Jason_R

He has dominated the finals.

Walman just ripped one for the go-ahead goal.

Holl was a disaster. Everyone else they paid market price. The real problem is that in the rebuild they traded away players, got a dozen second-round picks in three drafts, and got one NHL player out of it. Where is the development?

He got married over the summer and seems to have been upfront with Tomlin about it. He’s not a well-loved player, except by his inner circle. Hmm. Somehow he seems to elicit strong feelings from people. If I was to guess it is because when he experiments with drugs they are weird Aztec plants and not the more mainstream stuff. I don’t care one way or the other but I don’t begrudge him his right to get married out of the spotlight, and I don’t begrudge him the chance to run it back one more time on his terms. He’s one of the greatest ever. Hats off.

It is easy to say in retrospect that he should have fired Lalonde sooner. Maybe he should have. I’m OK with him not making rash decisions. Nobody is saying the Winga have an upper echelon roster. Is Yzerman responsible for the roster? Well, yes, within the constraints of a limited pool of talent in the franchise, a limited pool of FA talent, and a limited pool of funds. Fans of every franchise want to be in the playoffs. The roster as is was good enough to have gotten in the past two seasons. They didn’t. (Maybe if he had kept Gostisbehere they would have, but maybe G wouldn’t have stayed at any price because he wanted to compete for a Cup.) If they can’t get Danielson, ASP, MBN, and a goalie up and in the playoffs by the end of 2026-27, that will be the sign that it is time to move on from Yzerman.

I think this assumes his options were to go all in on FA or tank. It seems to imply that he would have or should have traded Larkin. Maybe in retrospect he should have, and he did trade every other talented player from the roster he inherited. But you still need to put a roster on the ice. So who was he going to get to play 1C if he traded Larkin when Larkin was 24 — a 21-year old? Was he supposed to call up his good prospects before they were ready, then fill out the roster with FA who were cheap because nobody wanted them and with players who are no better than minor league fodder? he has turned over the roster completely since he arrived with the exception of Larkin. He has drafted several cornerstone players who are playing serious minutes. He traded for another cornerstone player in Debrincat. He has filled in some medium term roster gaps with free agents that he paid market rate for. Maybe he should have done a better job at the margins (what might have been with Walman and Gostisbehere) but look at the roster and prospects he inherited. Not good. The Wings missing the playoffs the past two years is on the players, in my view, not on Yzerman. He was not out there giving up 25 goals a week during a playoff run.

No offense to Steve Yzerman, but there is no "Yzerplan." There was getting rid of bad players and contracts, drafting better players (within the bounds of lottery luck), and filling in the roster gaps each season and across seasons with free agents. I know it is popular to say that his pro scouting staff has failed, but I think it is more accurate to say free agents are expensive and he has been reluctant to spend too much money on free agents when he knows he can't build the core of a competitive team on free agents. The more alarming thing than his free agent acquisitions has been that outside of the top picks, only Johansson and Soderblom have made any contributions. Yes, very little talent from below Round 2 of the NHL Draft ever makes it to the NHL. But when the NHL roster has been so mediocre, and you had all those second-round picks (13 over five drafts), you would think more than one of them could crack the lineup. He has done well with his top picks -- and I think the rebuild ends when Danielson, ASP, and one of the goalies makes the roster.

Today I heard Chris Simms talking about the "Aaron Rodgers locker room cancer" bit. He thinks there is no truth to it. I think it's overblown. People are mad at him for lots of reasons that have very little to do with his performance on the field and in the locker room. They point to his time with the Jets and say he was colluding with the owner on personnel moves. I think this is overblown too. There was no leadership in that franchise so Aa-Rod stepped into the void.

Yes. Feels like this was part of the appeal of people like Copp, Chiarot, Perron, but that “veteran leadership” never really materialized.

Yes, I'm sure Stevie brought in a nice lady from HR to oversee his performance evaluation with Larkin. And yes, I'm sure it wouldn't raise any red flags if the captain of a team led by "The Captain" demanded a trade or otherwise seemed to be doubling down on his tantrum at not having made trades at the deadline. I'm not saying he's not tradable, but he wouldn't want his legacy in Detroit to have been that Stevie Y ran him out of town. Larkin is not going anywhere, but I'm sure Stevie made it clear to him the expectations for continuing to wear the C. I wouldn't be surprised if Stevie asked Larkin if he was prepared to meet those expectations or if Seider should start wearing the C.

Regardless of what they do with Larkin, the take is the truth, and it seems to be shared by Yzerman and McLellan. It is possible they are looking to trade Larkin but that would be a major move and hard to accomplish even if they thought it was the right thing to do. Assuming they keep him it would be a bad move to demote him — as bad a move from the FO level as Larkin’s comments were from his level. Yzerman and McLellan dealt with Larkin’s comments the right way in public, but I suspect Stevie took him to the woodshed in private. If Larkin is a man, he will take the punishment he deserved from a man eminently qualified to deliver it, and he will do the job he is supposed to do as Captain.

Yzerman is not delusional. Anyone who thinks there was some magic formula that would have allowed him to rebuild a barren roster and minor league system in five years is delusional. The FA market is what it is. Want talent? You are going to overpay, especially if you are not a competitive team. They blew it on Holl, there is a back story we will never know on Walman, and they are asking Chiarot and the rest of their FA acquisitions to do a bit too much. They could have made the playoffs this year but Larkin let the team, the front office, and the fan base down by pouting that they didn't acquire talent at the trade deadline. If the captain doesn't believe the players in the locker room are good enough to make it to the playoffs, the team doesn't believe it either, and if the team doesn't believe it, well, they are not going to make it. If the fan base is going to be mad at anyone, it should be Larkin. That press conference was a shameful display. Worse, if he is saying these things in public, imagine what he was saying in the locker room. He needs to get his mind right or give up the "C."

OK, let's parse the different meanings of "grit," "edge," "relentlessness," and "attitude." Every successful NHL team has a couple of forwards who are hard to play against, who are going to punish defenders in the corners or in front of the net. The Wings do not have this.

Grit. Current Wings team does not seem to have anyone with this kind of fire and edge.

Lomas Brown was on NFL Radio the other day. His preference given the circumstances is to run Glasgow at center this season. Certainly seems like the most viable option. Here’s Hank Fraley’s chance to show how good he is.