RedWingAbner

The Drake re-acquisition worked.  Danny Markov?  Really?  That one "glorious" season made you nostalgic?

Brad Stuart, yes, I'll give credit there---good pickup, good price.  But he is also an example of how Holland craps the bed.  Stuart left this past summer, and what did Ken do?  ......crickets......Carlo Colaiacovo? 

Brian Rafalski......that's a whole 'nother topic. 

The new system had nothing to do with Shero constructing his team in fact Ray Shero had little to do with constructing that team, being terrible for a long period of time constructed that team for him. He took over a team that had selected in the top 5, 5 years in a row, with 4 of them being in the top 2. The biggest adversity he's had to face was a problem of his own making when he had to trade Staal away because he couldn't fit all his top 5 picks under the salary cap. Let's see him rebuild the team when those players start retiring, and have him do so without the luxury of having any top 15 draft picks and without missing the playoffs. Maybe then he can start being compared to Holland.

Also if Holland doesn't get any credit for the teams draft choices because he employs a scout who recommends which players to pick, then no team's GM should ever get credit for a draft choice. They all employ scouts.

 

Below is a list of players drafted while Holland was in charge of amateur scouting. If I follow your logic Holland should get credit for the cups in 97, 98 and 2002 since he drafted the core of those teams. He also made several trades in those years that provided key parts to those cup winning teams.

 

Yves Racine

Sheldon Kennedy

Mike Sillinger

Nicklas Lidstrom

Sergei Fedorov

Dallas Drake

Vladimir Konstantinov

Keith Primeau

Slava Kozlov

Jason York

Martin Lapointe

Jamie Pushor

Chris Osgood

Mike Knuble

Darren McCarty

Dan McGillis

Anders Eriksson

Mathieu Dandenault

Tomas Holmstrom

 

Holland is the best GM in the history of the franchise, arguably the best in the history of the NHL, and a guaranteed first ballot Hall of Fame Inductee.

No.  Look at the list of North American names on that list.  They are the players taken in the first 3 rounds.  They are also players Holland personally saw before the Wings drafted them.  It's not hard to hit an NHLer with the first three rounds, and Jesus, during his tenure as head of scouting, our 1st-3rd round drafts were spotty.  Curtis Bowen, Kory Kocur, Jesse Wallin ring a bell?  Throw in the fact that guys like Sillinger, Pushor, etc were high round picks.....whew, glad we had Kenny at the helm for those picks. 

Players in the 5th round on are players he (usually) didn't see play and were found by Hakan Andersson.  Hakan Andersson has made Holland look really good for a really long time.

What, again, has Ken Holland done SINCE the implementation of the salary cap?  He held together a Hakan Andersson found team for a while, then slowly let it crumble away.  The biggest move he's made post-lockout #1?  Bertuzzi?  (I distinctly remember Marian Hossa's agent was the one who called Holland in 2008, and pitched the one-year deal).  Beyond that, it's been a recurring cycle of re-acquiring players who didn't work the first time (Hello, Todd Gill.....Mikael Samuelsson.....Kyle Quincey......Jason Williams.....Ty Conklin.....Joey MacDonald.....)

The argument "Ken Holland doesn't suck because there are GMs who suck more" doesn't work.

If people are going to credit him for the old system's success, then you can give credit to Shero for constructing a team for the new system.

Holland has been an abject failure since the cap was implemented; I refuse to credit the 2008 championship to him considering something close to 60% of that team was Hakan Andersson finds.

Was this article posted on April 1st?

Was it in the satire section?

Ken Holland.....and the phrase "best GM".....should have a minimum 3-sentence separation, required by law.  (Which I just broke).

The parity of this league means that with shrewd management, any team can win in any year.  Ken Holland has let this team crumble, afraid to do anything of significance, and a could-have-been dynasty has been reduced to the rubble of mediocrity.

There is no more "rebuilding" in this league, save for the horrendous cases (Edmonton).  In any given year, a team can make a few shrewd moves and win.  If Holland was as good as people say he is, given the core we had, we should've been MORE successful.  Pointing to the team's success and saying, "well, it was still better than most" is a cop-out to the fact that it should've been better. 

Uh, yeah....lol.

It was a ton better when there were no salary restrictions.