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"Hold my beer..." - Ken Holland

Glad to hear you're feeling better. I can make your re-acclimation back to the Wings much easier with a two word summary: Piss Poor

Bin is right. There is no top talent on this team, including Mantha and Larkin. We have to come to the cold truth that Mantha and Larkin may be the next coming of Tatar/Nyquist or Filppula/Hudler, and not Datsyuk/Zetterberg. This is one of the reasons I advocate against the tank. Do you think Datsyuk or Zetterberg would be the caliber of player they were and are today without spending extended time with Yzerman/Chelios/Lidstrom etc etc. Without guidance they could have ended up down a hudler or fillpulla road as well. Team culture is everything. It's why teams like Detroit extended playoff appearances well past their prime and why teams like Arizona cant even start one. Mantha and Larkin can learn from Zberg (thank god) but after that there's not much to look up to. A natural talent like Dahlin is well needed

I made a thread about it back in the summer. Below is what I posted:

I think some of you guys are lowballing Green on his next contract. Just to do some comparables, I picked out 5 guys currently under contract who are near Green's point totals and age. Mike Green: 29 points, age 32, 6.0 AAV Alex Goligoski: 30 points, age 32, $5.475 mil AAV Marc-Edouard Vlasic: 29 points, age 30, $4.25 AAV Justin Braun: 27 points. age 30, $3.8 mil AAV Jeff Petry: 31 points, age 30, $5.5 mil AAV Duncan Keith: 28 points, age 34, $5.538 AAV Average AAV among the 5 players I listed is $4.91 mil. Considering all of them signed their contracts before last season, and with the overpayment last summer of dmen, I wouldn't be surprised to see Green get a fair 3 year deal at $5 mil AAV. He'll be 35 when the contract is up, and probably still one of our best defenseman.

I blame Mrazek.

This place is nowhere what it was a few years ago when the team was competitive. It's tough to keep coming back and talking about a bad team with no direction and poor management, it's just depressing. The GDTs have no heart anymore, Mikey who did the GDTs here virtually all season, every season for how many years isn't even around this year because of how rough this team is. Some GDTs don't hit two pages. I've lost motivation to keep up with it because it's been such a decline in interest. It is what it is, you can't blame anyone for not wanting to sit through these games and talk about tires being kicked and the dumb decisions the coach makes game after game. The important thing to take away here, is Mrazek is gone. And that is a step in the right direction. Now he's in Philly, not playing well, not playing like a starter, and that's giving me even more justification to gain draft picks for him who very likely wasn't going to be the future of this team. Thanks for those of you who have stuck around, even though I think that old cheese smell is coming from Kickazz.

Simply put Mrazek wasn't going to be brought back. IDK if there was some off ice stuff too, or if it was just him being pretty consistently bad for so long, but they had no intention of qualifying him, and at that point the odds of him returning were nil. So it was trade him now or lose him for nothing later. Regardless of how you feel, about him, Holland was ready to move on.

People say Holland can't trade, but he deserves a ton of credit for this one. He managed to sell basically a useless player for a 2nd and a 3rd. Handing out big contracts to McDonagh's buddies last year is really gonna bite NYR in the rear lol. And now they're listening to offers on McDonagh too lol

The fact that there is currently zero 1st line talent and zero top pair defense on this team is enough to make me believe that we lack elite talent. Everyone is currently playing above their role and struggling because of it. Add a few elite players to this team and players can start slotting into their proper roles and play a more consistent game.