Leaderboard

Not sure what you're trying to say here. Top UFAs don't want to come here, so we need to sign a top UFA like Carlson to show some "direction"? I think the whole "top players only want to play for top contenders" idea is way over-stated. Lot of reasons a player will choose to play somewhere, and I haven't heard anything to suggest that Detroit isn't still a very well respected organization. It's not like we're the only team in NHL history to miss the playoffs. Don't know why so many Wings fans have this idea that it's so egregiously bad for the Wings to now go through what literally every other team in the league has gone through multiple times since the last time we did. What will make it difficult to land any of those guys is that it is unlikely that any of them will actually become UFAs. I would be pretty surprised if even one of them do (including Carlson this summer). If they did, we'd still be only one of many teams vying for them, so even if each team was given equal consideration the odds overall would still be against us. If you really think "a couple of years" more of this would put us in the same category as Edmonton, you need some seriously intense psychotherapy. They missed the playoffs for 10 consecutive years, over that time finishing with 86 fewer points than any other team, last twice, bottom five 7 times. And that decade of awfulness was immediately preceded by more than a decade of being mediocre or worse. Overall for that 25 year period they were a bottom 5 team in the league. We've been middle of the pack over the last 5 years with last year being the first time finishing lower than 15th overall. Still haven't finished bottom 5 (though we're working on it this year). We still have the 15th most playoff wins over the last 5 years. We are a long, long way away from anyone making fun of us, much less Edmonton doing so.

Just imagine how Arizona and Buffalo would feel if Edmonton won again. Or maybe even worse if we did. So much combined suck and neither has had a 1st overall since the 80s.

Ottawa, Buffalo, and Arizona are the only 3 ahead of them in the race to the bottom now. They could catch Ottawa in the next few games. I'd be ok with the 3rd best chance at #1 overall and guaranteed top 6. They're 9 points out of the wildcard spot, 10 behind Boston for 3rd in the division. They'd have to jump 6 teams to get in as a wild card, 3 to end up as 3rd in the division. The sooner Holland and/or ownership concedes the season and goes into sell off mode the better.

I chose A because I'm a hoodrat.

While I can understand the idea that adding Carlson could possibly hurt our draft position in the future, I think you're under-rating him a bit. I'd put him on basically the same level as OEL; 2nd-tier guy not all that far behind the elite, Norris-caliber types. Also think having an excellent all-around, all-situation, big-minute defender in his prime would be great for the young players we already have, and might add this year. A deal in the $7M range is probably workable even without any effort to shed salary (other than just letting Green and Mrazek go), and also wouldn't be likely to handcuff us any in the future. I think there's little chance that Washington will let him go, as they're in good shape cap-wise. But if they do he'd be a great target to go after. Better than trading for Karlsson, I'd say. Also rather have him than go after Tavares. Dekeyser-Quincey was our primary shutdown pair in Babcock's last year, and that was Dekeyser's best season. I don't think he's regressed because he's been playing over his head, but maybe the other way around. Why he's regressed is a good question. Both Green and Blashill seem to be a bad fit for him, but likely more than that. Maybe just other players have figured him out and hasn't been able to adapt, or maybe he was just unusually lucky his first couple years. If we could get him back to what he was in 14-15 it would be as valuable as almost any addition we could make. But replacing Green with Carlson doesn't change anyone's role. 5 years in which we have added quite a few good pieces, even core pieces, for the future while not even actually "sucking", but rather just being a low-end playoff team. Whether you or anyone wants to admit it or not, it does take time, and some luck. 10+ years would not be at all unusual. Yzerman is #1 in pretty much everyone's slideshow. He started with Stamkos and Hedman (who could take a decade to find by themselves, without considerable luck) and the 6th overall pick. Added two more top 10 picks since, plus a dream 2011 draft, and only now 8 years later are truly looking like an elite team. No doubt signing Carlson and/or OEL would have a huge impact, but it's unlikely that either will even be available, much less that we would be able to sign both.

(P.P.S. Cole and de Haan are meh.)

4 birds in the hand are worth however many in the bush.

Before the day gets any older and we get any drunker..... lol. I do want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! To our friends in Canada and the rest of the former British Empire, Happy Boxing day! Yes we all love the RW's and love to talk. The best part is most of the time we do so without getting all personnel. Thanks for another great year talking about the Wings! Hope everyone has a great time this holiday season with their friends and family!

he was born a street rat, he'll die a street rat, and only his fleas will mourn him

I’m sure Karlsson starting the year hurt, and still not playing like himself has a lot to do with it.

None. It is not his strong point. On top of that he's big, equating to heavy. He is not ideal on the rush and the PK would sap his strength for what he is needed. I would surmise, and would be willing to bet if he by some miracle was to play PK extensively, that his numbers would fall in almost direct correlation to the amount of time on the penalty kill. Any takers?

You don't know that. Maybe Blashill has tried him on the PK during training camp/ practices to see how he does and he might have not been good at it. We don't know about the ins and outs of what goes on behind the scenes. If anyone has played a team sport here then we should all know that coaches try tons of combos and ideas during practices and based off what they feel about players act upon it during the game. Team practice is the best place to see players strengths and weaknesses and roles. It's easier to assume things from your seat at home when you have no idea about what goes on in these players/coaches environment behind the scenes. As far as the last 90 seconds, I agree with you, I would have put Mantha out there.

This I do agree with. It will be hard for us to get any of these guys. Why would a top level UFA want to come here to suck? We need to show some direction to land those guys again. Play it out in our minds for a minute. We do nothing big this off season. Miss the playoffs again after the 2018/19 season and have another bottom 10 season. All 3 of Karlsson, OEL and Doughty become UFA's. We free up 15 million in cap in the meantime. Does anyone really think that any of those 3 guys are going to want to come here? Why would they? Doughty isn't going to leave the Kings and a SC caliber team to come to a bottom dweller. OEL has been on a sucky team for most of his career. You think he wants to continue that? Karlson the same? Now flip it the other way around. we make a move or 2, show we are on the upswing with a good young core. Maybe even make the PO's next season, and we have the cap. Maybe.... just maybe we can lure one of these big timers to join us. Still a very slim chance, but the odds do improve. I do not beleive for 1 second that Carlson alone or the other Karlsson for that matter is going to make us a PO team again. We need 4 or 5 pieces added, 2-3 on the BL. But we have to start somewhere. If not then in a couple of years Oiler fans will start talking about us sucking for so long like we used to joke about the Oilers.......

I'm definitely with the 'we need a legit #1 D' as our biggest need, but I also can't argue that we don't also need elite goal scorers as well. We got a lot of problems, obviously. Here's part of me hoping we tank to possibly fill one of those needs with a sure-fire, can't miss superstar next draft:

There are a few reasons to have a forward on the PK. One if he's good, two if he's fast, and three if he's a centerman. Mantha is neither of those things.

For the first time in 25 years the Wings are a basement team. We finally have an opportunity to draft in the top ten for a few years (and pick near the top of all the other rounds), but now people who routinely bash Holland for assembling mediocre teams are saying we should try to brute force our way out of this hole we're in and "throw all the money at all the UFAs," which would probably just lead to more mediocrity (assuming we'd actually manage to sign anyone of note). I, for one, appreciate the irony. I want the Wings to build something truly great, truly sustainable. In this day and age, the way you do that is by drafting well and building up a small army of really good young players. Larkin, Mantha, Athanasiou, Svechnikov, Rasmussen, Cholowski, Saarijarvi, Hronek is a nice start, but it's not nearly enough. We need more than that. If we decide we don't need more than that, if we decide all we really need is a couple UFAs, then we're almost certainly setting ourselves up for failure. I want the Wings to do this right. I want us to get Dahlin/Svechnikov/Boqvist/Hughes/Zadina/Tkachuk/Kupari/Wahlstrom, and then I want us to get another top-tier kid in 2019, and then I want us to get another top-tier kid in 2020, and I want a couple of our non-first-round picks to be homeruns. And if we can sign OEL in 2019, then hell yeah let's do it, because he's a proven top-tier defenseman. We don't really know what the Wings could do with three or four consecutive years of picking in the top ten of the entry draft, but I'm willing to bet the results would be good. I don't think signing Carlson now would be wise. I think it's an immediate-gratification temptation, one we'd be wise to resist. I think the priority has to be drafting the young elite talent that damn near every team not named the Red Wings seems to have. I want us to slowly but surely reach the point where we have a core of young elite talent and a comfortable cap situation. That, to me, is The Dream. Spending the next few years as a basement team is probably the surest way to make that dream a reality in under five years. (P.S. DeKeyser does not have great speed.)

Dabura's Thoughts - 12/23 Edition I know our biggest area of need is defense. I know after every loss, the big takeaway is "Our defense blows." I won't deny it. We need help on defense. We need that help in the worst way. But I'm going to re-assert a point I've made every now and then over the past few years. Which is that we need gamebreaking high-percentage shooters almost as badly as we need that legit top pairing on the back end. To me, the story of our past few seasons is, arguably, "We played 'em real close, but they converted their chances and we didn't. If we get one more goal tonight, it's a totally different game/series." To me, the story of our season thus far is the same. We get chances. We get lots and lots of chances. We get lots and lots of chances every night, even against top teams. You could say that it's the other teams' superior defense groups that keep us from converting, and there's probably a lot of truth to that. But, even so, the fact that we're generating the chances we're generating suggests maybe this idea that every team not named the Red Wings has a solid defense group is overstating things a bit.

I'm starting to think we're not going to win the Cup this season.

Green was and is a solid second-pairing defenseman. Trotz worships the likes of Brooks Orpik, because "Big, mean, shutdown, shutdown, shutdown." Trotz does not trust the Mike Greens of the world. Green's underlying numbers as a Capital were actually very impressive. His shortcomings on the defensive side of the puck have always been used to knock him, same way Erik Karlsson's been knocked for much of his career. I'm not saying Green is on Karlsson's level, but it's the same kind of thing. Green wasn't a third-pairing defenseman then and he isn't one now. He can be a liability in the d-zone, but he can also help power your offense in ways most defensemen can't. For a stopgap guy, he's been worth the money. Look, it's not like I don't get where you're coming from. We need a 1D, Carlson is a 1D, therefore we should sign Carlson. If we sign him in the summer, we get a 1D and all it costs is money. That makes our team better. That could be a major shot in the arm for our "rebuild-on-the-fly" effort. Thing is, I'm not sure Carlson really helps us all that much over the next several seasons, unless perhaps we get lucky in the draft. And if he does help us, I feel it would only be enough to put us back on the playoff bubble, maybe enough to just barely get us into the playoffs. That would hurt our draft positioning and would probably slow the rebuild effort. I wasn't high on Niskanen. I don't feel we missed out on a great player there. I like Shattenkirk more than I like Niskanen, but I don't feel we missed out on a great player there. Shattenkirk, like Green, is a second-pairing guy who really earns his pay on the power play. They're offense-minded defensemen of the non-elite variety. I like Carlson, but I don't think he makes much sense for us right now or in the near future, unless we're going to aggressively retool and Chuck Fletcher our way back into Cup contention. Get a really good player with our first-round pick in the summer. Then get another really good player with our first-round pick in the next draft. Then do that again. Then do that again. Maybe sign a truly outstanding UFA like OEL along the way. This is pretty much our only realistic path back to relevance, assuming we don't get a Rasmus Dahlin type. (Though, even if we get Dahlin, we'd still have a big hill to climb.) Signing OEL and Carlson and de Haan isn't a plan, it's a pipe dream. Wings fans have been clamoring for a clean slate. While we are indeed in cap hell, we also kind of have that clean slate. We're a bad team with next-to-nothing in the way of young building block players. We're a bottom-five team in the league. If we suck for the next three years, the next three drafts could give us what we need to re-establish ourselves as a really good team, or at least a team that's on the rise. I don't see a desperate need for a John Carlson at this time (assuming we don't get Dahlin or Svechnikov). I think it'd be too little too late for an organization that needs to build up a small army of young ELC impact players.

Glad abs gets so much playing time. He really deserves to be out there in the last minute. Def more then AA or Mantha

Sounds nice. In the real world we call that "capable GM who's gonna fix your organization in short order" a diamond in the rough, because reality is only that simple and efficient in your schoolgirl daydreams.

You're a street rat