Leaderboard

In sports, there are men and there are Gods. I can't put Yzerman in the same category as either Lidstrom or Zetterberg. What he did for this team, the memories, the championships, it was just magic, and now lives on as legend.

Ask Shocky if there's a Corsi for that.

If Malkin was Canadian he would have most likely made it. Toews gets a bonus for being North American.

https://mobile.twitter.com/DidSheahanScore so this twitter account exists you're welcome

Im not reading all that. Someone give me the Tl;dr Is it Blashill?

Well if we want to go by what players in the lockerroom think then out of the three only Zetterberg won the King Clancy Memorial trophy, which happens to be the "Leadership" award and if I'm not mistaken the players of the team are the ones who nominate their captain. That might be the closest thing to a representation of lockerroom. I don't think it's a good representation personally. But that's the closest we'd get aside from player interviews.

Having fans judge leadership is nonsense. We're not around the players or in the room.

What's the measure for "leadership"? Lol.

Rating captains is hard if you've never been in the locker room (which would be any of us basically).

I did. Don't mind admitting that Blashill wasn't the answer, and that I was wrong about that. But I don't think Babs was right for the team any longer either. All of the s*** people get pissed at Blashill for (constant line juggling, over reliance on mediocre veterans, conservative systems, etc.) Babcock did too. He just got more out of the players while doing it. The problem wasn't getting rid of Babcock, the problem (admittedly in hindsight) was that they got a less good version of Babcock to replace him with. Both guys are completely mismatched for the personnel this team has. Also, the notion that Babcock is the "most dominant coach in the league" is absurd. Joel Quenneville is second all time in wins and has 3 Stanley Cups. When it comes to winning NHL hockey games, and Championships, no active coach is as successful as Quenneville. Period.

Yzerman >> Lidstrom=Zetterberg

I never thought that was a viable argument for replacing Babcock with Blashill, considering most of the younger guys coming up had little to no experience with Babcock's message and way of doing things, but had spent a couple years already with Blashill in the AHL.

Its amazing what Babcock was able to get out of the club. I remember a couple years back when something like 30% of the starting lineup was injured and our lineup looked like the AHL Griffins and we still managed to make the playoffs that season.

pavs was great i think the team is effected by more than just not having him though its all around lack of talent on D and lackluster play by alot of our guys

I don't like to assign blame, but really, if I'm a young guy, I might be questioning whether or not I wanted to play for this coach. A few people on here have pointed out that this team looks de-motivated at times, and I agree, and I have to think that's got to have something to do with blashill right? If you want to play and win for your coach, you're going to play harder yea? So it goes with our young guys who actually have talent, like Mantha and AA, and to an extent Sproul, can you imagine how frustrated they must have been under his tenure? look at AA last year, late in the season he was making a huge impact, only to basically get 5 minutes a game and watch ECHL worthy Andersson get a call up and play in front of him?? Or even at times this season where Blashill has publicly called him out for his bad points, or limited his ice time after playing well. Look at Mantha, who I think we can all agree has been playing excellent in December and early January, then he has what, one bad game, and gets his ice time slashed from 20 to 15 minutes for the next 4 games? Ofc I'm not the coach, but I have to wonder also at this point what he's got against Sproul. The guy came in and played well I thought.

Just saw it http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/nhl-unveils-100-greatest-players-time/ What a joke. Put Toews on any other team and he doesn't come close.

^ Exactly. My opinion is- Yzerman full 10/10 - double OT goal, best player on ice with numberous injuries, helped bring Wings out of Dead Wing era. - gave hope to a city that was torn after civil rights movement. - Joe Louis arena is on Steve Yzerman drive for a reason. - changed his entire game style for the sake of the team, went from being an offensive forward to defensive forward for the team's sake. Zetterberg 8/10 -willed the team to playoffs in 2013 season and scored playoff series OT game winning goal win against Anaheim while we were the udnerdog team without Lidstrom for the first time - immediately came to play against Boston playoff series in 2014 after back surgery (idk how you can do that and not worry about becoming handicapped) Lidstrom 7/10 -leader by example, Greatest defenseman of modern era but can't really think of many individual captain-like notable instances. During his captaincy Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg aka the "Euro-Twins" were the faces of the franchise and along with Osgood's incredible play won the Stanley cup in 08.

Yzerman, Yzerman, Lidstrom. All due respect to Z as a player, not a good captain.

I don't this Towes is over rated at all. He is THE player that makes that Chicago roster go. He's a complete player and consumate leader. He's exactly the type of player the wings need a talented Canadian with an abundance heart and leadership. Something we've not had since Stevie.

Based on that, Darren McCarty and Kirk Maltby are not as good as Nyquist and Tatar. There's different roles for different players. Tatar and Nyquist suck at their roles. This isn't a stickhandling contest we're talking about here.

I don't disagree that this roster needs work also. We are lacking a franchise defensman, we are lacking a franchise forward (or two), and if people want to move Howard, we are also lacking a franchise goalie. I would pursue these pieces regardless of the coaching situation, but my point (which I surmise you agree with) is that the talent we do have isn't playing up to their abilities, and if they were we would be in the thick of the playoff race. Hell, if the Wings had an average powerplay and nothing else changed we'd be in the thick of the playoff race.

Make it happen Ilitch!

Chapters 1-5: Its Blashill Chapter 6: Surprise twist! Its Stan Bowman Chapter 7: Bowman was a red herring its actually blashill. Chapter 8: To be continued? Chapter 9: No. its def blash.

An uncreative answer isn't necessarily an incorrect one, but I can certainly flair it up for you if that's what you want (and excuse my wall of text because its coming!) Here's Sheahan's career stats (taken from hockeydb) 2013-14 Detroit Red Wings NHL 42 9 15 24 6 8 5 0 0 0 0 2014-15 Detroit Red Wings NHL 79 13 23 36 16 -3 7 2 1 3 2 2015-16 Detroit Red Wings NHL 81 14 11 25 12 -8 5 0 1 1 4 2016-17 Detroit Red Wings NHL 29 0 5 5 12 -11 points per game ordered by season: 0.57 0.46 0.31 (Blashill yr 1) 0.17 (Blashill yr 2) That first year was the best, and he had a bit of a sophomore slump (not uncommon, mind you) the following year, but still respectable for his role and experience. Then Blash takes over and instead of the numbers recovering or even plateauing, they drop even more, and at a steeper rate. And then they drop some more, and again at an alarming rate the following year. A little unusual, especially for someone who initially showed so much potential, but maybe that's just Sheahan. Except it isn't. Here's Tatar's stats: 2012-13 Detroit Red Wings NHL 18 4 3 7 4 2 -- -- -- -- -- 2013-14 Detroit Red Wings NHL 73 19 20 39 30 12 5 0 0 0 8 2014-15 Detroit Red Wings NHL 82 29 27 56 28 6 7 3 1 4 2 2015-16 Detroit Red Wings NHL 81 21 24 45 24 4 5 0 3 3 2 2016-17 Detroit Red Wings NHL 29 4 7 11 12 -9 Again looking at points per game but omg at that goal drop off. .39 .53 .68 .56 (Blashill yr 1) .38 (Blashill yr 2) Again we see a noticeable dropoff when Blashill takes over, and again instead of it recovering or plateauing we see the numbers drop even more (and even steeper) in Blashill's second year as coach. Here's Nyquist: 2012-13 Detroit Red Wings NHL 22 3 3 6 6 0 14 2 3 5 2 2013-14 Detroit Red Wings NHL 57 28 20 48 10 16 5 0 0 0 0 2013-14 Grand Rapids Griffins AHL 15 7 14 21 6 6 -- -- -- -- -- 2014-15 Detroit Red Wings NHL 82 27 27 54 26 -11 7 1 1 2 2 2015-16 Detroit Red Wings NHL 82 17 26 43 34 -2 5 1 0 1 6 2016-17 Detroit Red Wings NHL 29 4 11 15 4 -1 again p/g. aaaannnddd again omg goal drop off. .27 .84* .66 .52 (Blashill yr 1) .51 (Blashill yr 2) * note: to be fair that second year was a bit of an anomaly. That was the year Nyquist scored like 25 goals in 30 games or something ridiculous, and had a shooting percentage of a million. I don't blame Blashill one bit for failing to get Nyquist back to that point. Its an unrealistic expectation. The numbers from the following year, however, are more reasonable. Recurring theme: All three players are currently playing statistically the worst hockey of their careers as established NHL players, and all three players are approaching what should be their prime ages for production (meaning not only should they not be getting worse OR plateauing, we expect they should be improving). And these three players are not isolated cases. I could have put up Abdelkader's numbers, or Dekeyser's. Across the board just about every Red Wing has played worse than compared to when before Blashill took over. (Quick and dirty evaluation of goal scoring as a loose supportive data set: Red Wings ranking in goals/game the last few years: 16th, 10th, 23rd, 26th. Guess when Blashill took over.) And as I mentioned in another thread, the roster has arguably been improved bit by bit from year to year, so at least on paper there's more support for our guys to continue to produce, or at the very least earn points for the team (which have also incidentally plummeted since Blashill took over). Considering how just about everything across the board has suffered since he took over, and considering that just about everything has gotten worse and not better in his following year, I have a hard time looking at anything else beside Blashill at this point. He is the most glaring and obvious problem, and the one with the most repercussions throughout the makeup of this team. I struggle to properly evaluate other aspects of this team because I have such strong conviction that The Blashill Effect is already negatively muddling the results, and I wouldn't trust making adjustments or tweaks elsewhere because elsewhere might not even be broken and we could be potentially doing more harm by trying to find fixes where none may even be necessary. To take that a step farther and to underline a more ominous problem that's impending: do we trade away Sheahan at the deadline for a 5th round pick because he's dead weight and we're clearly missing the playoffs, only to see him immediately rebound under another coach? To be fair that's just speculation, but its also a real possibility that I want to convey, and one that leaves us trading down in value. As we approach this upcoming deadline likely to be sellers, right now the organization and potential trade partners are at high risk of under-appraising our goods and selling them off for less than they're actually worth (unless of course Sheahan and Tatar and etc and etc and etc actually are playing at their true levels and all the data before Blashill took over was just anomalies across the board). Holland is on his way to a terrible position because when the phones are ringing in February and Chicago wants Tatar (or just about anybody on the roster), Holland is either selling low based on the last two years of performance and continuously diminishing trends, or not selling at all (and then the fan base calls for his head for "kicking tires at the deadline"). I don't mean to derail this thread and I have no problem with people analyzing the actual on ice product that has been Sheahan to see if he's working the corners enough or skating with confidence or whatever, but I think its worth at least partially derailing to discuss exactly the magnitude that a poor coach has on this organization, both now and for the future, and that if Holland wants to maximize his chances at turning this team around, right now is probably the time to fire Blashill, if not to make a playoff comeback, but to reclaim some value on potential trade pieces by February. Anyway, sorry to totally go off on a tangent and do so in an endless wall of text.

Great defensively?? He's not great. He's average. Great would be someone like Marchand, Hossa, Courturier, Kesler. The best are obviously the tier above that in Bergeron, Kopitar, Toews.