The depressing thing though is that we were just as excited about this prospect pool - ranked top 10 at the time - as we are about today's prospect pool. And that was in 2014, when the Wings had made the playoffs 23 consecutive seasons, won a Cup six years earlier, been to an SCF five years earlier, and had pushed the Hawks to Game 7 of the 2nd round a year earlier. I'm not arguing that some of Kaspar, Danielson, MBN, ASP, Bear, Cossa, Augustine, Lombardi will become NHL players. But it's starting to look they might turn out like any random batch of mid-1st round prospects, which many teams have. This idea of "we're not building to make the playoffs, we're building to win the Cup" is the part that we all should have serious doubts about.
1. Anthony Mantha, RW
2. Dylan Larkin, C
3. Xavier Oullett, D
4. Ryan Sproul, D
5. Teemu Pulkkinen, LW
6. Petr Mrazek, G
7. Mattias Backman, D
8. Tyler Bertuzzi, LW
9. Axel Holmstrom, C
10. Alexey Marchenko, D