buddha

one thing in their favor for a larkin trade is that he's on a really good contract, assuming he doesnt crater.

put him as a #2 center on a team and he'll thrive.

5 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

The question is whether he is a poor coach given that his team collapsed at the finish, or a good coach that had them playing way over their heads through a good part of the season until reality struck against other teams raising their games?

Personally it always seems unlikely to me the personnel on this team should have been able to achieve and hold a divisional lead for as long as they did at all.

i think its more on the talent on the team than mcclleland.  lots of fragile players in that locker room, it seems.  it could also be that when other teams turned up the heat and started playing hard, the wings cant compete.  they may also have been playing through injury.

regardless, i think its more on the team than the coach.

if danielson and kasper arent 2 and 3 c next year with cossa in net and asp somewhere on the blue line, then the team is trouble OR theyve been traded for actual nhl talent.

1 hour ago, Jason_R said:

We must never stop blaming Kenny! His failure was abject and complete and will still be felt for another five years. If anyone other than Yzerman was responsible for cleaning up the nuclear waste dump Kenny left, Hockeytown would have chewed them up and spit them out a long time ago. 

I haven't said a word about trading for Matthews. Not sure where that is coming from. Their best trade option is probably Edvinsson, once they sign him to an extension. I'm not sure I'd want to part with him now that he and Seider are the on the way to being the best pairing in the league. Would I consider trading him for Brady Tkachuk if he told Ottawa I'm not re-signing here and if we could get him extended? Now that would be interesting. 

i thought you mentioned a matthews trade at some point.  my bad.

i often wonder if detroit has shopped its prospects and people dont want them (other than edvinsson)?  the "no one wanted danielson" rumors were all over the place.  if true, it says a lot about detroit's drafting the last few years.

yzerman's success in drafting has been greatly exaggerated.

to stanley's point, its still a little early for most of the picks.  otoh, you could see seider/raymond as hits right away.  edvinsson took a year.

kasper has had 1/2 a good season and a flop.  danielson flopped this year.  asp was shown to be quite flawed.  while every prospect develops in their own way, if they were going to be stars you would likely know it already.

and the success of finnie and kasper on the top line next to raymond/larkin tells me more about larkin than it does about yzerman's drafting.  

6 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

I agree it is unlikely. But they traded DeBrincat to us. They traded Perron to us. Sure, different situations, but every situation is a different situation. If Ottawa doesn't think they can re-sign Tkachuk or doesn't want to re-sign him because he's American, he's exactly the kind of player Yzerman should be in on, especially if Yzerman does not intend to trade Larkin. Larkin needs someone to do the dirty work on the ice and in the locker room. 

if tkachuk comes out and says "i will not sign an extension and will only sogn an extension with the detroit red wings" then we can probably trade for him.

the red wings have a better chance of making the playoffs this season than that happening.

11 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

If you trade Larkin then you might as well start the rebuild over and keep on taking until you get a top line capable of putting up 90+ points in a season on the regular. 

i think its too late to trade larkin.

12 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

Yes and one of his seventh round picks was the best player on the ice yesterday. And he brought in the team’s best forward through a trade. And he signed Gibson who covered up for a full season of weak offense and almost dragged them to the playoffs. And he made a trade at the deadline like the players asked for last season and they still wet the bed. 

I don’t claim he is perfect, but yes, when we could have had Quinn Hughes and Kenny picked Zadina, when we could have had Martin Necas or Nick Suzuki or Robert Thomas or Jason Robertson and Kenny picked Rasmussen… you can go on and on down the list and see that good franchises still have players contributing and even leading their teams from draft picks made ten or more years ago. Any one of those players would have made this a playoff roster. 

Firing Yzerman is not going to help. In fact he is the only one who has the credibility to rebuild this franchise from the depths that Kenny left it in. Do they need more money in analytics? Do they need more help in scouting? Player development? I don’t know, but I think Yzerman should be on the phone to his peers across town who are leading franchise turnarounds. I think he needs to buy out Compher. I think he needs to let Mac call up some kids who will allow him to bench bottom six vets who aren’t playing with an edge. And I think he needs to listen to trade offers for Larkin,  Raymond, Edvinsson, or a goalie prospect. 

come on, jason.  7th round pick hits are pure luck.  getting a plugger like finnie is nice, but it doesnt show any particular acumen.

gibson for a second was a decent trade.

debrincat told ottawa he would not sign an extension and would only sign an extension in detroit.  that's not yzerman finding a good deal, its having a deal thrown into his lap.  i dont give him much credit for that.

every prospect who we are expecting to be good will not pan out.  we expected kasper to be good, buium, wallinder, tuomisto...where are they?

he's reponsible for the final product and the final product hasnt been good enough.  in fact, its failed in spectacular ways in multiple seasons now.

none of us can say with any certainty that "firing yzerman wont help."  how do you know that?  

the criticism about yzerman's plan when he started this was his signing middling talent to long term deals, thus raising the floor temporarily but in a way that prevents them from bottoming out long enough.  the second criticism was in his drafting "try hard" players who dont have elite skills like danielson and kasper.  well, how are they doing?  third, the "plan" to get cap space and sign free agents failed because he refused to sign any top free agents while we had space and now EVERYONE has space and there is no one to sign.  no kyle connor.  no mitch marner.  no gavrikov.  no guentzle.

and stop dreaming about trading for austin matthews because 1) they traded their asset for justin faulk; and 2) the bidding would start with mo seider.

we need to stop blaming kenny for taking zadina over hughes and realize yzerman's failure to draft quality depth players and inability to sign quality players has resulted in this season's collapse.

the flyers trade a second, fourth, and ryan poheling for trevor zegras.  zegras has 66 points this year.  would that have been a decent trade for us to make?

the flyers beat winnipeg 7-1 yesterday while the wings folded.  the flyers are rebuilding and were supposed to be terrible!

and who do they play in the playoffs?  the penguins.  kyle dubas makes a bunch of moves that work for them, what great moves has yzerman made lately?

"drafting mo seider" only gets you so much cachet anymore.  raymond is a nice, small scoring wing who has failed down the stretch in two straight seasons.  edvinsson is coming along nicely.  anything else?

9 hours ago, Jason_R said:

Don’t forget Stevie drafted Mo Seider, well ahead of when everyone thought he would go, and he is now the team’s cornerstone and a Norris Trophy contender. Raymond is a legitimate scorer and the second-leading scorer of his draft year. Edvinsson and Seider are by some measures the best defensive pairing in the league. Some of the prospects are TBD, but they are getting their chance.

If just one of Kenny’s first round picks other than Larkin had been a good one, this team would have been in the playoffs three years ago. And go back and look at how much talent Kenny overlooked, including several players the Wings were looking to trade for this year. 

its been seven years, this is no longer kenny's problem.  this year's collapse was on yzerman.

in seven years you cant get a decent second pair that doesnt get caved in regularly?

in seven years you cant get a scoring wing to go along with larkin/raymond?

i love stevie and i acknowledge that he was put into a tremendous hole by kenny and bad lottery luck but come on.

kenny didnt make him miss on 5 of his six second round picks in his first two years.  kenny didnt make him sign compher to a ridiculously long deal or rasmussen for any amount of time.  he's spent his years in detroit not "overpaying" for impact players (in his words) but then overpays for marginal talent like copp, compher, and chairot.  

regardless, its been seven years and the team has failed time and again.  its HIS team now.  this is his failure.

13 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

Yes, if you aren’t scoring, you need to be hitting. 

how do they get rid of ras and compher?  youre going to cut and stretch both of them?

they attached a second round pick to get rid of jake walman, who was actually GOOD!  What asset would you have to attach to get rid of those two?

Another late season fade by cossa.

by all means bring him up, he'll fit right in.

For once, MCS's ridiculously over the top hyperbole overreaction is justified.

Just now, lordstanley said:

/thread

this thread should be closed on march 1st of every year.  just to save us all some time.

20 minutes ago, GalagaGuy said:

Wings are tied for the 12th most points in the league and would have a playoff spot clinched if they were in the Western Conference.  Sucks that they missed it again, but things ain't as bad as they seem.  

dude.  no.

if they fired mcclellan i wouldnt be surprised.  this is probably their worst collapse in a long time.  even worse than last year.

there must be something going on that this happens every year.  what's up with that locker room?  

its hilarious that they bring back 50 year old david perron and he leads the team in shots in this must win game.  the dude cant skate, has almost no skills left, and he puts all these young players to shame by just trying hard.

they must have felt the locker room needed a guy like him.  if so, what does that say about larkin?  or anyone else on the team?  theyre just floating along?  mcclellan calls them all out and what happens?  nothing.  

cant change all the players so mcclellan probably gets the axe.

Everyone clamored for the great carter mazur to come up.  well, come up he did.  

in the last six games on the season mazur finished with 0 goals, 0 assists, 0 points, and a whopping 3 shots on goal.

marco kasper finishes with 8 goals in 78 games.  he had 2 goals and 3 assists in the months of march and april.  18 points on the season.

i'll repeat what we all said last year: i hope that is the last we see of michael rasmussen in a red wings jersey.

if so, he'll finish his career getting scratched for AHL old boy Dominick Shine. Ras completes this season with a whopping 14 points in 64 games.  in his last 5 wings games, he has 0 points and 0 shots on goal.

they deserved to be booed.

what a terrible team finish.

On 4/5/2026 at 2:07 PM, 1984Echoes said:

No, not yet.

This is still a valid thread until...

The Wings make it...

Invalid.

 

Is this already a team of invalids? Maybe...

Lord Stanley is putting in such hard work though...

I say let him finish the job!

how about now?

11 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

Since the Canadian teams don’t seem to like the American Olympic hockey players, what do we think about a trade for Brady Tkachuk? He has one more year on his contract for a little over $8 million. He would bring an abrasiveness to the team that we haven’t had in a long time not to mention being a top line scorer. 

sure.  but they wont trade him to us and if he's on the market were likely to get outbid, just like we did for hughes.

and we dont have a first round pick to trade this year.

5 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

Boston loses. 

ottawa wins

6 hours ago, Jason_R said:

https://octopusthrower.com/don-t-worry-about-slumping-red-wings-sophomore-01knt0b5rte4

For Kasper panicans. 

there's a lot of rationalizing and cherry picking in that article.

They should sign or draft better ones.