim for top draft picks year after year. So what's the issue with letting our prospects get more time so that they can have less of a struggle when they start to compete for an NHL spot? As somebody in the thread already mentioned, competition isn't a bad thing. I'd rather the top prospects know that if they aren't putting the work in to succeed. they won't take the spot from the veterans who have been putting in that work. To your last point, I actually slightly agree, but probably not in the way you're thinking. Larkin is turning 28 this year, and I would have loved to have him in his prime while we're competing for a cup. In that sense, some of these years are somewhat wasted. Except then you run into the issue of, how do we explain to our captain when it comes time to re sign that until all of our prospects are ready for the nhl, we won't add any help and will compete for a bottom 5 pick every year? Doesn't seem super helpful to the culture of the room, and from my pov I think it would be more beneficial to them to see some sort of progress, whether to help the team bond together to try to reach new heights or to at least give them some hope that they're not stuck on a bottom-feeding team. In that regard, I think this season has been pretty successful. I didn't think we'd contend for a playoff spot for the next two years, and while I would have loved higher draft picks in those years leading up to it, I'd also rather have a few years where we can plug in more prospects over time and get them used to play meaningful games, instead of the season ending for the players (since why would the players care about a high draft pick) within a few months of the season starting.
Enjoy
