bottom line is that Yzerman (and maybe Ilitch) didn't want to pay the price for Holland having let things get so bad, which was to be a bad team longer. In a capped league there are only so many levers. Outside of the three big draft hits, they haven't scouted better than the rest of the league, which is one of only three ways to get better. They didn't lose enough to collect more top picks, which is the 2nd way to get better, and Yzerman has not managed to pick any other GM's pocket in a trade, which is the third way to get better. If you don't do any of those, what can you expect the outcome to be? So they either need to go back to losing and collecting picks, they need to trade better, or they need to scout better. How do either of those last two things improve unless you upgrade the people tasked to do them who haven't done them well enough so far to produce the needed improvement?