Red Wings Offseason 2025

[slothfacekilla]

Oh.  Didn't see that coming.  1 year, like no money that can be buried in the AHL.  Guess it doesn't hurt?  Though I don't think he's very good at this point of his career.  Hopefully it is just him and Holl battling for a spot and they both don't end up on the team (hopefully both in the AHL honestly)

[Shinzaki]

Why?

[buddha]

4 hours ago, Shinzaki said:

Why?

because they have no faith in buium, wallinder, and tuomisto.

[gehringer_2]

7 minutes ago, buddha said:

because they have no faith in buium, wallinder, and tuomisto.

Whose going to fill Petry's role as old. slow, ineffective 2nd paring anchor? A guy with a 4:1 giveaway/takeaway ratio sounds perfect.

[buddha]

strikes me as a depth signing...easy to get rid of if you have to if one of their young defensemen surprise them in camp.

[gehringer_2]

6 minutes ago, buddha said:

strikes me as a depth signing...easy to get rid of if you have to if one of their young defensemen surprise them in camp.

I'd rather they tell the kids: "There is one spot open, compete for it", than "well maybe if you give us enough reason to dump this vet we will, but you already know we usually don't."

Edited August 15 by gehringer_2

[buddha]

5 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I'd rather they tell the kids: "There is one spot open, compete for it", than "well maybe if you give us enough reason to dump this vet we will, but you already know we usually don't."

i dont agree with how they've done it.  otoh, when they think youre ready they call you up.  and its worked so far.  kasper, seider, raymond, and edvinsson have all had excellent debuts and have been very good players.

hopefully one of wallinder/buium/tuomisto break thru in camp.  if they do, justin holl will easily clear waivers.

[slothfacekilla]

1 hour ago, buddha said:

 

hopefully one of wallinder/buium/tuomisto break thru in camp.  if they do, justin holl will easily clear waivers.

In my limited viewing of all the players in the AHL my hunch is that ASP is the only one who will have a chance to win a job out of camp based on where he's at.  It isn't likely, but both Holl and Harmonic are easily buried in the minors if you need it.  

The signing to me says that the front office doesn't trust the AHL guys to be injury depth next season and that they want to compete.  Whether it was a smart move is another story but I imagine that's the thinking.

[Jason_R]

In addition to questionable depth this year, they only have Seider, Johansson, and Edvinsson under contract on the blue line next year. Anyone they pull up from GR, now or later, will leave a spot that needs to be filled there. Also next year they won’t fill all of the four open roles from GR. It would be good to have a few options to re-sign for one or more of those roles already within the system. 

[Mr.TaterSalad]

I can't believe this is reality for our third line defense. I also can't believe the official NHL Instagram could ask such a question and include the Red Wings in it. 

[Jason_R]

This will not be the defense by the end of the season and it may not be the defense by the end of camp. 

[Hongbit]

I’m not sure you will find many playoff teams with a second pairing with 163 total NHL games.  

[gehringer_2]

5 minutes ago, Hongbit said:

I’m not sure you will find many playoff teams with a second pairing with 163 total NHL games.  

The worse part is that they can put two D men on the ice together with only 163 games still not have that be close to the weakest pairing.

Edited Monday at 05:04 PM by gehringer_2

[Jason_R]

Are we saying Stevie should have signed some overpriced free agents for the second line so that the team could bump the kids to the third line where they could replace some overpriced free agents?

This season they see if JBD can play, they see if Wallinder can play, they see how ASP develops, then they replace half their defensive corps going into 2026-27 with whatever mix of kids and overpriced free agents makes sense. So this season we better hope the kids play a lot and well. 

[slothfacekilla]

I would be shocked if Holl is in the starting lineup opening night, I wouldn't be shocked if he's sent to the AHL

[gehringer_2]

6 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

Are we saying Stevie should have signed some overpriced free agents for the second line so that the team could bump the kids to the third line where they could replace some overpriced free agents?

 

No, we are saying that it sucks the proven overall talent level isn't better 6 yrs in. 

The best we can say for Yzerman right now is to take the comparison to the Tigers. If you take 2016 as Al Avila's first draft in control of the Tigers as a turning point, it took to last season  - 8 seasons - to build a competitive baseball team and development system from zero. Do we think Yzerman is within two years of a team that can challenge for a cup? Maybe, but a lot of guys are going to have to make a lot of progress to meet that bar, and most people don't even think Avila was a particularly good GM. Is there an argument that it's harder to rebuild a hockey org than a baseball org? Then again, the Wings have been "sub-contracting" most of their important development responsibility to European teams.

[Jason_R]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

No, we are saying that it sucks the proven overall talent level isn't better 6 yrs in. 

The best we can say for Yzerman right now is to take the comparison to the Tigers. If you take 2016 as Al Avila's first draft in control of the Tigers as a turning point, it took to last season  - 8 seasons - to build a competitive baseball team and development system from zero. Do we think Yzerman is within two years of a team that can challenge for a cup? Maybe, but a lot of guys are going to have to make a lot of progress to meet that bar, and most people don't even think Avila was a particularly good GM. Is there an argument that it's harder to rebuild a hockey org than a baseball org? Then again, the Wings have been "sub-contracting" most of their important development responsibility to European teams.

I think it is way harder to rebuild an NHL team than an MLB team. The talent pool in NHL is much smaller. There is no system for signing international prospects in the NHL like there is in MLB. There is much less organizational room for talent development than in MLB. I think the Tigers' rebuild was enormously helped by the use of analytics in player development which is not something that is nearly as prominent or useful in the NHL. 

Also, let's not forget that Kenny was so bad Stevie is still paying a guy who last played six years ago. From his first draft Stevie has a franchise defenseman in Seider. From his second he has a franchise forward in Raymond. From his third he has a defenseman who may turn out to be better than Seider in Edvinsson. From his fourth draft he has a solid 2C in Kasper. It remains to be seen what we have in Cossa and the more recent draft picks, but (especially since Seider, Raymond, Edvinsson, and Kasper have all outperformed expectations) it seems reasonable to expect Danielson, ASP, MBN, and Bear will all turn into at least solid NHL players. 

I know people complain that his free agent signings have been too long, for too much money, and for mediocre players. Evidently people want to sign the all stars who want to play on short term contracts for under market value, and I guess that's a great strategy if you can execute on it. So Yzerman has paid a few guys more than he would have liked to fill out the roster through this season, then he will see what the kids are able to do.

If I have any criticism of Yzerman's tenure, it is that he has had 14 2nd round picks and as of yet, only Albert Johansson has shown up in any meaningful way. There is still a chance for some of them, and if Augustine, Buchelnikov, and maybe one of the big defensemen can make the NHL team, that's a competitive roster that could be attractive to the high-end free agents that right now will not take Stevie's phone calls. 

[gehringer_2]

26 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

it is that he has had 14 2nd round picks and as of yet, only Albert Johansson has shown up in any meaningful way.

You can do the math for any pro sport the same way - divide the roster size by the average career length. 6 yrs is typically quoted as the average NHL career. There are 20 roster spots, you need to average a little better than 3 players per year added to keep up with natural attrition - or find more above league average level players that tend to have longer  careers. If your system can't provide that many, you have to make trades that net the amount of added value that you didn't get from your drafting -i.e "win" all your trades. That is extremely hard for any GM to do, and Yzerman is no exception there. In the last couple of years the Wings have met that target, not clear if thy can this year.

[buddha]

the only reason g2 compares baseball to hockey is so he can do his "steve yzerman is al avila" routine.

you cant compare sports rebuilds.  and unless you want to say yzerman inherited justin verlander, jd martinez, nick castellanos, david price, ian kinsler...which he did not.

[buddha]

yzerman has been really good so far with the exception of last summer which was a disaster cluster**** of verlander for franklin perez, daz cameron, and jake rogers proportions.

[gehringer_2]

1 minute ago, buddha said:

the only reason g2 compares baseball to hockey is so he can do his "steve yzerman is al avila" routine.

you cant compare sports rebuilds.  and unless you want to say yzerman inherited justin verlander, jd martinez, nick castellanos, david price, ian kinsler...which he did not.

why should hockey get such exalted treatment that a GM should get unlimited time to turn a franchise around? What's is fair then? 20 yrs? You get two full player career generations before you are expected to put a quality product on the ice? There are a lot fewer moving parts to assembling a hockey team than a baseball team, and the Tigers were every bit as bad at the bottom as the Wings ever were. The fact is that Jason hit it on the nose - one player per draft is not enough to ever get a team to good even if the that one player is a good one - that is still below your roster replacement rate. You have to consistently hit on an average of more than one player to rebuild a franchise. And it's true a lot of teams don't hit on more than one, but when you need to get better that's what you need to do.

[gehringer_2]

to finish the thought - 

The thing that bothers me the most is that I don't even think they are as good now as we give them credit for. The conventional narrative from last season is that they played badly down the stretch. I think a more a likely story is that McLellan came in mid-season and got the Wings to play their 'A' game while most of the teams they were playing were in mid-season doldrums mode, and when it started getting close to the finish line and other teams raised their level of play to their "A" game, they left the Wings in the dust.

[Kacie]

I guess where my frustration lies is that it seems that Yzerman doesn't see value in "just" making the playoffs.  It seems he feels they have to be Cup contenders and that missing the playoffs isn't a big deal because they aren't contenders anyway.  Even a first round sweep is better than missing the playoffs to me.  

Thinking back, the Wings first made the playoffs in 85-86 and it took 11 years to win the Cup.  If we're still a couple of years away from making the playoffs and another 10+ after that to win it all, I'll be too damn old to enjoy it!  

[gehringer_2]

20 minutes ago, Kacie said:

Even a first round sweep is better than missing the playoffs to me.  

and you never know, the other team's goalie might blow a fuse, your goalie might get hot, a top seed might be looking past you and get ambushed, you might draw a team with a better record than you but that you happen to match up well against.

[Jason_R]

Where does this idea come from that Steve doesn’t see value in making the playoffs? He and McClellan got up in the press conference and basically ripped the team for not competing as hard as the teams that made it, and ripped the captain for whining about not acquiring overpriced talent at the trade deadline. And they were right to.

Again, it is a great strategy to sign all star free agents at less than market value, and we were lucky enough to be able to do that for a long time. Not anymore. That’s not Steve’s fault. The kids are going to have to compete and grow and the team will have to improve from within.