Buppy

Minnesota traded their 1st, so no worries there. This doesn't seem like a great year for Euros, but Wennberg, de la Rose, or Hagg would be decent picks. They're guys I'd rather we target if we trade down, but they all sound good. I'd like to see one of three things happen: Trade up for Monahan or Nichushkin if he falls (maybe Lindholm or Shinkaruk, but only if we didn't have to give up much), Stay put for one of Pulock, Gauthier, Mantha, or Zykov (or any of the previous four), or trade down to add another 2nd-rounder. There's several players that should be available late-1st or early-2nd, and even into the 3rd.

Not sure about mid-1st, but late-1st or in the 2nd round would be nice.

He was much improved last year too, especially later in the season.

But the same is true for forwards. Like I said, it depends on who's available. The top 5 seems pretty well established with Jones, MacKinnon, Drouin, Nichushkin, and Barkov in some order. Then Nurse, Ristolainen, Monahan, and Lindholm seem unlikely to fall far enough for us. Everyone else could potentially be available, or could go in the top 10. Gauthier and Mantha would be my top choices, and maybe Zykov, and if Monahan were to fall some I'd make a bid to trade up (Phoenix at 12th would be concievable, though I doubt he'd fall that far), but if they're not available and were choosing between Pulock, Domi, and Wennberg then I'm taking Pulock. If Pulock's not there either, I'd probably look to trade down, hopefully pick up someone like Rychel plus and extra 2nd-rounder.

I'd have to disagree with that. You can never have too much depth, and it's never too soon to start drafting the next wave. Furthermore, I'd say a top-pair 2-way defenseman is just as much of a need as a goal scorer or power forward. Sproul is the only one who seems to have that potential, and I wouldn't say that it's particularly likely that he'll get there. If someone like Pulock is available, we'd have to consider it. Depending on who else is available, he could easily be our best option. I would expect to see us take a couple defensemen this year.

Best of luck to him. It's definitely well deserved. Our drafting will probably take a hit now, just when we're coming up on what should be a big draft for us. Wonder who we'll get to replace him.

I can understand how you came to that conclusion, but it's not pessimism at all, nor do I think the future is particularly dark. I just don't think the real building is going to start for a few years yet. I figure we'll likely stay around our current level for another 1-3 years (depending on Datsyuk), adding a few more pieces along the way. By that time, Datsyuk will probably be gone, Hank, Kronwall, and Franzen will be mid-30s. The kids so far look like good pieces to build with, but as yet no one has emerged as someone to build around. It's possible some may do so. Also possible that enough of them will turn out "good" that we'll be able to compete will depth instead of star power. Much more likely though is that we will need some to become real stars, and we probably haven't drafted them yet. I'm hopeful that we can find our future stars without dropping all the way to the basement, perhaps without even missing the playoffs, but historically speaking it's not very likely. The good news, though, is that once we find those stars, all the other pieces we have should have some experience or be ready to step in to the lineup. Plus we should still have plenty of veteran leadership to help the kids grow. The rise, once it starts, should be quick. Realistically I think 5-6 years is about the minimum we should expect before we're getting back to the top. If anything, I'm probably being optimistic in thinking Howie will have that kind of longevity.

Good rule of thumb is always take an octopus everywhere. Better to have one and not need it than find yourself thinking, "Damn, I wish I had that octopus".

No it isn't. Other than Howard, we don't yet have anyone to build around. We're not yet at the "build" stage. We're still at Home Depot shopping for material. We can hope that some of the lumber we have already will develop into a foundation, but more likely we'll still have to buy one. When talking rebuild, we need to consider who we'll be drafting in the next few years. Consider that whomever we draft this year (assuming we end up picking in the 14-17 range) will likely instantly be one of our (if not the) top prospects. Big difference between a 15th overall and 31-33 (which is where we've averaged in recent years). Bigger difference if we decline further and get a top-10.

Also, a point tonight and a Columbus loss in regulation would put us in.

Got any further info on McCarron? I haven't been able to find a scouting report/talent analysis, or even a highlight reel. I see he ended up 35th among NA skaters in the CSS final rankings, but that doesn't give any real notion of how he stacks up against the Euros. The only current combined ranking I can find is from Craig Button, and he doesn't have him in his top 75. Mackenzie had him 49th in January, but offered no other info. Either way, I think it'll be hard to go wrong in this draft. Our only real need is future star power (which we probably won't have a shot at any of the "can't miss" guys), so we're basically just adding depth to an already strong pool.

Can't get 6th. It's not the first game, it's the first game in the city that had the extra home game. In this case, we did, so you throw out our 5-3 win. With our ROW tonight, Columbus now can not beat us in a tiebreaker. So if we beat Nashville and Columbus loses, we are in. If the Jackets lose in regulation, Minny is also in. Regardless of what Columbus does, 3 points in our last two games puts us in. Also with our win tonight, Phoenix is officially eliminated. We basically ended their season 3 of the last 4 years. Dallas is virtually out, and the biggest Nashville fans in the world at this point. They need to beat Columbus, then beat us in regulation, and they need Nashville to beat us in regulation, then beat Columbus. Either they or Nashville need to beat Columbus in regulation.

True enough, but again...free.

Yeah, pipe dream. But while looking at the Halifax stats I noticed someone else who might be of interest. Stefan Fournier. RW, 21 yo, undrafted, unsigned so far as I can tell. 35g in 66 games, 12 in 11 playoff games. 6' 3", 210. Even drops the gloves on occasion. Be nice to add a kid like that to the system, especially for free.

T.its

I never said it was impossible to sign good players. What I'm saying is you shouldn't expect to be able to sign really good players every single time you need one. Even before the cap, very few teams in all of NHL history have managed to make big transitions without some bumps along the road. Fewer yet have managed it after such a long period near the top of the league. The cap makes it even harder. You're asking for perfection. Sometimes, mistakes will be made. You get someone that doesn't work out the way you expect. You go after one guy and have to pass on another, then miss your target anyway. You think you'll have more options, but they don't materialize. Everyone makes them. Sometimes they don't hurt, sometimes they do. Your list of "wrong" moves is ridiculous. Half those players were signed specifically to play in GR and had no bearing on the Wings roster. Others were emergency replacements signed during the season or signed to fill roles at the bottom of the roster. Williams was signed when we needed cheap depth scoring during our cap crunch. He'd had 19g and 47p the previous season, and he knew our system, and he offered a potential replacement for Sammy on the point. We got him for $1.5m. It was a sound decision but didn't work out. It's not like we could have gotten anyone particularly good for that money. Cleary was signed 5 years ago, as a depth scorer and penalty killer. In that role he has been a success. We didn't fail to sign a star winger because we had Cleary to play in the top 6. He's been put in the top-6 because we failed to get anyone better. Quincey's been much better than he's gotten credit for. Not as good offensively as he'd been in LA or Colorado, but why should anyone have assumed that would be the case? White was a good pickup last year, when there were very few options that made it to free agency. No so good this year, but oh well. At least it was only two years. Cola signed late in the free agency period, when most everyone was gone, to fill a spot at the bottom of the roster. A good depth move, and unfortunately his injuries were even worse than usual. Luckily it turns out we didn't need him. Sammy was another depth scorer, and again an option for the PP point. Literally not even one of those moves you listed prevented us from going after any top players. Quincey is the only one that was really expected to be in a key role. Well, none of our forward prospect are "supposed" to be stars, but a few, like Jarnkrok, may have that capability. But of our top forward prospects, Jarnkrok is really the only "pass first" one we have (and Nyquist I guess, if you want to include them). Jurco, Pulkkinen, Frk, and Tvrdon are all goal scorers. Tatar is probably more a goal scorer as well. Sheahan and Ferraro probably aren't scorers at all.

No one is "just realizing" anything. Acquiring top talent has always been hard, and has become even more so in the cap era. Yet you seem to think that even now a competent GM should be able to replace any that's lost, and add more to compensate for any decline from those still around, all without any drop in team performance. When the GM you think are good now have all rebuilt their teams on the fly, without any "down" years...then you can say Holland should have done better. For now, you have nearly 100 years of NHL history telling you that your expectations aren't reasonable.

I believe what he was saying is that the cap takes away the advantage of spending more than most other teams. In the past we could trade away picks and prospects to acquire proven talent without having to worry about fitting them under the cap, and still go after any UFA we liked. That isn't possible anymore. Now, we have to keep our young players, since as you say we need them to fill out the roster. Now we have to compete with a lot more teams for UFAs, and there are fewer of them to go around as well. It's not a matter of how we're spending money; it's acquiring those "great players" in the first place.

You know he's signed for two more years, right?

As I pointed out in my post, they don't really have any more depth than we do. Sharp's been out almost half the year, Hossa missed 7. Saad, Bolland, Stalberg, Bickell, Shaw... none of them are really any better than what we have, none of them have as many goals as Brunner, and only Saad matches Franzen. More likely I think is that Kane and Toews add more to those guys than those guys add to Kane and Toews. Upgrading a couple of our forwards to Sharp and Hossa level would help, I'm sure. But I wouldn't expect it to double Pav and Hank's output. Particularly not if the one's you upgrade are Franzen and Filppula, as you'd likely need to do to make it work under the cap.

I said they can't score goals. By that I mean they both seem to be around 20-25g. And you're kind of proving my point. They're not good enough to turn average players into stars. Nothing really wrong with that; few players ever have been. I point it out because it makes it that much tougher to build a team. If we need four 30g wingers, we're probably out of luck. Couldn't afford it in free agency, even if there were 4 available. Nor do we have the trade assets, even if we completely empty the cupboards (which would leave no cheap depth to fill the rest of the roster anyway). We need to be able to score, even if our top-6 has a couple of guys that can only pot 15-20. Cleary and Abby have 9g apiece. Franzen has 10, Brunner 11, Flip 7...Tatar, Nyquist, and Bert combined have 9 in what has essentially been the same roster spot. That's pretty good scoring depth. That's 7 players with 9 or more, plus 1 with 7. For comparison, the Blackhawks also have 7 players with 9 and one with 7. In fact, looking at the entire forward corps of both teams, taking out Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Franzen for the Wings, and Kane, Toews, and Hossa for the Hawks... our forwards have scored just one fewer goal. Paid similar money too; we're a little under a million more. Injuries close to balanced. Bolland and Flip roughly equal out. We've had more injuries, but they've had Sharp out for a while. Our replacements have done better. It's a very minor difference. Add in Franzen and Hossa (both have missed 7 games) and the difference is 8 goals, and now the Hawks spending slightly more. Pav and Hank have 22. Kane and Toews have 42. It's reasonable to think we could upgrade one of the others enough to offset the 8g difference there. Not so much the other 20g at the top. We need that depth scoring. Need guys like Cleary, Abby, Bert and Sammy who can fill a role on a top line at a fairly cheap price. We can afford one upgrade, and maybe make one other swap for someone of a similar level but who fits better. No guarantees that we can find either, and no guarantees it would be enough, so we don't want to spend to much (in cap commitment or trade) to try for it.

Not a goal scorer, but he put up 27 or more in 6 straight years (3 over 30), then followed that with 23 in 56 games. But he's at a 25g pace this year. His goal production isn't down nearly as severely as Hank's. His assists are down, but that's far more dependent on the guys around him. (Part of the decline for both is certainly from not playing together as often.) He's also older, and has been playing fewer games the past few years. Hank deserves appreciation for getting his assists up in spite of having less to work with, but he's actually averaging more games the last four years than he did the four years prior to that. Perhaps he's playing games now that he would have sat out in the past. We certainly need him more now. This year, Pav is on pace for 25.4g in 82 games. The last four years he's averaged 27.1 per 82. The four years prior it was 30.5. Hank is on pace for 18 this year. The last four years: 23.1. The four years prior: 41.

Yes, eventually the young guys have to play, and I believe they will. But most of our prospects haven't yet played pro hockey in NA. Many will be in GR next season. Cleary and White will likely be gone this summer, Sammy, Bert, and Cola likely after next year. The openings will come. Maybe not as quickly or as many as some would like, but they'll be there. Some of the kids will likely wash out in the AHL. Once we have a better idea of what we have, some may be traded away to better balance our strengths. The windows may be small and the kids may have to really excell in limited time to squeeze in. The past and the future are very different situations, so I would expect different behavior from management. Even though some of the decisions this past summer may look similar, to me they look more like stop-gap measures to try to keep us in the playoffs while we wait for the kids to develop some more. And who can say what might have been different if we'd had a real training camp. Likely no different for Andersson and Lashoff. But the spots they'd fill are already filled with young players anyway. Helm, Abby, and Emmy are all young bottom-6 centers. Mursak was a kid getting his chance. Andy's chance likely would have come next year, luckily for him injuries gave it to him sooner. Same for Lashoff, though with all the questions on defense and so many young guys anyway, injuries may have been his only opportunity. Again, lucky for him, and maybe the team as well since now we have a decent 6/7 guy we didn't know we had. I guess that's the silver-lining on the injury cloud. I think Tatar and Nyquist would have had a chance in training camp, though the addition of Brunner didn't help their cause. Bert and Sammy are certainly in the way, but both offer elements that the kids lack. Not a great chance, and maybe not the way I'd have done it, but I can't fault management for trying to remain competetive through a rebuild. Personally, I think they're both trade candidates. I think they're close enough to the NHL that we can safely conclude that neither of them is particularly special, and they're too similar to what we already have. We can try to trade them to address other weaknesses. That we haven't traded them yet is maybe a good thing. Our needs on defense don't seem quite as desperate as they did in the summer, while they have both been valuable injury replacements. Over the next few years, I expect more kids to start trickling in and out while we try to separate the wheat from the chaff. Maybe some more stop-gaps depending on how well guys do; who stays and who goes. Likely to be frustrating, and we'll almost certainly let someone go that will turn out better than we thought. But so long as at least a handful work out well for us, we'll be in good shape once we find our next generation stars. No one's going to like the process, and the boards will be full of ideas for what could be or should have been done, some realistic some not so much. I can understand the impatience, and the thought that we should have started the rebuild sooner. But building takes time, as does decline. We need to be more patient.

To a point. Hank's has been down for four years. Datsyuk isn't down much. Of course having better players around them or more depth would help. But neither of them is the same player they were a few years ago. Part of their job is to elevate the players around them. In that respect, they have failed as often as the players around them have failed at playing up to their capabilities. It's not like they're serving up goals on a silver platter and the rest of the team is just blowing the opportunities. They're getting double-teamed and turning the puck over. Part of that is teammates failing to give them enough options, part of it is Pav and Hank failing to find the options they do have. But I don't want to further derail this with criticism. Probably gives the wrong impression. Both do all I would expect of them, and occasionally more. The thread is about Hank's degrading goal-scoring, which I believe to be more about him than everyone around him.

Build for the future. Stockpile young players. Avoid panic-induced roster juggling. Look for moves that make sense long-term, rather than making moves just because you feel like you have to, and "well, it's the best we can do" at the time. Aim for a versatile prospect pool. Avoid long-term commitments unless they're players key to the future. In time we'll find someone new to build around. With good work, we'll have a strong supporting cast already assembled and developed. With luck it will happen soon enough that Pav and Hank will still be around and good enough to lead the team while the next foundation players grow into it, and we'll be in position to make another long run at the top. Hopefully, we could get all that done without falling out of the playoffs. If not, oh well. Nothing wrong with a little down stretch while we rebuild. "Down" is the easiest place to find those foundation players.