Dabura

Seattle Pinkos

Point's 2018-19 shooting percentage = 21.5%. I think you're right to be skeptical. I wouldn't worry. Seems like Eklund is the only household name who's reporting ("reporting") on this, and I'm willing to bet NHLTradeRumors is just piggybacking for the clicks.

So our 2020-21 blue line could be... DeKeyser Trouba Nemeth Hronek Cholowski Seider Seems pretty decent to me.

We'll see if Veleno is up to the task in a couple of years. If not, we can go hunting for a 2C on the trade market or in free agency, or maybe someone else in our prospect pool will have emerged. Hell, maybe AA settles into that role. The Rangers were in the same boat as us right up until the moment they placed 2nd in the draft lotto. I suspect getting that pick emboldened Jeff Gorton and he decided Kakko + a couple big splashes = rebuild over. We'll see how they perform next season. Personally, I'm not entirely sold on that team. They could be a force next season or they could be thoroughly middling. I think if we'd gotten Kakko, Yzerman probably would've made a bold move or two. Instead, we picked 6th, so it's business as usual for at least another season. Sucks, but it is what it is.

Disagree. Rasmussen was pegged as a one-trick pony, a power-play/net-front guy who cleans up around the net and doesn't do much else. Easy to clean up around the net as a 6'6" player in the OHL. NHL? Another story. Seider did well in a men's league. He's dynamic, there's a ton to like about him. Projecting him as a good two-way top-pairing defenseman doesn't seem like a stretch.

Seider was a late riser, same as Kotkaniemi the year before. I noted back in mid-May that he was getting a lot of love: Craigh Button had him going 11th in his final mock draft. Cam Robinson (Dobber Prospcts) had Seider and Broberg both going in the top ten (though, he explicitly stated that he didn't feel they should go that early). Post-draft, we've heard whispers about multiple teams in the 6-11ish range wanting Seider and that this partly explains why Yzerman didn't trade down. Seider's a good player. I had wanted Zegras, but, as I've said before, I'm not sure I buy that Seider was a huge reach. WIIM sucks. On this much we can agree.

I don't care that he didn't fill the 2C hole. I don't care that he signed some veteran stopgaps. In fact, I said numerous times that he was probably going to sign veteran stopgaps. It's what he did in his first offseason as Tampa's GM. It's only disappointing to people who are laboring under the illusion that we're anything but an organization that's still in the middle of a painful rebuild. Maybe he could've acquired Marleau. Maybe he shouldn't have signed the UFAs that he signed. I dunno. At the end of the day, I don't think it really matters all that much. We suck, there's basically nothing we can do to truly accelerate the rebuild timeline right now, we need to get some (more) elite talent in the pipeline, we need to endure some more pain for a little while longer. I don't like the situation, but it is what it is. Yzerman felt we could use some depth (I explained that we basically had no decent veteran shutdown defenseman outside of DeKeyser and that having another Nielsen gives us a bit more depth) and it didn't come at great cost, so whatevz.

kip is our resident edgelord.

I suspect it's a little more complicated than "Hey, Steve, take our dead weight and we'll shower you in 1sts." Just saiyan. We had one 3C in Nielsen. We had no 2C. Still have no 2C, but Filppula gives us a little more depth at forward. I could've done without the Nemeth signing, but I'm fine with it. Daley and Ericsson are old and falling apart. There seems to be a cloud of uncertainty hanging over Green's future due to this virus thing he's been dealing with. Kronwall could be done. Hronek isn't a shutdown defenseman. Cholowski isn't a shutdown defenseman. Bowey isn't a shutdown defenseman. Pickard gives us goalie depth. If by some miracle we do go on a surprise postseason run, we'll probably need the depth. Look at how many goalies Vegas went through a couple years ago. I'm not an Yzerman slappy. I said he was going to run things pretty much the same way Holland ran things (for the time being). As I said: I'm in favor of taking on dead weight, but, for whatever reasons, the Wings have been unable or unwilling to pull off one of these it's-so-damn-easy predatory trades. Regrettable? Sure, I guess. But it shouldn't keep Wings fans up at night. P.S. Paragraph breaks are your friend.

I'd love to have him on a one-year deal (trade deadline chip). I wouldn't hate him at $3M x 2. Our blue line is poised to go from way too old to way too young over the course of the next year and Gardiner could be a nice stopgap, possibly replacing Green in the top four.

"The bad contracts hinder our ability to get a couple of 2nds in exchange for taking on some dead weight" doesn't rate very high on my list of concerns. Strikes me as more of a "Gotcha!" than a truly damning criticism. While I wouldn't mind seeing the Wings pursue this strategy, it's pretty clear that The Detroit Red Wings Don't Do That, for whatever reasons. At the end of the day, we're stuck in the suck mostly because we failed to produce enough (any?) blockbuster talent in Datyuk's and Zetterberg's and Kronwall's twilight years. Now, I can't really knock anyone for that failure; like I've said many times, I think we've drafted reasonably well over the past half-dozen years or so. But, still, it's a thing. The hope is that we've started to turn that corner and a couple more drafts will get us there. "You know what might help us in our quest to acquire that 'blockbuster talent'? Taking on some dead weight." Fair enough.

meh. I'll start complaining about the cap situation when we've got a young core that's worthy of a Cup and bad contracts are catastrophically hindering our ability to open and maintain a Cup window. I suspect Yzerman was fine with signing Flip and Nemeth to two-year deals because he dgaf. I think he feels we're at least two years away from seriously contending. By that point, most of these bad contracts that everyone's always harping on will be off the books.

TBH, I kind of skimmed over most of the conversation. My bad. Feels like Mantha and Athanasiou are the new Nyquist and Tatar.

I find myself agreeing with Buppy quite often lately. The notion that Athanasiou is the better goal-scorer really isn't all that controversial. Mantha gets the top-line minutes because Blashill thinks Mantha's the better fit there. Is Bertuzzi a better scorer than AA? Nope, but we all seem to be ok with Bertuzzi-Larkin-Mantha being our top line going into Game 1 of the 2019-20 season. Because Bertuzzi, Larkin, and Mantha seem to work well together. AA's settling in as a guy who can break a game wide open on any given shift but isn't necessarily someone you can fully trust to play the big minutes against the other team's top players. I think Blashill sees him as someone who can potentially devour other teams' secondary and tertiary talent on a consistent basis. Mantha seems to be better suited for the truly heavy lifting. The real tragedy here is that none of this really matters. Wanna put Athanasiou on the top line and Mantha on the second line? Cool, we're still in the same boat as a team and as an organization. We're a one-line team, and that one line isn't anything special. We have no depth at the NHL level.

This.

I reckon Yzerman would say we have needs at every position and that these needs are so numerous that trying to rank them in order of severity is basically pointless. I mean, a 1D would be great and Yzerman should be receptive to any conversations that could perhaps lead to us getting a player who could perhaps become that 1D -- but my impression is scouts and GMs generally aren't all that interested in our players, which would make the "Would you trade Mantha/AA for [insert really good young defenseman]?" conversations kinda moot. Then again, you never know. Certainly we never hear about 98% of the conversations GMs have with each other. Maybe Chuck Fletcher is willing to sell low on Ivan Provorov after his disappointing 2018-19 season.

Fair. If it's me in the GM chair, I don't have much of an appetite for trading any of our top players at this time. Like, I'd love to trade a Brassard for a Zibanejad, but...do we even have a spare Brassard lying around? It's probably going to be a couple more years before our tank drafts really begin to bear fruit. At that time, we'll have a better idea of what we have and what we need.

No. Holland opened a transdimensional portal to Hockey Hell (aka Edmonton) and all the suck is leaking into our side.

I'm not super-familiar with Ristolainen; if I didn't see his name in the rumor mill every week, I'm not sure I'd even know he exists. That being said, his basic stats don't seem to be especially tantalizing... https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/r/ristora01.html Basically, he's been good for between 41-45 points, with roughly two-thirds of those points being potted on the power play. He finished 2017-18 with a -25 rating and finished this past season @ -45. (Woof!) Granted, that's while logging huge minutes (26:30 and 24:38, respectively) on bad Sabres teams. But our team is similarly bad, so...lateral move at best? I'd ask my pro scouts how much of pre-Sharks Brent Burns they see in him.

And I'd add that the futility of it all is more a feature than it is a bug. Owners want RFAs to have as little bargaining power as possible; if the offer sheet system truly incentivized pillaging other teams' best young players, you can be pretty sure the system wouldn't last more than one season. It's a fight that's been brewing for a while now. Could be a central issue in the upcoming lockout.

oh lord we've become the oilers

Honestly, Pietrangelo's the only defenseman on that list who really interests me (and I sincerely doubt he leaves STL). Like you said, there are some good players on that list but they're not necessarily what we need. Of course, a lot can change in a year. If we make the 2020 playoffs, Yzerman might go fishing. ...Or he could just as easily say, "We just made the playoffs without having added any big-name UFAs back in July. I like our team. I think our young players are gonna be even better next season. Now's not the time to splurge." Pietrangelo, Backstrom, Trouba. I'd be fine with overpaying for one of those guys and/or adding some depth guys like Gudas. Overall tho, I think UFA madness is dumb. And Yzerman seems to agree.

Yeah. Like I said, I do think there's something to the notion that the Wings generally aren't seen as a top destination right now. But I don't think we can safely conclude that no Panarin-caliber UFA would have any interest in signing with the Wings at this time. You've got to evaluate these big signings on a case-by-case basis. And you have to realize we're not especially interested in signing a Panarin unless the GM feels it makes all the sense in the world for the organization. I remember fairly early on in this past season it was reported that Panarin had a short list of around 4-6 teams, including but not necessarily limited to NYR, NYI, FLA, DAL. While Panarin's apparent lack of interest in the Wings could be taken as a slap in the face and an indictment of our rebuild, it's gotta sting even more for a team like COL. They're a team on the rise, a team with a ton of cap space, a team with a need for a scoring winger, a team that reportedly tried to crowbar themselves into contention for Panarin's services...and they didn't get anywhere with him. The heart wants what the heart wants. Tavares wanted to be a Leaf, Stamkos wanted to stay in Tampa, and Suter wanted to settle down in Minnesota. Maybe Trouba wants to come home and maybe that's a good enough fit that Yzerman does something he's basically never done as a GM and brings in a top UFA from outside the organization.

So do I!