kipwinger

Aaaaaaand the Wings got another day off today. They seriously take more days off than any team in the NHL it seems like. If I just lost an absolute stinker to a bottom dweller, I'm pretty sure I'd find something for the guys to do the next day. Collective therapy perhaps?

2 time all-star AND Olympian, if I'm not mistaken.

I'm completely perplexed by all of this right now. Sure our goalie isn't playing great. Sure our defense isn't spectacular. I completely get that. But is our defense any worse than Pittsburgh, or Ottawa, or Vancouver, or Minnesota? Is our goalie worse than Winnipeg or Calgary? I mean, what confuses me is why we're falling off a cliff right now. If we were just a mediocre team, I'd get it. But mediocre teams are playing more consistently than we are. We've got the same weaknesses as every other mediocre team, but they're staying the same or trending up, and we are in a tailspin at a time in the season when you want to be heating up. We added a 20 goal scorer, a 30+ point defenseman, and they're both playing great...yet somehow we're worse off for it. How does that happen?

Sooooo, what the hell is going on with the Red Wings anyway?

Sooooo on the plus side, Kindl looked good eh?

Rusev doesn't suck, he's just enigmatic.

Abby! Nice goal, nice stretch pass by Kindl. Who thought that would ever get typed on LGW?

Because the day was saved by a secret chemical compound when the heroes were being dominated and were exhausted.

Why o why wasn't space jam a baseball movie. Too apros pro?

Well lest we blame it entirely on the whipping boys, doesn't anybody even want to mention the fact that zetterberg lost the battle in f front to the actual goal scorer? Cuz...ya know...he did.

Jesus, think you could find the time to marry her after two kids Helm? I mean, no rush or anything.

Quenneville took over Chicago a year after they finished 10th in the West and 20th in the NHL. Babcock took over the Wings a year after they finished 1st in the West and 1st in the NHL. Quenneville's team wasn't quite as bad as Babcock's Anaheim team, but he's never stepped into a team as good as the one Babs did. So again, all of your criticisms of Sutter and Quenneville apply just as much to Babcock. If the guy with 700 wins, 2 cups, and 4 good post seasons did it all because of his stacked team, then the guy with 500+ wins, 1 cup, 4 good post seasons also did it on the back of his super skilled team. And why is it such a sin for Quenneville to win with good teams? You're supposed to. Babs had world class teams and won less often. His win percentage with the Wings is lower than Quenneville's with the Hawks (marganally, I'll admit). Is there some coach out there who did more than Quenneville with a less skilled team? Certainly not Babcock, as you've already admitted, since he only ever won with (your words) the most skilled team in the league (too). Like you, I don't object so much to your characterization of Babcock. He is a good coach. And he did an exceptionally good job that first year in Anaheim. But I don't understand why you're so quick to dismiss Quenneville. If Babcock (or any other active coach) had 2 Cups, 2 President's Trophies, made it to the conference championships 4 times, made the playoffs 15 times, had 1 Jack Adams Award, and was 3rd all time in wins, nobody would argue that he's the best coach in the league. But you think he's "average to above average" because he didn't win more Cups with his other teams, and because his players were too good? I don't know man.

Lol. What a hater.

I do want to add that I'm really not intending to knock Babcock here. I'm just stating my reasons for answering F. Michael's question the way I did. I maintain that Babs isn't the best coach for our team, but that still doesn't make him a bad coach, and it's not even the point I'm trying to make with this discussion. I think that Quenneville, Suter, and Hitch are better because they've got the accomplishments, and because there's no serious criticism of them that doesn't apply to Babs too. But again, he's clearly a very good coach, in pretty illustrious company.

For a minute there, it looked like both of those guys might have been able to do it too. Franzen started out really strong before his injury, and Weiss was going like gangbusters for a bit too. Dang.

I'm going to address two of your points... 1. "I firmly believe Quenneville is the beneficiary of the skill on his team, and he doesn't bring much to the table". Who's better, Toews, Kane, and Keith or Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Lidstom? If you answer the latter, as I suspect you will, then your argument applies even more to Babcock then it does to Quenneville. Babcock's best teams were better than Quenneville's best teams, or Sutter's best teams. Yet they won more Cups with theirs. Babcock's 2005 roster was WAY better than anything Quenneville has ever coached. It's better than anything ANY of those guys have ever coached. He had four 80+ point players. And he lost in the 1st round. So don't act like he's been given some hard road and the rest of these guys had a cake walk based on their rosters. 2. "But I'm not willing to say Quenneville is one of the best coaches in the league based on four solid postseasons and ignore the rest of his career". The rest of his career where he had more wins and more playoff appearances than he had in Chicago? Quenneville's got over 700 wins. He had as many wins in St. Louis as he does in Chicago in roughly the same amount of games. Chicago is not an anomaly. It's more of the same. True Chicago's where he won his cups, but that's true of Babs and Detroit too. He didn't win anything until he had Dats, Z, and Lids to work with. In fact, he missed the playoffs 50% of the time he wasn't with the Wings. That's right, Babs missed the playoffs with a team that went to the finals the year before...just like Sutter.

Winning the Stanley Cup is the hardest thing to do in hockey (or sports for that matter). Quenneville and Sutter each have two. Quenneville also has the added bonus of having over 700 wins (only the third person to do so). Hitch has 700 wins and as many Cups as Babs. To be honest, I think win percentage and "first to 500" are less meaningful in this case for two reasons. Mclellan AND Boudreau will be faster to 500 than Babcock, and they both have a higher win percentages. Bylsma has a higher win percentage and just as many cups. Yet I think it would be misleading to suggest that any of them are better or worse than Babs based on those stats. Certainly it's a factor, but if you go down that rabbit hole you might not like where you end up. As I said, these are just my (partially informed) impressions. You could definitely figure out a way to factor in all the relevant information, and then plug each guy in. And that might totally change my mind. But needless to say, Babs is a very good coach. Easily top 5 in the league. But if someone asks me (and they did) "who's the best", I've got to give it to the guys with the hardware and longevity.

That's a pretty tenuous characterization for a guy who has 54 goals, and 55 assists in his short NHL career. Joe Thornton is "pass first". Valterri Filppula is "pass first". I think it would be misleading to describe Nyquist's game in a similar fashion. So far in his short career he's been a significantly better finisher than most NHLers.

I'd like to see Blashill behind the bench. Or Dave Tippett, if Phoenix goes in a different direction. I like Blashill because he's already familiar with the talent, they've bought into his scheme, he's got report with the guys, and he's won with them. I like Tippett because he's got about 20 fewer career wins than Babs, with about one twentieth the amount of talent. Tippett gets more out of less than anyone in the league and I"d love to see what he could do with a payroll, some stability, and some quality hockey players. When it comes to who is better, the results speak for themselves. Quenneville, Hitch, and Sutter have credentials that surpass Babs. Laviollete and Julien are in the same ballpark. Vignault, Trotz, Tippet, and Mclellan are nipping at his heals. Edit: I would add that this is a rough ranking of guys based on a few variables (Cups, finals appearances, career wins). Ideally you'd rank these guys on a few other factors as well. Notably, long playoff runs, President's trophy wins, division wins, injuries, quality of team, etc. As all make a major difference in either A) determining who is best, or B) identifying legit reasons why they've struggled. I just don't have the time to do it though, and I suspect you'd probably end up with the same guys (in a slightly different order) anyway.

I agree with most of that. But I don't really know why people insist on comparing Babcock to Bowman anyway. It's an apples to oranges comparison. God knows I'm more critical of Babcock's image than most, but even so I'll readily admit that comparing him to the most successful coach of all time, in the pre-cap world, with teams full of the greatest talent in the game's history...is bulls***. It yields nothing useful. Babcock should be compared to his peers. By which standard he's better than most, about the same as others, and less good than a couple.

I wasn't making any argument. I was just providing context for the current discussion. Edit: To provide even more context, I looked up the production from the next three highest d-scorers for each of those teams, and Detroit slightly above average there as well. So, my next question: Could it be "how" the defense is scoring that's the problem? By which I mean, are they "producing" offense by making things happen, or are they getting on the score sheet because the forwards are scoring pretty well? Again, no answers here. Just questions.

I was looking at top defenses (in terms of scoring) yesterday, and one of the things I noticed is that their top guys don't noticeably outpace our top guys. Here's the point production of the top three defensive scorers for a random assortment of quality teams. Nash: 51, 45, 35: Total 131 Wash: 47, 39, 24: Total 110 Mtl: 52, 34, 14: Total 108 TB: 37, 36, 30: Total 103 Ana: 36, 33, 31: Total 100 Det: 40, 31, 25: Total 96 NYR: 45, 26, 25: Total 96 Stl: 41, 40, 14: Total 95 NYI: 32, 29, 29: Total 90 Pit: 54, 17, 17: Total 88 Chi: 41, 31, 15: Total 87 So, a couple of things. 1. Obviously we didn't have Zidlicky's points until recently. And without him we've got about 15 points fewer. 2. This doesn't say anything about how any of these guys or teams are getting their points (i.e. powerplay vs. even strength). 3. Obviously we're not looking at the defensive strength of these same players, but our top three of Kronwall, Zidlicky, Dekeyser aren't slouches on defense either. Do you guys think it's how we're using them or what? Because production wise we seem to be at least a reasonably skilled team from the back end.

Not really sure if you've noticed, but Detroit's shot suppression game isn't exactly exhilarating to watch. Last I knew we were at, or near, the top of teams with fewest shots (for and against) per game. These days it looks like we're not too different from New Jersey.

What do you mean? We're in excellent cap condition. Babs doesn't have "top players" because the ones we had got old, and the ones we will have aren't old enough yet. If Kenny had wanted to, he likely could have signed a bunch of second tier stars (e.g. Vanek, Moulson, etc.), we definitely have the space. But legit "top talent" doesn't really hit the market much, and as previously mentioned our home grown "top talent" is either too old, or too young, currently. And just to be optimistic, I'd like to point out that Tatar AND Nyquist are both coming off freshman and sophomore seasons which rival or surpass the freshman and sophomore seasons that Datsyuk and Zetterberg put up. So there's plenty of reason to believe we've got top players coming (in addition to all the first rate prospects we've got coming too). Contrary to the narrative, Mike Babcock has had (and will have again) plenty of talent to work with as coach of the Red Wings.

Of course! Why didn't I think of that?