greenrebellion

Not too early at all, when players at their ages are putting up points at the NHL level, that means something. Looking at your listings, I'd say that we have above average success in drafting NHL talent. So, your data is in line with what most pundits think and that is that the Wings are pretty good at drafting. I think the data would become even more dramatic if you looked at later rounds since we are really known for finding late round gems.

Based on the team's performance year to date, I think we'll be pretty far from a playoff spot at the deadline and moves will be made.

He wasn't trying to win a cup, he was trying to keep the playoff streak alive. Personally, I thought it was pretty amazing how long the streak went on and I'm glad we tried to keep it going and rebuild on the fly rather than throwing in the towel early. A rebuild on the fly might have worked with a couple of lucky draft picks or surprising development of some of our young players (always easy to judge in hindsight). It didn't happen, now a new course must be set. The end of the playoff streak will be a very good thing for this franchise and I think you'll see a lot of activity as this team transitions towards a rebuild.

I blame parity and the fact that we haven't had a top 10 draft pick in decades. Everyone was mesmerized by maintaining the streak, the fact that it is coming to an end this season will be a VERY good thing for this team in the long run.

Topic is meaningless without a comparison to what the league average for those draft positions should have been. People have hugely inflated expectations for how often late first and second round picks become great. Arbitrarily leaving out Larkin and Mantha years is also pretty silly.

That discussion has concluded. You are about a day late and a dollar short.

Listen, with the Wings performance thus far this season, I'd much rather debate nothing over 100 posts then watch another Wings game where they have 8 shots through two periods!

Yes, if you are refining your position, then yes I agree that 05-12 had poor results with the only cavaet being that we ended up with four players out of it that had significant NHL playing time, which is most likely a well above average success rate for our average first selection draft position over that period. Nonetheless, none of them really ended up as much more than fillers with limited trade value.

Your position was never 05-12 were poor. Your position was that the last 10 years were poor so you have shifted your position. And the last 10 years of picks are simply not poor as you have two potential stars drafted over the last 10 years, which is about as much as you could possibly expect to find over that time period. And if you go back 15 years you'll find that there are even more great players picked.

Please don't makeup straw man arguments. No where did I ever imply that 05-12 were good choices. So when you made the above reply, what I gather that you actually meant based on your more recent postings was: "Go look at our first picks from the last 10 years. They're really not very strong, but that could be completely expected given our late draft position and how much of a crap shoot these later picks are, I'm not sure and don't care to research it. In actuality, I don't really dispute your point that our drafting is strong." And if this is what you actually meant (and it clearly isn't what you meant, you are just shifting your position now)...then why did you even bother disputing my original post that simply concluded "we have a very strong draft record." You were trying to cite evidence that our draft record, or at least our first selection draft record is poor. Which is simply untrue unless you view it in a vacuum and think that some arbitrarily high number of late first round or second round picks should be stars.

I agree with this and I have stated something similar before. I believe that any coach we transitioned to after Babcock was going to be a big let down. Tough to follow up Babcock, who I believe is one of the greatest coaches of all time. Blashill could merely be an average coach or a good coach, but it would still be a big dropoff from one of the best of all time.

Nope, just saying that compared to the league, our first selections are very good. I think you might have inflated expectations of how often a "first selection" should be "great" versus "crap." You quoted the above post and replied: And again I say, they are strong!!! Look at how successful we have been in first picks compared to a team like the Penguins with similar drafting positions. We are very lucky that our first selections have turned out so well!!

Ya, they are very hard to watch. No players I am super passionate about, no star power, no goon squad, no offense, no scoring chances...Sad really.

Alright, so let's compare this to the Penguins first selections since 2007 (a period at which for the most part they have drafted relatively low so its comparable to Wings. 2006 they drafted second overall. 2007 - Angelo Esposito - Crap 2008 - Nathan Moon - Crap 2009 - Simon Despres - Crap 2010 – Beau Bennett - Crap 2011 - Joe Morrow - Crap 2012 - Derrick Pouliot - Crap 2013 - Tristan Jarry - Crap 2014 - Kasperi Kapanen – (Borderline, might still end up being serviceable, but not "great") 2015 - Daniel Sprong (too soon) 2016 - Filip Gustavsson (too soon) So I'd say the Wings compare pretty favorably.

The problem with Nyquist and Tatar, in my view, is they can work well playing with other top end talent, but don't necessarily make other players around them better (like the Datsyuks, Crosby's, Kane's of the world). They are more supportive offensive talents rather than game changers themselves. Thus, given this teams current roster, they struggle.

I guess my point is that our first selections have been good as of late. With Larkin and Mantha coming in back to back years and could be very solid talents in the league. Without further comparison to other teams, there is no evidence that your literal point that our "first selections have been bad as of late" is even remotely true. Its just random conjecture and I'd rather we discuss facts rather than spread fear by implication that we can't make first selections and thus we may not be able to make a top five pick, which was an implied point you were making.

I very carefully in my reply differentiated "first round picks" and "first selections." I am very aware that they aren't the same. My point was, that arbitrarily choosing first round selections as a measure of draft "luck" is both pointless without a comparison to other teams first round selections and meaningless since some arbitrary subset of a draft isn't deterministic of drafting "luck." The Wings overall drafting ability (including all rounds) would be far more relevant in the potential outcome of a top five pick versus some arbitrary "first selection" metric (and you haven't even yet shown we underperform on that metric), we could very well be above average in your metric given our low draft positioning (as many of our first selections fall to the second round). So again, I fail to see your first selection metric as providing evidence that we would pick a bust if we had a top five pick. And if anything, I believe that our first selections show we'll be just fine with a top five pick given how low we generally draft our first selections.

Well we are pretty good with first round picks. 2006-2015 - way too soon to tell on 2016 2 of 7 - Larkin / Mantha should be very good 4 of 7 - significant playing time (adds in Shaehan and Smith) So since the origin of this whole chain of dialogue was someone stating "with our luck, we'd draft a bust in the top 5," I'd like to point out that we actually have good luck at drafting in the first round and we haven't drafted all that early. So we don't have bad luck drafting and there is nothing to worry about. Stating that our "first selections" have been bad is not only pure conjecture without a comparison to other teams. But worst than that is meaningless unless you are trying to make the point that first selections requires a different skill set than second and third selections. But I think we both agree that is absurd and that viewing the entire drafts including all rounds is a much more meaningful way to look at the Wings drafting "luck."

I don't think this will be a 10 year downswing, but I do think it could stretch 5+ years. We have a lot of bad contracts on the books, some all the way out to 2022 (Nielsen, who will be well past prime at that point). So the lack of financial flexibility could hurt us for a while. As I have emphasized in other threads, I really hope management makes the right decision to be sellers this season and get some return for our assets.

Has our first selections been bad for the last ten years? How do you know? What teams are you comparing it to?

All good things must come to an end. Doesn't mean that everybody involved in the Wings organization is awful and needs to be canned tomorrow. Teams have down years. Wings fans may not realize this but it is okay! This team is definitely not a playoff team and that may be a good thing as it may be the beginning of significant changes and a new era of success.

To be honest, I doubt Babcock could get this team in the playoffs either.

On the bright side, we will have a Top five pick in the draft.

What does $70 million buy you?

Either way!