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Blah blah blah blah Howard is old. It ain’t about who’s owed what, it’s about what’s smart for the team long run. You’ve got a goalie who’s shown flashes of brilliance and who strung together two consecutive solid playoff outings, a goalie who’s been working hard behind the scenes, who also happens to be heading into a tricky RFA situation. At the same time, you’re the Detroit Red Wings, and you have s*** for assets, no one solid in the pipeline, and an injury-prone Howard on the tail end of his career who’s going to start having a harder time coming back from these injuries sooner than any of us would like. It just is what it is. Mrazek has a lot to prove without a doubt, tons. He brought it on himself, he lost his head, clearly. I don’t think it was an easy situation though, and I don’t believe he’s at an age where we should be giving up on him when we don’t have many good options. And we don’t have many guys in the system with the upside he could have. Petr Mrazek has been through some s***, and he’s grown up some in the process. Blashill and whatever the new goalie coaches name is have praised his work ethic behind the scenes. He’s gotta be hungry. Howard’s done nothing wrong, true story. Both these guys get zero favors from the guys in front of them either. But he hasn’t been so lights out to keep this team at the top, and we are mediocre at best as a team. And for the love, Howard is getting pretty old. You don’t have to dislike Howard to understand that in a season like this under the circumstances, it is in this teams best interest to give Petr Mrazek one final shot. But don’t take my word for it. I think Petr Mrazek made a pretty strong statement for himself in the last couple starts. Enough said. Oh, and by one final shot, I mean it should probably at least be Howard 2 and Mrazek 1 unless one of them s***s the bed or plays truly lights out. I don’t think that’s remotely unreasonable.

Yeah, we definitely shouldn’t be giving Mrazek a chance to get going. Lost cause.

You know, the thing a lot of people who have given up on Mrazek overlook is that the guy had two relatively solid playoff outings, as a young kid playing behind a lousy defense to boot. The second time he put up better numbers than the year before despite coming off a rough regular season and then coming in cold in relief of the floundering Howard, once again posting an underwhelming playoff performance. And that’s the thing that sticks out to me about Mrazek and makes me think we’re not giving him a fair shot. I think someone who can come in and play well in those big pressure games has something in him worth fighting for. I’m not going to defend his play in the previous couple seasons; it’s been lousy. But from many reports we heard that he’s been working hard behind the scenes and been focused, and he’s shown strong moments at times this season already. But he’s not getting any sort of consistenty. You can’t sit there and honestly say a goalie is getting a fair chance to get his game going when he’s going 3-4 weeks between starts. How don’t care how much you might believe the guy is done here, it’s ludicrous to say that any goalie is getting a fair shot when they’re getting next to no games. Ask any goalie and they’ll tell you that’s an incredibly hard position to be in. They’ve already decimated his trade value enough through mishandling the situation, and it’s weaker yet with Edmonton picking up Montoya tonight. There really is very little to lose giving him some more consistent starts for awhile to see if he can’t string something together. We’re not a team that’s ready to do anything in the playoffs. Truly, why not see what he could do this year if given more starts? No player has more upside if they were to come around. When little else is working and the playoffs or success in them are a pipe dream, there’s literally nothing to lose giving this guy a more reasonable shot. He may continue to be terrible, but on that slight chance he’s not, it could be a.big break for us. And again, Mrazek has gone 2-2 on strong NHL playoff performances, and end of the day, Howard’s never been a strong playoff goalie. You should not walk away from that kind of potential so easily when there’s so little to lose in a season like this.

The amount of winnable games this team consistently loses is simply mind-boggling. I get that the D is bad and the goaltending can be inconsistent, but end of the day, we can’t score almost all of the time. It’s crazy how mediocre we are at scoring.

“Starter for the season” means nothing on this team. Well, it shouldn’t on a team like this with the season going the way it is. Again, to me, the smart move in this disastrous season is to give Mrazek every chance to get something/anything going. There’s nothing to lose and potentially much to gain. This team is a dumpster fire with terrible defense that does neither of our goalies any favors, and Mrazek really is still young; a lot could still change. I don’t think it’s fair to assume he’s toast at this point, and I certainly don’t think it’s wise. 100% agree.

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They must’ve known this would be for the best for all of us...

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Of course Holland overvalued his prospects. He’s been utterly delusional about them for a long time. He was lucky to be around for some of the best prospect luck ever over the years and lost touch with reality. He’s been completely wasteful with far too many guys in this decade, and I really do wonder if our system is to blame for some of our prospect’s shortcomings even; I have to think our slow system combined with a mediocre pro team is not an inspiring environment, and we don’t have the same class of vets around steadying the ship as we once did. It definitely isn’t the system it once was.

Absolutely agree on some level. I was one of very few peoole on fence to be certain, though I didn’t say it would be bad nor did I expect it to be this bad. I thought we were being foolish to assume his success would translate to NHL succh as. My thought is and was that when you want to walk around like you’re the class of the league and an elite franchise, you need to be bringing in top people. When we brought in Babcock, he was THE guy to bring in. Solid NHL track record already; young and hungry coach still too. Someone like Blash should’ve gone to a lower-tier team to cut his teeth and the Wings bring in someone proven in 2015 if you want to keep up what seems like more of a facade than anything at this point. We’re clearly not an elite team anymore, and we don’t conduct business like one either. We haven’t in a long time. It may be hindsight for some, but this is the same sort of bad strategic thinking that I’ve had issues with since before this decade began, and we’re now nearing the end of it. Unless something dramatic happens this year, it’s time for a new GM.

End of the day, yes, absolutely. I still don’t think Blashill is there yet on the pro level, especially in this organization. In retrospect it really seems completely foolish to go with an unproven and very green Babcock clone. Maybe Blashill would have had better luck somewhere else where his style was fresher sounding, but going from 10 years Babcock to mini Babcock lite really was an absurd idea. Blashill was doomed to fail here, and that really boils down to another overly-optimistic and logically bankrupt Ken Holland move.

I’m far from sold on Mrazek at this point, but Howard is never going on be our savior, and let’s be honest, he’ll likely get injured at some point soon, and even if not, he’s generally on the tail end of his up and down career. I still think we need to give Mrazek more of a chance given that we’re short on players with higher potential and at this point, we’ve got nothing to lose as far as I’m concerned this season. Give him more consistent starts to see if he can get his game going again and if he can’t, have fun back in the Czech Republic next year. He’s got absolutely no chance of proving anything one way or another getting 1-2 starts a month behind this s*** team though. He needs more starts.

The fire sale has begun. /s

Something this board has struggled mightily with over the last 5-6 years is recognizing that the NHL and every league beneath it tend to be wildly different for everyone sans the elite among the elite. That’s one or two guys every generation, certainly not Jeff “he’s won everywhere” Blashill. Most pros win everywhere before they make it to the pros; it’s almost a prerequisite. For the rest, you really never know how things are going to go. The really crazy part to me was how confident the Wings were in Blashill. Did they even interview alternatives? I don’t remember. I only remember everyone and their mother essentially thinking he was our savior and Babcock was overrated and hurting things here. I was never sold on any of these ideas. Bummer it’s working out like this, but fans and maybe even management need to learn that they have to work with other proven professionals in the NHL sometimes. You can’t assume everything coming out of your system is going to work out for the best. We’ve made dramatically less trades than any other team in the league in recent years. I think the second lowest team still has twice as many trades as we do. This system is not working.

Great...

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It really bums me out that Abdelkader is part of our power play unit.

Maybe we’ll get royal flush lucky and the kids will blossom into stars. Optimism...soon to be shattered. But hope lingers...

There it is!

What the f*** does that face mean, Jeff Blashill?

Hossa called Holland Hossa took less money on a bridge deal basically and left millions on the table hoping Ken would find a way to get him a long term deal and Holland bungled it. The Hossa situation and all the side situations around it was Holland at his worst. That was when he did permanent damage to this team.

He didn't even do that job very well. Too many of the moves he's made over the last 6-7 years defy any sort of justification. He did nothing to help the team get into the playoffs handing out many of the contracts to the players he did.

The board collective doesn't like any Red Wings goalie for more than a few minutes at a time.

AA ain't no star. Not even close. That's the sad part. We're in this s***ty of a situation with an above-average prospect who could maybe be a 40-50 point guy one day if things pan out extremely well? These are sad times. That said, tough to argue still that he's not one of our better prospects. Again, sad times... Exactly. You can like the guy or think little of him, but he's one of our best young players on a team that doesn't have many promising guys. It's a sad state to be in, but you can't put yourself in a position where you're willing to let guys like AA and Mrazek head out of town. We cannot afford to give up on our promising prospects that easily, and again, it scares the s*** out of me that in one summer, we've realistically had to deal with the potential of losing both. I'm completely over defending Holland at this point. The guy is bordering on pure cap incompetence.