Where did Yzerman go wrong with the rebuild?

[sepster]

He hasn't.

 

[Henkka]

Let's look at the roster Yzerman inherited from Tampa Bay for comparison's sake.

2009-10 Roster

• Norris Trophy, Conn Smythe winning D-man with over 700 career points to date.
• Richard Trophy winning center with over 500 career goals and 1,100 career points to date.
• Art Ross Trophy winning winger with nearly 400 career goals and over 1,000 career points (to be fair, he requested a trade)
• Maurice Richard winning center with over 400 career goals and 950 career points)

Recent Draft Picks before Yzerman arrived in Tampa

• 2007: Alex Killorn (900 games, 500 career points)

Now let's look at the roster and prospect pool for Detroit!

• Dylan Larkin: career numbers pretty close to Alex Killorn's, albeit in 200 fewer games
• LOL, that's it!

With all that talent in Tampa, and some solid drafting ( Kucherov, Palat, Point, Vasilevskiy), it still took Tampa 10 years to win a Stanley Cup. Detroit was in much worse shape thanks to Ken Holland. And the team was capped out on top of having one quality player they could build around.

So complaining about Yzerman is fine I guess, but I have no idea what you expect him to do. My guess is sign a bunch of free agents to crippling cap hits, and sure we probably would have made the playoffs by now but we could just as likely be at the start of a brand new rebuild with nothing to show for it and possibly be in cap hell all over again.

Pass.

Imo, the situation ain't that different if comparing those building blocks.

Tampa just had their Seider and Raymond already.

Martin St. Louis was their "Larkin", same valued asset, who could be moved as an Elite veteran for two 1st round picks at some point.

Vincent Lecavalier never turned to assets. It was just a big money buyout after he lost his career for concussions.

And at Detroit Yzerman inherited also Tyler Bertuzzi, who is a Killorn clone. Bertuzzi will also be having 500+ points after he will reach 900 games.

But Red Wings situation is timely more behind vs. the Yzerman arrival.

If Stamkos and Hedman were drafted 2008 and 2009, and Yzerman went there after, Tampa Bay's year 2010 is comparable to Red Wings year of 2021, when both Seider and Raymond will exist in the organization.

- Kucherov was drafted on the 2nd round at 2011. that's the Red Wings year of 2022.
- Vasilevskiy was drafted at 2012. that's the Red Wings year of 2023.
- Drouin was drafted at 2013 after a deep drop on standing to get 3rd overall. He was traded for Sergachev later on. That's the Red Wings year of 2024.
- Point was drafted on the 3rd round at 2014. that's the Red Wings year of 2025.

Tampa was at 2015 Finals first time. That's the Red Wings rebuild comparable year of 2026.

Tampa won President's Trophy at 2019. That the Red Wings rebuild year of 2030.
Tampa won the Cups at 2020 & 2021. That's the Red Wings year of 2031 & 2032.

 

[Ed Ned and Leddy]

I would be very curious to hear from people how many years the team could miss the playoffs before you’d say that Yzerman failed to do what was expected of them. Call me corporate I guess, but I’m a fan of defined goals.

Half the teams in this league make the playoffs. It’s not a wildly high bar. Yzerman just had his sixth draft and is entering his sixth season. In my opinion, eight years is plenty of time to clear out any unwanted staff or players that you inherited, time to ship off assets for futures and develop those futures, time to bed in at least three or four draft classes of players on the NHL roster, time to make all sorts of trades and free agency acquisitions.

I feel like if you can’t make the playoffs once by year 8, regardless of what you inherited, that’s pretty tough to justify.

 

[better Red than Dead]

But you said, with no ambiguity, the increase in points was due to veterans. Which you're now saying are "not so good."

You can understand how that looks like you're trying to talk out of both sides of your mouth. Not trying to call you out or anything, but I think it's disingenuous to say the increase in the standings is due to these veterans when it's the youth movement like Seider and Raymond leading the team in scoring and ice time.

I don't think people are taking enough notice that Raymond is blooming into a star player, his end to the year was spectacular, and he's a far bigger reason this team is moving the right direction than the likes of Copp or Perron. Although having that help while those kids develop is crucial.

Add a full year of Edvinsson next year. Kasper, Danielson, Cossa, ASP... these guys are on the way sooner than later. This team is going to be transformed to one where the veterans are supplementing this fully stocked youth movement with Raymond and Seider as the tip of the spear.

We don't know how all these guys will look as a unit yet, or if they'll live up to their draft pedigree, but we're just a couple years out from realizing the potential set in place half a decade ago. I get people want changes TODAY but this was always going to take the better part of a decade to reach contender status. That's just how the NHL works, for better or for worse.

Let me explain. Holl, Chariot, Copp, not so good. Perron and Kane were great signings.

 

[Rzombo4 prez]

I get and largely agree with your point that rebuilding a competitive team is a longer haul than fans anticipate. Especially when the cupboards are as barren as what Yzerman took over.

That said, is there a date that you could commit to where, regardless of context, not making the playoffs would constitute a failure?

Good question. I get back to Kenny making the comment that it takes 10 years for a full-on rebuild. People laughed at the time and even I didn't necessarily agree with what he was doing at the time, but I don't think he was far off. The answer for me is a hell of a lot more than six years. Hell, I don't think you can reasonably expect to see more than three or four of your own draftees in the league within six years. I also don't expect good free agents to want to sign with bad teams in non-destination cities (i.e. FLA, NYC, LA, Dallas, Nashville, Boston...).

As bummed out as I was yesterday with the market (notwithstanding the insane amount of hypocrisy in the other thread) I personally don't think the rebuild is too far off course at all or that Steve has even "set us back." I also, however, acknowledge that we may need to re-build the rebuild at some point. That is a very realistic possibility but I don't think we are there yet. I just can't figure out why we were expected to be further along at this point.

 

[kook10]

In retrospect, selling at the TDL this year would have done a fair bit of good. We might have received some excess value for our depressed assets while riding high(ish). I don't think the stink from the total collapse at the end will come off very soon. That said, SY doesn't have a crystal ball.

Unfortunately, I think he has to be more disciplined and error on the side of increased value. In the absence of game changing drafts, he has to manage assets and be opportunistic when players are playing well and are outplaying their caphits (or are moveable at all in some cases). It's tough when the playoffs mean money and fan goodwill, but does it really make sense to forego better long term moves to get swept in the first round?

 

[Run the Jewels]

I would be very curious to hear from people how many years the team could miss the playoffs before you’d say that Yzerman failed to do what was expected of them. Call me corporate I guess, but I’m a fan of defined goals.

Half the teams in this league make the playoffs. It’s not a wildly high bar. Yzerman just had his sixth draft and is entering his sixth season. In my opinion, eight years is plenty of time to clear out any unwanted staff or players that you inherited, time to ship off assets for futures and develop those futures, time to bed in at least three or four draft classes of players on the NHL roster, time to make all sorts of trades and free agency acquisitions.

I feel like if you can’t make the playoffs once by year 8, regardless of what you inherited, that’s pretty tough to justify.

I have said I think the rebuild is truly over and the team should be ready for playoff hockey by 2025-26 at the latest.

• 2022-23: trending towards playoff hockey but team got smoked by Ottawa just before the trade deadline. Yzerman made lots of changes.
• 2023-24: would have made playoffs with better goaltending.
• 2024-25: we'll have to see what the roster looks like. Yzerman has aggressively addressed the glaring weakness in the goaltender position through sheer numbers. We'll see how it goes. My guess is we get 4-5 prospects onto the roster (including Edvinsson if you still view him as a prospect).

 

[better Red than Dead]

Good question. I get back to Kenny making the comment that it takes 10 years for a full-on rebuild. People laughed at the time and even I didn't necessarily agree with what he was doing at the time, but I don't think he was far off. The answer for me is a hell of a lot more than six years. Hell, I don't think you can reasonably expect to see more than three or four of your own draftees in the league within six years. I also don't expect good free agents to want to sign with bad teams in non-destination cities (i.e. FLA, NYC, LA, Dallas, Nashville, Boston...).

As bummed out as I was yesterday with the market (notwithstanding the insane amount of hypocrisy in the other thread) I personally don't think the rebuild is too far off course at all or that Steve has even "set us back." I also, however, acknowledge that we may need to re-build the rebuild at some point. That is a very realistic possibility but I don't think we are there yet. I just can't figure out why we were expected to be further along at this point.

Further along? Who thinks they should be in the playoffs or competing by now? The Wings missed the playoffs by 1 pt. I was disappointed by yesterday’s developments, I make no apologies for not getting excited about adding Gustaffson, or Sheldon Dries on the opening day of free agency. That’s all it is, disappointing, now we may see some trades that come out of nowhere, great. In another thread I mentioned trading for Rutger McGroarty or some similar move. Then all is forgiven. I have no idea who said they should be competing for Cups now. But the frustrating thing was their competition, teams like Washington had zero cap space and ended up with Roy and Chychrun. This can’t be all there is

 

[Henkka]

Good question. I get back to Kenny making the comment that it takes 10 years for a full-on rebuild. People laughed at the time and even I didn't necessarily agree with what he was doing at the time, but I don't think he was far off. The answer for me is a hell of a lot more than six years.

Theoretically, the organizational prime will happen, when the core is mostly 28-year old on average.

So it could be 9-year span of drafting, oldest guys being 32-year olds and youngest 23.

But oldest ones would have been drafted 14 years ago, when the rebuild did start from the scratch.

 

[HisNoodliness]

I would be very curious to hear from people how many years the team could miss the playoffs before you’d say that Yzerman failed to do what was expected of them. Call me corporate I guess, but I’m a fan of defined goals.

Half the teams in this league make the playoffs. It’s not a wildly high bar. Yzerman just had his sixth draft and is entering his sixth season. In my opinion, eight years is plenty of time to clear out any unwanted staff or players that you inherited, time to ship off assets for futures and develop those futures, time to bed in at least three or four draft classes of players on the NHL roster, time to make all sorts of trades and free agency acquisitions.

I feel like if you can’t make the playoffs once by year 8, regardless of what you inherited, that’s pretty tough to justify.

I think that these things should be contextual, but we have enough information now to give good context. Danielson and Kasper should be breaking onto the team this year. I'd say if we're not a playoff team by their third year, we're never going to be a real contender. That should be when they enter their prime. So we can miss this year and next, but if we can't make it the year after, I'm ready to see if someone else can do better.

 

[Ezekial]

The moment he took the job

 

[Ed Ned and Leddy]

Good question. I get back to Kenny making the comment that it takes 10 years for a full-on rebuild. People laughed at the time and even I didn't necessarily agree with what he was doing at the time, but I don't think he was far off. The answer for me is a hell of a lot more than six years. Hell, I don't think you can reasonably expect to see more than three or four of your own draftees in the league within six years. I also don't expect good free agents to want to sign with bad teams in non-destination cities (i.e. FLA, NYC, LA, Dallas, Nashville, Boston...).

As bummed out as I was yesterday with the market (notwithstanding the insane amount of hypocrisy in the other thread) I personally don't think the rebuild is too far off course at all or that Steve has even "set us back." I also, however, acknowledge that we may need to re-build the rebuild at some point. That is a very realistic possibility but I don't think we are there yet. I just can't figure out why we were expected to be further along at this point.

Yeah I generally agree with you. Rebuilding an NHL roster without taking shortcuts (e.g. major overpayments for short-term improvements) is a marathon. I mentioned above, I think I would personally say that year 8 feels like where the road forks for me. By that point, most players from Yzerman’s first five draft classes (19-23) should be on the roster imo. I think that’s plenty of time to clear out my prior staff or contractual obligations and to put your stamp on the roster through trades and free agency. That for me is probably the point where you have to evaluate a re-rebuild.

But I admit it’s a fluid thing to try to pin down.

 

[tabness]

when ASP comes over and dominates as the best D since Orr even someone like The Oaf will gotta admit Yzerman did ok

 

[rbartnik]

In my opinion, it was not trading Larkin. Not that he's not a good player, but it's a weird situation to rebuild and have him in his prime. It creates a dynamic where by the time your prospects are ready he may be over 30.

It took 14 years to build a team around Yzerman that could win a Cup. Patience.

 

[DoMakc]

People get lost in details, discussing Holl, Walman and Copp (I actually like Copp signing, he is a good player who has an important role with team, but that's not the point).

Here is the thing - Red Wings were one point away from playoffs driven by 27-year-old 1-line C, 22-year-old 1-line D and 21-year-old 1-line RW, while still having 5 recent top 15 picks not on the roster and having more or less consensus Top 2 proscpect pipe line, whith most important positions being covered. It is easy to see where improvement are coming from. They also are projected to have round about 30 mil of cap space with only Kane as a free agent of a significance.

Yes right now they have a couple of holes in their roster, which might be also an opportinity for young players to step up. The only thing i'm concerned about is actually handling of prospects last year. So not signing over the hill veterans might be also a good thing.

 

[Henkka]

Yeah I generally agree with you. Rebuilding an NHL roster without taking shortcuts (e.g. major overpayments for short-term improvements) is a marathon. I mentioned above, I think I would personally say that year 8 feels like where the road forks for me. By that point, most players from Yzerman’s first five draft classes (19-23) should be on the roster imo.

If I speculate, at 8th rebuild-year the own contracted guys + prospects who could be on the roster:

- Larkin, from draft 2014
- Rasmussen, from draft 2017
- Berggren, from draft 2018 (not sure about Veleno)
- Seider & Johansson, from draft 2019 (not sure about Söderblom)
- Raymond & Wallinder, from draft 2020
- Edvinsson, Cossa & Mazur, from draft 2021
- Kasper, from draft 2021 (not sure about Lombardi)
- Danielson, Augustine & Sandin-Pellikka, from draft 2023
- (Brandsegg-Nygård, from draft 2024, not maybe NHL-ready yet)

So the team at 8th rebuild year (season 2026-27) would be:

DeBrincat - Larkin - Raymond
Rasmussen - Danielson - Berggren
Kasper - Compher - (Veleno)
(Söderblom) - Copp - Mazur

Edvinsson - Seider
Wallinder - Sandin-Pellikka
Johansson - XXX

Cossa
XXX
(Augustine)

That's the home-grown core which would be dirt cheap, and of course it would include bolstering players from outside.

 

[SirloinUB]

Let's look at the roster Yzerman inherited from Tampa Bay for comparison's sake.

2009-10 Roster

• Norris Trophy, Conn Smythe winning D-man with over 700 career points to date.
• Richard Trophy winning center with over 500 career goals and 1,100 career points to date.
• Art Ross Trophy winning winger with nearly 400 career goals and over 1,000 career points (to be fair, he requested a trade)
• Maurice Richard winning center with over 400 career goals and 950 career points)

Recent Draft Picks before Yzerman arrived in Tampa

• 2007: Alex Killorn (900 games, 500 career points)

Now let's look at the roster and prospect pool for Detroit!

• Dylan Larkin: career numbers pretty close to Alex Killorn's, albeit in 200 fewer games
• LOL, that's it!

With all that talent in Tampa, and some solid drafting ( Kucherov, Palat, Point, Vasilevskiy), it still took Tampa 10 years to win a Stanley Cup. Detroit was in much worse shape thanks to Ken Holland. And the team was capped out on top of having one quality player they could build around.

So complaining about Yzerman is fine I guess, but I have no idea what you expect him to do. My guess is sign a bunch of free agents to crippling cap hits, and sure we probably would have made the playoffs by now but we could just as likely be at the start of a brand new rebuild with nothing to show for it and possibly be in cap hell all over again.

Pass.

I remember before Holland really started "rebuilding" he had a famous quote that wasn't very popular. He said a rebuild is at least an 8 year journey.

 

[Run the Jewels]

I remember before Holland really started "rebuilding" he had a famous quote that wasn't very popular. He said a rebuild is at least an 8 year journey.

Well, he never really started rebuilding. He was forced to trade guys like Tatar after he had built one of the worst teams in the league and had no real prospect pool to build around. Oh, and the team was in cap hell due to all the awful, long term contracts he gave out. We still have one more year left on Abdelkader's buyout.

But other than that, Holland totally nailed it.

 

[SirloinUB]

I would be very curious to hear from people how many years the team could miss the playoffs before you’d say that Yzerman failed to do what was expected of them. Call me corporate I guess, but I’m a fan of defined goals.

Half the teams in this league make the playoffs. It’s not a wildly high bar. Yzerman just had his sixth draft and is entering his sixth season. In my opinion, eight years is plenty of time to clear out any unwanted staff or players that you inherited, time to ship off assets for futures and develop those futures, time to bed in at least three or four draft classes of players on the NHL roster, time to make all sorts of trades and free agency acquisitions.

I feel like if you can’t make the playoffs once by year 8, regardless of what you inherited, that’s pretty tough to justify.

I get what you are saying but if "our goals" don't align with his goals what does it matter?

We can sit her and say it should be done in 6 years but if he was actually working off a 10 year plan isn't it a futile exercise?

 

[RED WINGS STOMP]

Slow playing prospects like he did last year can be frustrating. I know Stevie stressed patience, but I didn't understand overloading the roster last year to bury Edvinsson and Berggren. As more guys get closer to being ready, the more that will frustrate. Further, Seider and Raymond weren't slow played and both are two of our best players, we can hit on that philosophy again.

I get making rookies earn their spot, but rookies aren't so clueless to see that the roster has no openings, then outplaying a vet doesnt matter, you still aren't getting the job. That happened last year and will probably happen again this training camp.

 

[Rzombo4 prez]

I remember before Holland really started "rebuilding" he had a famous quote that wasn't very popular. He said a rebuild is at least an 8 year journey.

I thought it was 10, but I could be wrong

 

[Rzombo4 prez]

Well, he never really started rebuilding. He was forced to trade guys like Tatar after he had built one of the worst teams in the league and had no real prospect pool to build around. Oh, and the team was in cap hell due to all the awful, long term contracts he gave out. We still have one more year left on Abdelkader's buyout.

But other than that, Holland totally nailed it.

Right, the attempt from the Ilitch/Holland camp to hold on as long as possible is because they thought the rebuild was going to be very lengthy. They were absolutely right.

 

[Ed Ned and Leddy]

I get what you are saying but if "our goals" don't align with his goals what does it matter?

We can sit her and say it should be done in 6 years but if he was actually working off a 10 year plan isn't it a futile exercise?

Well I agree with you that it’s a futile exercise. We as fans have no ability to set demands for Yzerman, and Yzerman himself has made it clear that’s he’s not going to communicate a timeline.

The point of my question is mostly to clarify exactly what people mean when they say to have “patience.” Like, pretend you’re Chris Illitch (plz build the District Chris). You want to let Yzerman see this rebuild through, but you’re also running a business. Does he have total carte blanche? Or is there a date by which you say, hey Steve, you’ve had X years. We still haven’t made the playoffs let alone truly contended. Thanks for everything but we need to go in another direction.

 

[SirloinUB]

Well, he never really started rebuilding. He was forced to trade guys like Tatar after he had built one of the worst teams in the league and had no real prospect pool to build around. Oh, and the team was in cap hell due to all the awful, long term contracts he gave out. We still have one more year left on Abdelkader's buyout.

But other than that, Holland totally nailed it.

My intent isn't to litigate Holland's moves. There are plenty of examples of rebuilds taking 8+ years. In reality quick turn arounds are the exceptions and they are driven by lottery luck.

 

[SirloinUB]

I thought it was 10, but I could be wrong

I don't recall the specifics and I can't find the quote Im thinking of but i did find this one:

"There are teams out six, eight years of the playoffs," Holland said. "When you're dealing with 18-year-old players and a lottery draft there are no guarantees you're going to come out on the other side with a powerhouse, super-elite team."

Whether he had other quotes about 10 years, or 8, conceptually he was bang on. Of course, this rebuild's timeline was probably made worse by his actions to extend the streak but that's a different conversation (imo).