Dabura

[screams into pillow] I mean, he's not wrong tho.

TBH, there isn't much they can say that would royally piss me off. Team is in fact terrible. Most of the players are in fact playing like crap. Yzerman does in fact have his work cut out for him. Me personally, I'm just glad we called up McIlrath so he can play against the team that drafted him. Stuff like that is important.

HYPE! LGRW!

Kinda. Ideally, he's something like Pietrangelo. I think people are sleeping on his scoring upside. Prob'ly. I was half-joking, but, honestly, I think AA might actually be more valuable to the Oilers than he is to us. They need scoring depth almost as badly as we do. What CRL said. Based on Bowey and Erne and Perlini (all former 1st-rounders, all roughly same age, all cheap), and based on what Yzerman seems to value in defensemen, Fleury seems like a no-brainer target. In theory.

Agreed. The team is possibly in danger of slipping into a very toxic "new normal" swamp of awfulness. This is my one serious concern. Things will probably sort themselves out. We'll probably look back on this and conclude that it had to be this way. AA will probably start scoring at a decent clip and that alone will probably help make games closer and give us a little more mojo. But in the here and now, this really sucks and I really hope Yzerman handles it the right way (whatever that may be).

Speaking of trades, I feel Haydn Fleury is a guy we should be looking at. 23-year-old 6'3 left-shooting defenseman who skates really well. Former 1st-round pick. Doesn't have a ton of scoring ability, but in theory he could turn into a steady DeKeyser type on the second or third pairing. Analysis: The Case for Haydn Fleury [Puck Drop]

Oh, for sure, it's not like we didn't have elite talent. Franzen was also a pretty big deal for a while. I guess I'm just taking a dig at our drafting. I'm kind of tired of defending the track record with "I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW WE DRAFTED VERY RESPECTABLY GIVEN THE CIRCUMSTANCES." We needed them to pull gems out of their butts and they gave us lots of Jakub Kindls and that's why we're here. Fair or not, I'ma say they pooped their pants. Jarnkrok looked pretty good last night.

I'm inclined to agree, though I suppose one could make the counterargument that the veterans are the very reason why we're sucking as hard as we are. Don't look now but Seider is one of the few bright spots on an otherwise largely underachieving Griffins team. 11 games played, 6 assists, +1 rating. I think we'll be seeing him sooner rather than later. Maybe not this season, but even if it's halfway through next season, that's an insanely fast trajectory by Red Wings defense prospect standards. I'm really hoping he's That Defenseman we've been pining for ever since Rafalski retired. As for Yzerman trades, I'll be really surprised if we don't get several more between now and July 1st. The players have given him a very clear picture of what he has in each of them and there's a wealth of blah prospects in the pipeline. Things could get interesting. Athanasiou + Hirose for Puljujarvi + EDM's 2020 1st (no lotto protection). Get that 1st before the Oilers tumble down the standings, as is their wont.

Could be. Admittedly, I don't know anything about the tourney, so your guess is as good as mine.

I think one of the most damning things we can say about the post-Rafalski/Lidstrom era is that we somehow managed to go all those years without boasting many players who made other people salivate at the prospect of their team landing them. Even "joke" organizations like the Sens have had some very good players in recent years, e.g. Karlsson, Turris, Zibanejad, Duchene, Stone, Hoffman. Feels like we spent 40 years poking Nyquist and Tatar with a stick and saying to them, "Trades are hard. Plz be better." Hronek is the first legit high-end defenseman we've produced since Kronwall. Point being: Yes, trades *are* hard when no one wants what you're selling. The Tatar trade was masterful, but, holy hell, that's basically the only hell-yes-we-got-some-good-pieces-in-a-trade moment of the entire Nyquist-Tatar era. (Hindsight, I know.)

Yeah, I hate to say it but I'm pulling for the Sharks in a big way right now. Ugh. I know no one wants to hear it, but even if the tank goes sideways and we end up picking in the 3-10 range, it isn't the end of the world. The consensus about this draft class is that it's crazy deep. As in, we're potentially looking at the entire top four or five being as good as or better than Andrei Svechnikov, who was the clear-cut #2 in the Dahlin draft and who's been producing like a former 1st overall pick. (God, I wish we'd gotten Andrei Svechnikov.) Personally, I've been able to watch some of the big names via streams and I've liked what I've seen. Lucas Raymond is capable of holding his own in the SHL, Sweden's top league. Alexander Holtz is having no trouble producing in the SHL. Anton Lundell is having no trouble producing as a centerman in the Liiga, Finland's top league. Tim Stutzle has put up 15 points through 17 games in the DEL, the German men's league that our very own Moritz Seider played in last season. Yaroslav Askarov is arguably a borderline generational goalie who's been favorably compared to Carey Price. I think any of those players absolutely crushes it at the CHL level this season. And then there's a group of players who ARE dominating at the CHL level this season. It's an embarrassment of riches there at the top few rungs of this draft class. Which means we should expect a large number of very good players to be available later than they probably "should" be.

shut yo mouf

2020 NHL Draft Rankings and Preview -- November 2019 [Wings Nation]

Bump. I'm kinda surprised this thread hasn't seen any action since October 1st, what with the Wings being the worst team in the league and all. Anyway, here's Wonderwall... Highly rated prospect Quinton Byfield on Red Wings' draft wish list [The Detroit News] Halloween Prospect Ramblings: Scary Starts and Stats [Dobber Prospects] Shift Work: Quinton Byfield [Dobber Prospects] 2020 NHL Draft Ranking: European Prospects (November 2019) [Dobber Prospects]

Dunno that it is in fact a thing. But, for reference... (Translation: "Interested in Puljujärvi? IL: Steve Yzerman travels to the Karelia tournament")

I feel ya, man. Believe me. I feel ya.

Honestly, I doubt this is a Blashill problem. I doubt the players have tuned him out. If he's mostly being judged on the development of our top young players, well, all of Larkin, Mantha, Bertuzzi, Hronek are performing as well as if not better than anyone could reasonably ask them to. Hronek's on a 40-point pace on a team that can't score goals. That's insane -- and, importantly, it looks like it's sustainable, as he scored at the same rate last season. The argument can be made that the aforementioned young players are good enough that they'd be performing like this with anyone behind the bench. Maybe there's some truth to that. But, realistically, Blashill getting fired before the end of the season means we get Bylsma as interim head coach. (Blah.) Yzerman isn't going to bring in a new head coach during the season; it'd be done in the offseason. There's also the fact that Yzerman looked at a team that everyone knew was garbage and decided he wasn't going to give them any serious help. So Yzerman very much owns the results of the roster that he himself ok'd, and I'm sure he fully understands that. With that in mind, I figure he's going to try to make another, slightly bigger trade between now and US Thanksgiving. I saw something about him scouting Puljujarvi in person...? Maybe that's a thing. Yup. We lost Zetterberg and Kronwall in the span of one season. This is why I was ok with Larkin not being named captain; it's a burden he doesn't need to be carrying right now. He already has more than enough on his plate.

Sure. But the team needs to be learning good habits, learning how to be a good team. Playing good hockey, even if the wins aren't there. Otherwise, we become the Oilers. There's respectable losing...and there's what this team is doing.

If we're gonna lose, we might as well do it spectacularly. This is probably the mature, correct take.

*farts*

Pull the goalie. Nothing left to lose.

All we need now is New Lebda.

Preds score on the PP. 1-6.

The Larkin-Ellis scrap: