Dabura

I'm hoping he hits 30 goals. Only needs 3 more...

Gettin' the band back together.

Red Wings sign Princeton forward Ryan Kuffner to entry-level deal [DetroitRedWings] He's from Ottawa. Get rekt, Sens!

>Gave out some bad contracts >Didn't draft Kucherov (and the drafting has been terrible, even though it hasn't) >Won't fire Blashill >Is not Steve Yzerman wew lad It's not looking good for Holland. The case against him is airtight. It's the electric chair for him.

"Holland gave out some bad contracts." HANG THE MAN!!!

Update: Had a good poop. Kronwall has, at most, a year left (and he's actually had a pretty good season). Nielsen and/or Abdelkader can be bought out when the time is right. Nielsen's a decent 3C. Ericsson has a year left. It's always been fashionable to hate on Ericsson, but he and his contract have always been harmless. Bad contract? Sure. Crippling contract? No. Do I think the fact that Holland gave Ericsson his contract means that it's only a matter of time before he hands out seven more contracts just like Ericsson's? No. I choose to believe Holland has learned from some of his missteps, Ericsson being one of them. Holland decided against bringing Nyquist back on a $5M(+) x 5 contract. Holland hasn't made any albatross UFA signings over the past couple of seasons (i.e. since the start of the rebuild). Holland has worked out some good RFA deals. Holland has pulled off some good trades. The "zomg cap hell" angle is overblown. The "zomg no room for kids" angle is overblown. The "zomg Holland signs terrible contracts" angle is overblown. The "zomg Holland doesn't know how to run a team in today's NHL" angle is overblown. That darn Abdelkader! Always sabotaging our rebuild efforts! *shakes fist angrily*

This has been fun, but I have to go poop now. ttys

Still waiting on how these contracts are hurting us. Shoulda Coulda Woulda is a dumb game with dumb prizes. lol, sure, go with that. "Watch GMR DESTROY Ken Holland with FACTS and LOGIC!" Do you see how far I'm making you stretch? Do you see how little there is in the way of indisuptuably damning evidence that screams "Holland must go"? I'll do what I want, thx babe. Because that was totally my point.

OILERS FAN: "I heard Ken Holland might be coming aboard. HYPE!" WINGS FAN: " Ackchyually, Ken Holland is garbage." OILERS FAN: "lol wut" WINGS FAN: "It's true. He signed some bad contracts and he refuses to fire our head coach. Also, his drafting his bad." OILERS FAN: "You know how stupid you sound to this Oilers fan, right?" WINGS FAN: "I'm telling you, man. Ken Holland is bad news. He's poison. He's a loser. It's settled science." OILERS FAN: "[tiny violin]"

I still haven't seen a compelling argument for why this really matters. How has it materially hurt the rebuild? Who are the great players we would have used that money on? So you want your team's GM and coach fired. Which puts you in the company of ~65% of all hockey fans. The drafting has been fine. We're coming off a 25-year-long playoff streak. We haven't picked in the top three in decades. I'm gonna give the Wings a pass for not finding Kucherovs and Subbans with the limited number of picks they've had. Yes, he is. He's been selling at the deadline. He's been stockpiling picks. He's actively trying to get this team younger. "No, no, the Kings aren't actually this bad, they're just tanking on purpose. Totally different situation. Ken Holland is the worst." blah blah blah. Them losing is inevitable because that's how it works in the cap era. You can only tread water for so long.

So we're mad at him because he fought off the rebuild for as a long as he could and we're also mad at him because he's now taking a different approach for a couple of years. "He should've found a way to acquire some franchise players when he was trying to retool on the fly." ok man

He's embracing the suck.

Counterpoint: Holland is lazy and he sucks.

I think that's disingenuous. You're framing it as "People who are pro-tanking don't understand that you can get great players without tanking." Everyone understands that great players can be acquired without tanking. But I submit that everyone also understands the realities of the cap era and the desperate reality of the Wings' situation. What Holland is doing now is necessary. (And I don't think he has much of a choice anyway. The team is simply bad.) The Wings want to get back into the playoffs next season and get that juicy playoff revenue. They also want to get themselves the kind of young core that would allow for sustainable success, perennial contention, a long-lasting Cup window. Jack Hughes, Kaapo Kakko, Bowen Byram -- a player of this caliber would, in theory, help tremendously. The odds of finding one or two of that kind of player without multiple high picks spread out across several drafts...are not good. So, personally, I'm fine with tanking. I agree that too much of a bad thing is a very bad thing and that what we're seeing right now must not become the norm. But with Holland and Devellano at the helm, I don't feel like that's a serious concern. Arguably no two executives in this league have less patience for losing.

I don't think anyone's saying you can't get great players without higher picks. However, I do feel that the days when you could find a Datsyuk and a Zetterberg towards the end of the draft are pretty much over. If your point is that a lot of people are way too gung-ho about rebuilds, that's fair. But I'd add that a lot of Wings fans are way too gung-ho about the healing properties of Theoretical Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman and are way too eager to blame anything and everything on Ken Holland's supposed incompetence. The Wings are where they need to be right now, IMO. It's dumb, but that's Parity™ for ya.

MacKinnon springs straight to mind. I'm not even talking about that caliber of player, though. I'm saying we've had a bizarrely small number of right-shot top-sixers and that pretty much all of our right-shot forwards have been specialists. It's weird. Almost defies logic, assuming there's no institutional bias.

Spencer Knight is the big name. Seems like he's destined to go in the 1st round, possibly in the top 10 but more likely in the middle or second half of the 1st round.

Straw man. You can find great players outside the 1st round. But let's not pretend that great teams/organizations of the cap era haven't benefited from high draft picks. Lightning Stamkos - 1st overall Hedman - 2nd overall Penguins Fleury - 1st overall Malkin - 2nd overall Crosby - 1st overall J. Staal - 2nd overall Blackhawks Toews - 3rd overall Kane - 1st overall Kings Kopitar - 11th overall Doughty - 2nd overall Capitals Ovechkin - 1st overall Backstrom - 4th overall The Wings tried to retool on the fly for a number of years. It didn't work. We did get some good organizational depth and Dylan Larkin out of it, though. Now we're hunting for bigger game, because we need it. And Devellano is on record saying he and Holland are naturally impatient and are willing to do outside-the-box things in attempt to speed up this rebuild if they're not satisfied with the state of things. So what's the problem? The Wings haven't established a losing culture, and what people say on internet forums has no bearing on the organization's culture. There's that straw man again.