When does the Yzerplan start getting criticized?

Pavels Dog

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The main thing I disagree with is signing a bunch of guys this past offseason. 2-3 weeks of looking like they might be able to make a playoff push certainly wasn't worth it, especially as it brutally lowers the chance of getting Bedard.

I think they possibly may have blinked and fast forwarded the original plan because of how well Raymond and Seider did last year. It could be a very costly mistake in that getting an elite franchise forward might prove to be an elusive thing.
Copp and Chiarot are good, but they're not "improve the team by 20+ points" good. If Detroit didn't do anything in the offseason they're still probably at best getting ~5th/6th lottery odds. It's simply not worth it.
 
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Voight

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They need more game-breaking offensive talent. When you see the kind of talent the top teams have and then you look at the Wings' roster, it's pretty bleak and it doesn't look like there's a big turnaround coming next season, either.

Agreed. Tho its going to be hard unless they win the draft lottery this year or trade for someone.
 

raymond23

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What would you have done differently to accelerate the rebuild?

The Wings were a f***ing mess 4 years ago. No assets and the worst roster in the league.

Rebuilds take so much longer than people realize.
 
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WarriorofTime

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Lol maybe listen to Yzerman himself if you want an idea of direction of the team. He said before the year started they aren't close. Funny how it's Edmonton fans or Tampa fans mostly that have an issue with Yzermans "reputation". Both teams that built what they have with multiple top picks. Edmonton is especially laughable considering they haven't actually accomplished anything with their lottery luck.
GM says GM needs more time and nothing to worry about, everything is going great even when it's not going great.

What does Edmonton's poor management have to do with it? lol. They probably just come in because a small portion of the Red Wings fanbase treat Ken Holland like a jilted ex treats their former partner, blaming him for everything wrong forever. It's been 4 years, time to move on...
 
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Dr Quincy

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When the team is as bad as when he took over

/thread
Agreed. Your post ended the thread. If DET fans are happy with marginal progress, then that's their choice.

Some fanbases demand more than 4 years later not being "as bad".
 

TheDoldrums

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The Chariot signing was absurd, but beyond that there aren't a ton of mistakes to easily point towards. Still, they do seem to be in no man's land. Boston, Tampa and Toronto are pretty well run and will probably stay good for awhile. I think Buffalo and Ottawa have more upside with their young cores. Its tough to be super optimistic about their future right now.
 

newfy

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They did what was expected this year. They were legitimately competing for a playoff spot until the trade deadline. Only 2 of his first round picks have made it to the roster (Edvinsson and Kasper are around now but werent this season).

For their highest pick being 4th especially, Yzerman is doing fine.
 

thefutures

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GM says GM needs more time and nothing to worry about, everything is going great even when it's not going great.

What does Edmonton's poor management have to do with it? lol. They probably just come in because a small portion of the Red Wings fanbase treat Ken Holland like a jilted ex treats their former partner, blaming him for everything wrong forever. It's been 4 years, time to move on...
Edmontons failures have nothing to do with Detroit, but it's hard for me to ignore the amount of edmonton/Tampa fans that like pointing out Detroit sucks when everyone knew that they sucked. Detroit under achieved with Ken Holland that's prolly where that bitterness comes from.

Spending money on chiarot and perron doesn't make you a playoff team especially when u sell better players than that at the deadline yourself. Everyone knew they were bad why are we pretending they were supposed to be something this year?.
 
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Dr Quincy

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Okay. Explain how you would've pulled game-changing offensive talent randomly out of the raw aether to get the Red Wings competitive.
These exercises are silly. I could name moves having the hindsight of knowing what has worked and what hasn't... but even if I do you'll say "Well that wasn't realistic, or that guy wouldn't have signed here, etc."

The only thing we can go on is "Is the team competitive." No it isn't. Yes he took over a crap team, and he hasn't done a "bad job" but so far the results aren't impressive.

If you are happy with the results... cool. Fans of other teams in the East are happy with Detroit's results so far too. So everyone is happy.



They got screwed by the bubble lottery.
There is no "screwing". Teams know full well that the lottery is designed to disincentivize tanking. So if you tank and you drop or don't rise, those are expected outcomes.
 

Stephen

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The team Steve Yzerman inherited was not too far off from an expansion team roster so you have to factor in a rebuild from the group up. Things would look and feel more developed if he had a small group of elite star forwards and a lottery win here and there but you have to figure that will come next.

Goalies and defensemen take longer to develop so the bones are good and once you mix in some skill up front this group will be ready to take off.

I like to compare and contrast the Wings build with the Sabres. Sabres aren't too far off in development, also have the focus on the blueline, but you'll also notice the forwards driving their build are actually not that young (Tuch, Thompson, Olofsson, Skinner).
 

JediOrderPizza

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I mean it can always be criticized and most Wings fans do have certain things they don't like that he did. Or are you asking when do we overreact? Because it's only year four and I can't really complain about his first round picks yet, I'm not sold on Cossa yet.

Didn't love the Chiarot signing but it's whatever, it doesn't stop us from signing anyone we have the room. Hopefully we start finding some offensive weapons in the first and later round picks eventually. But those take longer to develop, so it might be some time before we see how everything comes together.

It's feels like some are annoyed Wings fans are not losing their minds like a Canada team or something, sorry we understand the awful cap management and how absolutely bare the prospect pool was when he took over.
 
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Bleedred

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The Red Wings in 2019 were in at least as bad shape as the Devils were in 2015. Maybe even worse, as they had several more Kenny Holland albatross contracts on the book than what the Devils had in 2015. The Devils really didn't have any terrible contracts at the time Lou was ousted, but Zajac's was a bit high, Greene's became a bit high after a couple of years and Schneider's really turned into an anchor within a few years of that, but he was still one of the best goalies in the league as of the day Lou was ousted and would continue to be in year one of post Lou.

And the Red Wings haven't won a lottery yet like the Devils did twice in that span, though they've had some good pieces just outside the top-5.

So I don't think you should really expect them to be good or making the playoffs yet. Honestly, I would say 25-26 should be the goal, at least for some sustainable success. Maybe some attainable success in the next two years before that, like the Devils making the playoffs in year 3 of the rebuild.

If they somehow won Bedard or someone close enough to him, that probably speeds it up a little bit. If the Devils had not won the 2019 lottery and got Zegras instead of Hughes, we still may have been having a hard time this year and have just been a bubble or wild card team.

That said, I don't understand the Chiarot deal one bit. I know he's OVERRATED though by people in the hockey front office community. He's certainly not overrated (at least not no more) among fans.
 

Cursed Lemon

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These exercises are silly. I could name moves having the hindsight of knowing what has worked and what hasn't... but even if I do you'll say "Well that wasn't realistic, or that guy wouldn't have signed here, etc."

The only thing we can go on is "Is the team competitive." No it isn't. Yes he took over a crap team, and he hasn't done a "bad job" but so far the results aren't impressive.

If you are happy with the results... cool. Fans of other teams in the East are happy with Detroit's results so far too. So everyone is happy.

"It's a silly exercise to explain how it's almost literally impossible for the Red Wings to have significant improvement given the starting point and the horrible draft luck"

Yeah okay lol

Reality is silly I guess.
 
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Dr Quincy

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49% of Wings fans here thought they'd be 90 pts or higher which will not happen.

0% thought they'd be 79 pts or fewer (which is still possible).

51% thought they'd 80-89 pts. They'll probably end up right at about 80 pts. I imagine that of those who said 80-89 pts, a decent amount were thinking "more than 80", it sounds like a majority of the fanbase was expecting more this season. That doesn't mean Yzerman deserves to be fired, he clearly doesn't, but it sounds like they aren't as good as fans thought.
 

Bleedred

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Letting TRASHill coach as long as he did was maybe another criticism he deserves, especially since he even extended him at least once?

But on the other hand, it's not as big of a deal. He knew the Red Wings were not going to the playoffs his first 3 years in charge, which is how long he kept Trash for, so it's pretty forgivable and not as bad as it seems.

He would have only been hiring another head coach that he definitely was going to have to fire before they were good or able to consistently make the playoffs, so I can't really blast him for that one so much. At the time I thought it was indefensible that he survived the 19-20 disaster and then got re-upped (I think?) in 2021, but in hindsight I get his thinking. If he had fired him on his way through the door in 2019 or the next year in 2020, he's very likely firing that head coach at some point before they have some sustained success. For instance, this would be year 4 of the new head coach/Blashill replacement and 4 straight years of no playoffs, had he made a coaching change upon arrival.

In that case, he's very likely looking at a coaching change this very offseason and then he'd be on his second head coach hired and the team is still swimming around NHL 500.
 

Hedmonster Bolt

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SY best moves were hiring JBB to take care of contacts, Al Murray to take care of drafting and Jon Cooper to coach. He then let them do their jobs without interference. SY was a master of delegating responsibilities. His name also brought instant credibility and respect to an Org that badly needed it. Don't know the Wings current situation but I do think Lalonde was a good hire, he was loved by the players here.
 
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Ezekial

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49% of Wings fans here thought they'd be 90 pts or higher which will not happen.

0% thought they'd be 79 pts or fewer (which is still possible).

51% thought they'd 80-89 pts. They'll probably end up right at about 80 pts. I imagine that of those who said 80-89 pts, a decent amount were thinking "more than 80", it sounds like a majority of the fanbase was expecting more this season. That doesn't mean Yzerman deserves to be fired, he clearly doesn't, but it sounds like they aren't as good as fans thought.
Well, we also thought Bertuzzi and Vrana would be ~25 goal scorers for us. And I guessed 80-89 and will probably be correct in my assessment of the team.
 

Dr Quincy

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"It's a silly exercise to explain how it's almost literally impossible for the Red Wings to have significant improvement given the starting point and the horrible draft luck"

Yeah okay lol

Reality is silly I guess.

Oh ok fine:

Sign Andrei Kuzmenko
Sign Linus Ullmark
Sign Phillip Danault
trade a 4th rd pick for Valimaki
trade a 5th to TOR for Mason Marchment
Sign Dougie Hamilton

Looks like a much better team. But of course, yeah this is a silly exercise because no GM has the benefit of hindsight or the assumption that all these moves could be made by any particular team. Nor doesn't anybody KNOW what moves were available specifically to Detroit that the team didn't do.

Yeah, it's a silly exericse. as is your use of the word "literally".
 

BertCorbeau

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Breaking it down:

Drafting - they've done well with their top picks so far (Seider, Raymond). And at year 4 you should start to see the effects of that first draft class within the next season or two. A bit TBD on this end.

UFA/RFA signings - locked in Larkin on a nice deal. The Chariot signing was pretty rough, but found some good value in Perron and Kubalik. Hasn't hit the mark in his goaltending though (Ned, Husso). The Copp signing could get ugly too. 41 points, but only 9 goals for $5+ mill. A lot for a third line centre. He's done will bridging his young players too.

Trades: Done well in acquiring picks and asset values (Manth, Bertuzzi, and Hronek). Moving on from Vrana and also trading up to get Cossa look a bit sketchy right now. Otherwise pretty meh. A lot of depth moves, hasn't really brought in a big chip via trade, or had a deal pan out like he had hoped in bringing in a potential big chip.

Overall some good, some bad, but more good than bad and he has loaded the organization with futures which should help them build out their NHL roster. They have some good young pieces on their roster but need some patience since their top picks need some development time.

Trending in the right direction is the best way to describe it.
 

DFC

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49% of Wings fans here thought they'd be 90 pts or higher which will not happen.

0% thought they'd be 79 pts or fewer (which is still possible).

51% thought they'd 80-89 pts. They'll probably end up right at about 80 pts. I imagine that of those who said 80-89 pts, a decent amount were thinking "more than 80", it sounds like a majority of the fanbase was expecting more this season. That doesn't mean Yzerman deserves to be fired, he clearly doesn't, but it sounds like they aren't as good as fans thought.
The division was unexpectedly tough too, with Boston burning down the league.
 

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