Bowness sounds even more frustrated with kids today than McLellan. Although as a coach, Bowness is as mediocre as they come, the textbook example of a retread that keeps getting hired by organizations out of ideas.
The Wings need the NHL to adopt the split-season format like some baseball minor leagues do. Some spots reserved for performance the first half or first two thirds of the season.
Did they? Few teams were impacted less by injury than were the Wings. A few games for Edvinsson in late January, 3 games for Copp in early March, 7 games for Larkin in March. In an 82 game season that's about as uneventful as you can expect.