It's official: Jeff Blashill to return as Red Wings coach
Being a Detroit sports fan is so much fun.
Lightning seem to be doing fine… it takes time.
No. Drafted prospects should be in the NHL immediately regardless of their level of readiness. First round picks should be on the top line from their first night in the league. The team should set the NHL record for wins every year and it should start right now.
It can't be slow and methodical and thorough, building through the draft and teaching young players at the speed they're able to learn without ruining their confidence. That's just ridiculous. Two years should be far more than enough to go from the worst roster in the league to a perennial power.
What's that one famous quote about insanity? Something about trying the same thing over and over again or something?
Anyways welcome back, guy who loses a lot and inexplicably gets to keep his job.
Cheaper than paying someone more to do the same thing. Big hire will come when we're ready to start competing again.
Your optimism is inspiring.
Perhaps unrealistic and misguided - but inspiring nonetheless.
I lived through the 80s. We can do this.
Why is it misguided to trust that Yzerman knows what he’s doing?
There's something to be said for his leadership considering his teams don't quit on him in the face of all the losing.
I know moral victories don't count but look at how the Wings finished the season in both W-L and stats such as GAA (hint: among the league leaders on that last one).
I know it's fashionable as a Detroit sports fan to perennially bitch about:
1. Lions QB
2. Red Wings goalie.
3. Any coach.
But Blashill is a good coach.
Name 3 coaches that could do a better job with this roster.
I'll bite. For starters:
Gerard Gallant
Claude Julien
Bruce Boudreau
FFS, Blashill is 111 games under .500. If nothing else, they need a new voice after six years of this.
Barry Trotz.
There are also a few coaches like John Tortarella that would get one or two years out of them before the team got tired of them and they turned to crap. Blashill's teams are just permanent crap.
Steve Yzerman does not agree...
Scotty Bowman would not get this team to the playoffs.
The John Tortarella comment is laughable at best.
Hell, let's fucking dust off Mike Keenan using that logic. He'll lead us to the promised land.
Unfair to Torts to compare him to Keenan, at least in terms of their approach off the ice. Torts, while a demanding coach to play for, has a good relationship with his players off the ice and seems to genuinely care for them. Keenan on the other hand is a total piece of shit who will do anything to demean and humiliate his players as often as he can. The fact that he has a Stanley Cup in his name is more despite him than anything.
When asked how to judge the quality of a coach, Sparky Anderson said "if he's got players does he win?"
Blashill has never had the players. So, in the absence of that I choose to trust Yzerman.
Hockey, unlike other sports, is extremely fickle for one reason and that is goaltending. Unlike the NBA, the best team does not always win, especially when they're playing someone they should be but their goaltender is playing out of their mind which happens often in the playoffs.
How do we know he hasn't had players? He has had a lot of guys that we thought highly of a few years ago, but none of them developed. The team has sucked at a pretty constant level, except for last year, when they were arguably the worst team since before the lockout.
I don't think that Scotty Bowman would have these guys in the playoffs every year, but I'll bet that he wouldn't have had them in rock bottom last place with only 39 points over 71 games or missing the playoffs five years in a row.
I think Gerard Gallant will get an offer one day. Once the pieces are in place.
Fact of the matter is this roster still needs work.
The Wings leading goal scorer for the season was 11. Fucking 11.
26 leads all points (who was also a -18).
Would those guys come to Detroit knowing they're going to lose a lot of games these next few years and might not be around to see the fruits of their labor? Blashill might not be the answer to bring the team a Cup, but the team's not ready for that coach at this stage of the rebuild.
Would those guys come to Detroit
Exactly.
It's easy to spew names of who would do a better job in Detroit. The emotionally intelligent reply would include three names of people who would come here or it's plausible for them to come here.
Trotz aint coming to Detroit.
Neither are Boudreau or Julien.
Honestly I don't know enough about other rising NHL coaches to answer that question. Call me old school but I judge coaches from a W/L stance with a dash of upward trajectory mixed with a swirl of potential.
And excluding Blashill's first year where he took much of a team that wasn't really "his" to the playoffs and lost in the first round, we're looking at a Win% ~.355 over the last 5 years and sorta trending down or holding steady towards the back of their division.
So... not great I guess would be the most polite way of describing his tenure so far.
I agree with you. Not many coaches are going to have a substantially better record with the lack of top to bottom talent he is faced with currently. Blashill is not the reason Detroit has not been relevant for the last 5 years.
I’ll admit that maybe Blashill was correct about Mantha. The team as a whole played much better after the deadline.
I’m not a huge Blashill fan, but I also don’t have a slam dunk hire that is going to make this team contenders next season. 2 more seasons and it’s time to start winning games consistently once again.
I hope its for one year .
I just don't get this decision, the team has not really improved at all.
They did start playing better in the last few weeks but I hope he has a short leash if the team looks crappy again in the first couple of months next season.
What it says to me is that the pieces aren't in place yet to start competing and that we're going to continue to rebuild through the draft.
Yep. Feel like our HOF GM has been signaling a three to five year rebuild all along. Which is way better than barely holding on to set a postseason record that they missed anyways.
IMO that’s the *specific* reason we need an extended rebuild.
No idea if it was Holland - many think it was the owners - either way it put us in a deep hole.
Cheers.
I just don't get this decision, the team has not really improved at all.
More points than last season in fewer games this season.
.500 team in the last 37 games of the season. Quite an improvement from being 25 points worse than the whole league last year.
I trust Steve Yzerman.
This is the appropriate response. I’m not a Blashill fan, but it’s not like he took the mid 90s Red Wings and turned them into the dumpster fire they became. The team was shit when he got it, and it continues to be shit. We are 2 years into the Yzerman rebuild and all signs point to success (as I interpret them anyway), trust the process and trust Yzerman.
The team hasn’t improved? Did you see them last season? Team was significantly improved this year, especially in the latter half of the season.
You can debate whether or not that’s enough to keep Blashill around, but to say the team hasn’t improved is erroneous.
My personal view is that it doesn’t matter what Blashill has done the past few years. The team was riding out Holland’s poor contracts and was void of talent. Didn’t matter who the coach was, they weren’t going to do well. He deserves a clean slate, same as any new coach would have. The Wings not being ready to win yet allows him to have that opportunity, and they can bring in a new coach in a year or two if it doesn’t go well and the team is ready to push for the playoffs.
I'm OK with this. I'm sure us Wings fans would like them to be playoff contenders already, but if they aren't ready to make that leap, then what's the point of hiring a playoff caliber coach? You wouldn't want to waste him on losing seasons.
Steve Yzerman will see players improve, even if it isn't yet translating into a lot more wins, or he'll trade them away.
Is Yzerman purposely tanking the seasons until he feels that there is enough legitimate Stanley Cup talent? The Red Wings have been terrible for five years running now and there has been no evidence as of yet that Blashill can even get them to the playoffs in the future, much less win a Cup. Even shitty franchises in hockey like the Blue Jackets and Coyotes fall backwards into the eighth place spot now and then.
Last year Detroit was absolutely horrible. Zero coaches out there (past or future) was going to get that roster to the playoffs. What’s so great about being an 8 seed and being swept in the first round?
just be bad and take the higher draft pick. There is no place worse than being perpetually stuck in the middle as an average team.
for once I think the Detroit teams are doing it correctly. Take it all the way down and rebuild and develop through the draft. Fill in the gaps via free agency when the time is right.
I"m somewhat sympathetic to this idea, but unless you get a Connor MacDavid or Sydney Crosby type guy who only comes around two or three times a decade, that approach doesn't seem to work most of the time. And in the meantime, you are sending a loud and clear message to your team that you don't care if you win.
The NHL is a different beast with the salary cap. The wings had an all star team a couple of years.
with the cap it’s about drafting and development of those picks. A team can’t afford to sign a bunch of free agents to inflated contracts. That is a recipe for disaster. Draft, develop, resigning some of those guys and having discipline to walk away or trade some pending free agents.
It’s more doable than you think. You need one or two really high draft picks to pan out. It’s been the model for the successful teams of late. Kane and Toewes, Stamkos and Hedman, Ovi and Backstrom, MacKinnon, Crosby and Malkin, and others. Wings haven’t even scratched the surface. This rebuild was a long time coming and is going to last a while. People will have to learn to be patient.
A healthy chunk will not learn patience they will learn that investing time and energy in other endeavors will bring more satisfaction. And if teams return to playing well those people may return to participate as fans to join in the fun.
But an in it for the money owner like Ilitch will watch the fanbase walk away, cry he needs a new arena or stadium (Oops can't use that one anymore) to create a revenue stream and will spend like a poverty owner...forever. And yearly he will tell you that he is going to spend at that right moment.
I just hope that Blashill came at a reasonable cost so that Chris can put some money to work on District Detroit.
Yea, I’m not impressed with anything about Chris Illitch.
Mike ran the team like a sports fan.
Chris runs the team like an accountant.
Dude Yzerman hasn’t overseen even half of the disaster this team has become.
For most of the fall we’ve been chewing up difficult contracts.
Cheers.
we’ve been chewing up difficult contracts.
Indeed.
Just got off of Franzen's contract the previous season.
Last season was still paying off Zetterberg.
Between Zetterberg and other dead money that was 13% of the cap.
Hopefully they'll let Filppula go this off season; that will free up $3MM and the Wings can give Vrana some of that money.
7th season is the charm?
Blash has pics of Stevie Y and a farm animal
why the FUCK Spuddy Gallant isn't the HC is beyond me.
I wonder if we couldn't have gotten Barry Trotz instead of the Islanders.
I don’t understand the Gallant love. Sure he has had a couple good years as a head coach. However he has also coached 3 teams for 3 years each. If he was that phenomenal then why was he fired so quickly at each stop??
Doug Collins/Billy Martin effect. Immediate improvement for 1-2 years, then wears out his welcome very quickly.
That's my concern as well, especially as a Rangers fan. I understand Columbus and even Vegas as a new GM was brought in and wanted his own guy but the Florida firing is what has me worried. I do love the style he coaches, up tempo and hard and word is that his players love him.
yeah, who would want a coach that gets results in less than three years..... lets stick with blash, who's sucked for 6
These are fascinating times to live in Southeast Michigan. The two most unjustifiably employed men in the country live within about an hour or so of one another.
As an outsider, the Wings are in a rebuild in which rarely do you want to change coaches at this stage. Also, this roster is nowhere near competing yet as Stevie Y is starting to accumulate draft capital and purging the current roster.
I get there are a lot of big name coaches either already available or about to be but the Wings would have to overpay for any of them with where things are now and other openings in the league. I think standing pat with Blashill for another two or three years (probably the extended term he got) is the smart move, for now.
I don’t mind them keeping Blashhill, Scotty Bowman wouldn’t be able to turn this team into a playoff contender.
My biggest complaint has been the power play, and they’re getting rid of Bielsma, so I approve that move.