gcom007

Holland's the idiot for bringing him back when he did. You can't really blame Sammy for signing. It was frustrating and I absolutely couldn't stand that we had him the last two years given the circumstances, but I'll be damned if I throw his whole career under the bus because Holland can't find a way to make good signings anymore. He had some great moments for us during that first stint and it truly is a shame the memory is going to be sullied for many because Holland was dumb enough to bring him back when he was clearly washed up. He always had a way about him that made him a bit frustrating, but some of those huge playoff goals more than made up for it.

Whether people love the money angle of the deal or not, at least we can say that the guy actually did something to earn his deal. I like it personally, especially considering we really haven't been spending to the cap the last few years. We didn't do as well as we perhaps could've by Tatar the last year or so, and giving him a deal like this makes up for it a bit without it truly being any sort of overpayment.

Did anyone really expect him to drop the hammer too much? He said about as much as he reasonably could. You're never going to get the full story in an interview.

Absolutely. I don't disagree with you on the points you're making, but they don't have much to do with the point I was making. Too many people go on and on about how lucky we are to have Holland as a GM because he doesn't sign these guys to big deals, in the process criticizing the other teams for the deals that are made. But in reality, Holland is chasing these guys and oftentimes throwing out the same money if not more. The only reason he's not signing them is because he's getting rejected. It doesn't really matter why he was rejected given the point that they are making. You can't give the guy credit for not making big deals when he's trying hard to make big deals and is just getting rejected. That is, simply put, an absurd argument. That said, again, I agree with what you're saying, and I probably hold a lot less against Holland than some, as I never have gotten worked up about any of those deals you mentioned, because there were other factors involved. I'm much less nitpicky about the individual deals and much more concerned with the overall pattern we've seen for five years now. He can't seem to strike a balance in the way he pursues guys. He goes for the big players, who realistically probably are too much money, and year after year, we're rejected for one reason or another and are then too late to target perhaps more accessible mid-level talent. I still am nitpicky and bitter about him letting Hossa go, and like most at this point, I think many of the deals he makes for longtime Wings or former Wings are just abysmal and utterly and completely lacking in good sense at times. But at the end of the day, I really don't think Holland is a bad GM so much as he's just lost the ability to be an effective GM here. We're in a transition period whether we like it or not at this point, and Holland seems to lack the ability to build a team for a new direction. He brings in and keeps signing old parts that don't work, all the while holding back some of our younger players from moving up when they clearly should be in the NHL at this point. The last couple years in particular, you look at the team that ultimately got us to the playoffs, and it wasn't the team that Holland envisioned at the start of the season. Holland's vision was failing early on, then the injuries hit, thankfully almost in some cases, and we've got a deep stable in Grand Rapids that has helped us at least in the regular season. He talks about the importance of the draft and the youth, but holds the youth back and trades draft picks at odd times for odd people and doesn't trade them at other times when it seemingly makes more sense. He keeps chasing people that at this point we can pretty much assume are unattainable. He keeps signing older players that can't crack the lineup or stay healthy. There's just no sort of "good" consistency outside of the draft, and you can't just build a team with the draft. You have to be able to sign and trade for outside talent to plug holes when needed. And truthfully, I'd be a lot more content with Holland not landing some of the guys he's chased if not for the countless utterly terrible reactionary signings, and again, it's a five year pattern now. But more than anything, I just don't think Holland's playing to his strengths anymore. I think he stumbled pretty hard when he started having to really deal with the cap, and he's never really recovered, and he's never stopped to focus on what's worked for him and what hasn't. Things Holland is exceptionally good at: -Some don't want to give Holland as much credit for drafting, but no matter who deserves the most credit, while he's been GM, we've drafted ridiculously well, and we continue to draft well. This is great, but in the cap era, we need to get these guys into the NHL quicker and taking advantage not just of their youth and energy, but their cheaper RFA contracts -Finding younger UFAs who had promising starts or a fair amount of skill but have since struggled in the NHL, signing them cheap, and plugging them into a system in which they get a fresh start and an opportunity to grow. When Holland chases guys in the $1-2 million range, he's proven that he's got a knack for getting a lot of bang for his buck, and those guys tend to become very loyal to our team. -I think Holland knows goalies well, and I think he's generally pretty good about finding cheaper guys that give the team a chance to win, and guys that are good in the room, which is no easy feat given how crazy some goalies are. Other than 2002 with Hasek and the team that was almost certainly bound to win a Cup, he's not done so well with higher end goalies. I think it was a flash move that's surely hard to pass up at the time, but it started the Wings down a road that brought a fair amount of drama over the following five years. And while I tend to think/hope Howard bounces back, his first year with big money was pretty terrible all things considered. And while he's getting pad bigger money, I still think of him as more of a mid-level guy who's capable of getting the job done if not being great. What do these three things have in common? They all bring players to the team that are cheap, but offer a lot of bang for the buck. What awesome talents to have in the cap era! But he's seemingly turned his back on it. There's just way too many bad signings, and way too many kids getting way too "overripe" in Grand Rapids. And clearly, at least one of them was frustrated about it, and I'm sure he's not the only one. And seriously, when you're not as strong of a team as you were and you're irritating the talent you're developing, what's going to keep them here when they become UFAs? Why wouldn't they bolt for money and/or the chance to play for a better team? That's something else we're likely going to be dealing with sooner rather than later, and it's most likely going to sting a lot worse than not signing whatever flavor of the week free agent is available. I just don't trust that the guy has the right vision or the stomach to build a Red Wings team in the cap era. Maybe he's just been at it too long, maybe he's too close, maybe his loyalty has gotten the better of him. It doesn't matter. The reasons don't change the problems. We can't make guys sign here that don't want to sign here, but we don't have to sign nearly as much crap as we do, and we don't need to clog up the pathway between the AHL and the NHL as much as we do. You'd think after five years Holland would have woken up a bit more about some of the changes that need to be made, and would stop giving out bad contracts for the sake of giving out a contract when you didn't land the guy you wanted. And ultimately, if Holland had a better idea of what to do with what he does have control over, where he gets to make a choice, we'd likely be in a lot better shape right now in terms of convincing outside players to make the choice to play for us. But at this point, I think he's just too far into the downward spiral to pull it up. That's why we need a change more than anything.

A goalie a few years removed from a Cup victory playing behind the Hall of Fame roster is a gaping hole need? I think not. Was it a crazy opportunity to get a legendary goalie? Sure. I'm not taking anything away from Hasek, but Osgood would've won that Cup in 2002 for us. I admit that I was excited about the Hasek move initially like most, despite what it meant for Osgood and Kozlov, but I was never convinced we needed to do it. The guy was great, no doubt, and I have a lot of respect for the way he carried himself after getting pulled in 2008. But again, I just don't think it was a move that needed to be made, and I think it was short-sighted to move Kozlov for the very reason you mentioned. And the drama that Hasek brought into the organization as time went on did not do us any favors at all. Osgood is not a legendary individual goalie like Hasek, but he's always been underrated, and he definitely proved more than a few times that he knows how to get the job done in the playoffs. He had off post-seasons, but so does every goalie. No goalie is lights out every year, and the reality of the matter is that more often than not, Osgood wasn't the reason the Wings were folding in the playoffs. Had we stuck with Osgood in 2002, I think we still win that Cup, and moving forward, we have a team that is ultimately more stable in the goaltending department. Skip the whole Cujo/Hasek drama, skip Manny Legace deluding himself into believing he's a legit starter and his playoff implosions, stick with the guy who started and finished a Red Wing, brought us two Cups, and came within one game of bringing us a third despite a depleted roster. And hell, maybe with a little less goalie drama in the years that followed 2002 when we still had a solid team, we might've gotten close or even won another. Again, I don't mean to take anything away from Hasek's status as one of the all-time great goalies, but I don't think we needed him, and I think we paid a much higher price for making that move than it was worth in the long run.

It kills me when posters cite Holland not signing all these UFAs to big deals as a good thing, and that's why we want him, when in fact, he is out there pitching the same huge deals to the UFAs as everyone else, he just keeps getting rejected. How do they conveniently ignore that? And it's not just this year! The stupidity of some of the statements in light of the facts is mind-blowing to me. Holland offers a guy the same deal or a bigger deal, guy signs with other team, and somehow we're lucky to have a GM that doesn't sign UFAs to huge deals? Seriously? I just don't even know where to start when people are so loyal that they can't begin to be even remotely objective about the realities of the situation.

Since getting a new GM automatically means we become a scummy, bottom-feeding team full of assholes...

If I don't read that this is a joke in a few posts, I'm literally going to get a headache. This signing is nothing short of shameful. Dan Cleary should be absolutely ashamed to be making that kind of money while taking a spot away from a more deserving player. And for the love, if he's really such a team-first guy, why in the ever living f*** did he sign this deal?

This is just the Cleary (couldn't resist) on top of a 5-year in the making s*** Sunday.

I actually think he went a little easy on him. I mean, seriously, outside of drafting, over the last five years, Ken Holland's management system or style or whatever it may be is a complete mess and an utter failure. He's completely failed to adapt to the cap era since the cap actually started weighing down on the team. He got lucky early on with superstars playing for RFA money and the salary rollback, but since 2009 when he's had to actually deal with legitimate cap issues, he's done nothing but flounder. At this point, when you look at the last five off-seasons, you've got a steady stream of disasters. Everyone in the media seems hesitant to want to be too hard on the guy based on his reputation, but it's getting too hard to ignore that he seems completely lost as a GM of this team in the cap era. Even if you give him more credit than he could possibly deserve for drafting well, there's far too many other failures and terrible moves to continue to give him the benefit of the doubt. That he ends up looking more lost and ineffective as more major people from his management team leave is also quite telling. I'm not saying that the other management team members were the true geniuses necessarily, but clearly Holland has been less effective since losing them as resources; first with Scotty, then with Yzerman, and then Nill. However much credit you want to give to anyone though for the past, the fact remains that we have five straight years of Holland failing to help this team slow the decline, let alone actually improve, in any way other than drafting. But he's made so many bad moves outside of drafting that it's begun to nullify the benefits afforded to a team that drafts well, because he fails to build teams that have room for young guys to come up when they're ready. It's just all so absurd at this point, and it's all been said too many times. The bottom line is that if there was any doubt beforehand, I think today it's become abundantly clear, enough is enough. It's time for a new GM.

The whole Modano situation could've played out completely differently if not for a freak injury. It's silly that people knock it given what happened. That one ought to be disqualified if you ask me. What kills me is that once the guy was healthy, he wasn't so bad for us. I was actually surprised we bought him out given our lack of depth on defense and that once healthy, he played relatively well, considering he was cheap and coming off of injury. At the very least, it didn't seem like he was the first salary problem that needed addressing, that's for damn sure.

Well, if ever there was a summer to blow off steam.......

If not for the fact that even the Sammy deal looked better on paper than the Cleary deal, I'd say Sammy for sure. And what's sad is that it was still a pretty awful looking deal on paper and ended up playing out worse than I think anyone could've imagined. But signing Cleary again this summer is such an obviously terrible signing from any perspective really. It's not only a bad hockey move, it just makes the team and the organization look even more ridiculous after an already disastrous off-season. Anyone who thinks that league-wide perception of our organization doesn't matter on some level is kidding themselves. We haven't looked like this big of a joke since the 80s, and for it to happen so soon after some very successful years is just shameful.

Well, that's wonderful for you. I agree, that generally there's a time and a place for such restraint and perspective. And then there's the day that Ken Holland signed Dan Cleary again. If ever there was a day to blow off some steam, it's today...

I'm less worried about someone like Tatar pricing themselves out of Detroit so much as Tatar wanting to go to a team that has a better chance at winning. If people outside of the organization don't want to come here, why would guys want to stay here, just because we develop them? I don't think that's going to carry as much weight when they're not being developed and brought into a system where they have as good of a shot at really winning as they once did. Please note though that I'm not saying that I support the idea of trading him. I really don't know what to think about this. I think I'd prefer Holland do nothing at this point honestly, as it seems like every deal he does make turns to s*** fast.

There are cheaper and/or better bench warmers. And we have cap space. We talk about not wanting to overpay anyone, but we piss money away on overpriced s*** that rots in the press box. It's an utter and complete joke at this point. I don't know how he still has his job right now, I really don't. It literally is starting to feel like he's trying to get himself fired.

What has he done to make the team better since 2009?!? Again, I'll give him all the credit even for drafting well, though even the most objective supporter knows you can't give one guy all the credit for drafting well. But even giving him ALL OF THE CREDIT FOR DRAFTING WELL, he still deserves to be fired for everything else that he's done and failed to do over the last five years.

This is why I cut Tatar a lot of slack when those comments were coming out about his frustration being stuck in GR. It's one thing to not rush guys, but we're not in an era where it makes sense to let everyone get "overripe" as Holland puts it. We need their skill and their speed and their price points in the NHL far more than we need to be signing oldsters that can't contribute.

And yet we feel the need to be loyal to him... Could someone please just kill me? This summer has to be some crazy f***ed up dream in which I can only escape back to reality by getting Elmstreeted or some s***. f*** f*** f***. I just have nothing logical or reasonable or mature to say now. It's just a tirade of swears and a heavy cloud of depression. Part of me knew this was coming, but part of me thought that there really was no way it could actually happen. I know we said we'd do it, but given how last year went and our kids that are ready for spots, it just seemed like there was no way anyone could justify this at this point. Fire Holland.

Can we trade a bag of pucks for Hossa now and rectify the terrible 2009 mistake? Silly dreams...

I think the Cup is the clear breaking point with certain guys. Gretzky is unique, but career team guys are going to be a lot more unlikely to leave if they've already gotten their Cup. Even if Dats and Z didn't have Cups, it's still really hard to even call it a stretch though, especially with Dats and Z. Dats is a lot more shy than I think people realize which would likely make it harder for him to decide to go to another city and NHL team late in his career, and I think Z is pretty damn content in Detroit. Bottom line, these guys are too classy to actually "protest" as was originally suggested, and the only thing players like Dats and Z could ever do that comes close is ask for a trade, and it's just next to impossible to imagine. Things may be bad, but like I said earlier, if it gets bad to the point that one of them is seriously trying to get out early, that should be an indicator that things are way, way, way more f***ed up than any of us even realize, and we should not be longing for that day. It's bad enough now...

"We like our team." Nothing reeks of Ken Holland absurdity like this one after he's chased numerous big to bigger names hard and come up empty.

I still want to see what Babcock can do when given a team not made up of misfit toys...or factory reject dildos. I do think there's something to be said for coaches losing effectiveness over time, but I think Babcock's done a good job of overachieving given the lousy, unbalanced teams he's been given and the injuries piling up on top of that. I don't think it's time to give up on him. Holland should be "promoted" out of the GM spot. Keep him in the organization if you can because a) he's done well with drafting and b) I think he could still be very effective on another team, and it'd be great to avoid having to compete against. I don't doubt the guy's competency as a GM so much as I doubt his ability to be emotionally distant enough here to do the job well.

The only public sort of protest they could or would reasonably do is ask for a trade. I don't think it'll happen given the two guys involved, but who knows. This many years of struggle and this many bad deals you can't ignore might change their perspectives. Who thought Alfie would come here after all those years in Ottowa? They have won Cups though, so they're not chasing as much as guys like Alfie. But I'll tell you one thing, if the day comes where one of these guys asks for a trade or retires early to play in Europe, you know things are way more f***ed than it even seems now. Hopefully that day never comes.

But you have to admit, those years were unique for the Wings, and the team that had the most success was primarily a team built before the cap. When they got back to playing, they had the benefit of a salary rollback and they were able to buyout some deals that weren't close to reasonable with a cap and keep the core of the team together. Not only that, you had the unexpected rise of Franzen, who had his most success when he was making very little money. Zetterberg wasn't making star money until 2009 I believe despite being a bonafide superstar; wasn't his deal before his current contract for less than $3 million? I want to say $2.2 or $2.8. Either one was well below the value he brought to the team at the time. But I'm not really trying to take anything away from him so much as not given him too much credit for actually building a cap team, because I don't think he had to start building a legitimate cap team until 2009. You have to admit, he was lucky to have Franzen breakout while making next to no money, and getting away with paying Z less than $3 million throughout that period was of tremendous benefit. With that kind of luck and those RFA deals, there are likely a lot of GMs who could've done less than Holland had to and still had a tremendous amount of success. I mean, seriously, despite the salary cap and despite having a ton of talent up front, those lingering RFA deals allowed him to sign Hossa to a big 1 year deal in the summer of 2008. That's no small or ordinary thing, especially with no cap hit trickery from a longer deal to lessen the blow. For the team to be as loaded with talent as they were in the cap era and still be able to pull that off seems utterly laughable now, but again, we were lucky to have those lingering RFA deals and Franzen became a beast seemingly out of nowhere for a couple years. When tougher decisions started having to be made in 2009, that is when the reality of the salary cap started weighing down on how this team would be built, and it's been all downhill since. Every summer since the summer of 2009, he's been caught flat footed and unprepared. Even he has flat out admitted that at times, earlier on though more than in recent years. So sure, he had great success early on in the cap era, but how much that success had to do with him having to build a team in the cap era and how much it had to do with pure luck, rollbacks and outlandishly amazing value on some RFA deals is debatable. Again, I'm not trying to take anything away from his success at that time, but I also don't think that era represents Holland's ability to build a true cap era team, and I don't think it serves as justification to continue to give him more chances after five years of him failing to address needs and countless flat out bad signings.