Dabura

I'm guessing the Wings just didn't want him continuing at St. Cloud. Could've been a deployment issue, could be that they want him to forget about the academics and focus squarely on being a pro athlete, could be that there's some specific facet of his game that they personally want to attend to at this point in his career. I doubt that this was driven by Cholowski. And there's also the fact that our blue line sucks. I'm hoping the end of the playoff streak and Holland's insistence that he wants this team to get back to being a contender ASAP means we're going to see young defensemen progress through the system more quickly than we're used to seeing.

http://www.eliteprospects.com/player.php?player=247137 2016-17 St. Cloud State Univ. NCAA 36 1 11 12

Genesis?

Certainly possible. Honestly, I'd be ok with Suzuki or Yamamoto being our first pick, so it's going to be pretty hard for the Wings to disappoint me with whatever they end up doing in the first round. (Note to Kenny: that is not to be taken as a challenge.) Just a small town girl...

Here's how I'm looking at it. With this draft class, I'm not convinced there's much of a difference between picking 5th or 6th overall and picking 9th or 10th overall. Patrick, Hischier, Liljegren, Vilardi are likely your top four (not necessarily in that order), and then there's little separation between all the realistic candidates for the next half-dozen slots. So...we'll have a decent(ish) shot at picking in the top three, and even if we pick in the 6-10 range, we'll still be getting a really good player. If we're picking 10th, we're getting someone who probably could've just as easily been picked 6th. Mittelstadt, Rasmussen, Tippett, Tolvanen, Makar, Glass...at least one of those should be available to us (assuming we don't get a lottery pick). Given what the Wings are used to choosing from when it comes to making first-round selections, and given the lack of gamechanging talent in this draft class, I'd be perfectly happy with any of those players.

(I do really like Tippett and Hague, though.)

I can pretty much guarantee neither Tippett nor Hague would make next season's team. They're simply not NHL-ready. Besides, we shouldn't be drafting for need. At least, not in the first round.

We're playing really well thus far. I like.

Teams to side-root for tonight: Dallas, Vancouver, New Jersey.

Just felt like sharing this, mainly for the first Svechnikov goal and the Hicketts hit: Kids doing awesome kid things! woooooo

EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING! LOUD NOISES!

And one of the best overtimes I've ever seen.

Ken and Mick say we have enough skilled defensemen and what we really need on the back end is size and physicality. Ugh. We look good tonight. Svechnikov doesn't look out of place, has no problem going to the front of the net. We're shooting the puck and putting it on net. Good stuff.

Well, yeah. I've grown tired of Ken Holland saying Ken Holland things. I don't think this is a controversial statement; I trust most people here know what I'm talking about.

Didn't get off to a good start this season (first 20 games or so), but he's been great since then. 26 points in his last 30 games. 18 goals and 44 points in 68 games this season. I don't know if he's quite ready to be a real difference-maker at the NHL level, but he's more than earned this call-up.

I think when Holland says "rebuild" he means "complete teardown + years of highly calculated suckage." And I think that's him being disingenuous.

At this point, it's all we have to get excited about. And the reason it's all we have to get excited about is we are a bad team. And the reason we are bad is our serious lack of high-end young talent. And the place where you get high-end young talent is the draft.

Devellano: "For some time now, some people have been bugging us to rebuild," Devellano said. "Kenny Holland and I together, as long as we thought we could keep the streak going, make the playoffs, we were going to continue to do that. We just felt we owed it to a lot of people to try to be in the top half of the league. But the truth of the matter is it finally bit us in the (rear) this year. "The rebuild is on. You saw the first part of that at the (trade) deadline when Kenny wheeled four players for draft picks (the Red Wings have 11 selections in the 2017 draft and nine in 2018). "To our coaches' credit and Zetterberg's credit and (Niklas) Kronwall's credit, they're still trying hard to keep us respectable. And I think we have been. We've won a few games and when we lose it's usually pretty close. The culture is still there, but we lack star players and we have to go forward now and look for an opportunity to draft those kinds of people." [ . . . . ] "To some degree, when I arrived in 1982 to a bad franchise, when I got Yzerman in '83 in my first draft, it was night and day," Devellano said. "He made a big impact right away -- 39 goals as an 18-year-old. I don't think you can put time (frame) on things. There's some luck involved. By luck, I mean the ability to get that kind of franchise player - (Sidney) Crosby, McDavid, Yzerman, (Mario) Lemieux. You get that type of player and the rebuild moves quickly. "But I'm told that player isn't in the draft this year. There are good players, but (not) the guy that moves the needle -- Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane and (Jonathan) Toews coming in and all the sudden the team that was bad got good in a hurry. "Truthfully, and I said I wouldn't put a time (frame) on it, it would be nice if you could accomplish something in three years. But you're going to need some luck." Holland: “I think we want to be competitive,” Red Wings GM Ken Holland said on Prime Time Sports Thursday evening. “I’m a general manager and as long as I’m a general manager I want us to be the very best we can be. I don’t believe in tear downs and massive rebuilds because I don’t believe you can just guarantee the end result is going to turn out to be Stanley Cups and dynasties. You could go in the wilderness.” “I look around professional sports and there’s other teams in other sports that were great teams for a long time and now it’s three, four, five years, they can’t get the culture back. Once you lose it, you’re chasing.” [ . . . . ] "A rebuild, if you want to go that route, it takes a long time with no guarantees on the other end," Holland said. "If there was guarantees then teams that were bad for a while are automatically going to be the elite teams. Well you can look around the league and it doesn’t happen that way." -------------------- Ken Holland wants people to know that rebuilds are The Great Unknown and that the people clamoring for a rebuild don't understand the reality of rebuilds. Also, he wants to people to know to know that rebuilds are The Great Unknown and that the people clamoring for a rebuild don't understand the reality of rebuilds. Additionally, he wants people to know that rebuilds are The Great Unknown and that the people clamoring for a rebuild don't understand the reality of rebuilds. Oh, also: he wants people to know that rebuilds are The Great Unknown and that the people clamoring for a rebuild don't understand the reality of rebuilds. One more thing: rebuilds take a really long time. We're probably talking at least 400 years. People think rebuild = guaranteed Cups. Well, truth is, rebuilds are The Great Unknown and the people clamoring for a rebuild don't understand the reality of rebuilds. In short: rebuilds are The Great Unknown and the people clamoring for a rebuild don't understand the reality of rebuilds. P.S. Just to be clear: rebuilds are The Great Unknown and the people clamoring for a rebuild don't understand the reality of rebuilds. Look, Buppy, I know you like to be The Voice of Reason and point out that Wings fans tend to have stupid opinions, especially when it comes to their complaints regarding Ken Holland and the recent direction of the franchise. And I respect that. But I don't think it's necessary here. I liked what Devellano said more than I liked what Holland said, because even though it's pretty clear that they're on the same page re: the rebuild/the state of the Wings, I've grown tired of Holland dealing in Hollandisms when he speaks to the media and addresses concerns that fans have. I don't want Holland to "pander." Truthfully, I don't really care what he says, as long as his actions are guiding the franchise in the right direction. But I could do without the "Fans say things, and the things they say are stupid. Lemme tell you how it really is" business that he pushes every time he talks to the media.

Indeed. For better or for worse.

(Though, when you add in Vegas, we're 6th. But yeah.)

Damn straight.

Dallas wins!

I fully agree with you about Devellano. And I agree that Holland's gonna Holland -- I'm just not convinced he has to. I don't think he'd get himself or anyone else into any kind of trouble if we were to say what Devellano said.

You know what I mean, though. He's saying exactly what you'd expect him to say, no deviation from the script. That's not inherently "bad," but, personally, I much preferred Devellano's more candid and thoughtful take. I found it refreshing. Again, though, I imagine Holland and Devallano are both on the same page, more or less. Just a difference in how they're describing things to the media.