OT: Blashill is Out, Let the Next Phase of the Red Wings' Rebuild Begin
"The Red Wings will not bring back coach Jeff Blashill next season." DetNews Link.
Liked Blashill but time for a change. Will be interesting if he gets another look in the NHL
He won't
Was over his head to begin with. Kenny H had really lost his touch the last couple of years with a lash and Rasmussen choice among others. Left Wings in a terrible position.
It is time for a new and different voice.
Yeah, 7 seasons is a long time. A new & better coach is needed to push them to playoff contention.
Hell yeah. This team is going to be dangerous in another year or two.
LGRW
Now go get Igor
Would love to see the Professor brought in… just a brilliant hockey mind. Unfortunately with the current political landscape (Russia is banned from all IIHF competitions and Russian players can’t even be imported into the CHL) I don’t think there’s any chance it will happen.
Blash is a good dude but it’s time for a change behind the bench. It will be very interesting to see who GMSY pursues as coach. Hoping he doesn’t recycle a mediocre head coach. A name I keep hearing that would be intriguing is Igor Larionov. Maybe he could at least teach the Wings how to make and receive passes and do more than fling the puck up the ice and hope somebody in red gets to it first.
You don't like dump and chase? You probably don't like old time hockey, either.
If only more of the Wings came from the Iron League.
Dump and chase is fine when you can forecheck which the Wings didn't do very well this year. They have been a very poor passing team for a few years and if they actually could pass we'd also see that they have been very poor at receiving passes too. So instead they just end up chucking the puck against the boards much of the time. Adam Erne was probably the worst offender of this but there are a few others as well.
He seems like a pretty stand up guy in his interviews, and I was glad they brought him back this year. The first third of the season they played hard and were competitive in most of their games, and then they just reverted back to old form. They got so bad defensively the last few months in all aspects of the game, they'd play fine and then give up a goal and then the wheels would fall off. It feels like they've improved somewhat personnel wise, but they still have a ways to go. Hopefully a new coach can be part of pushing the team to the next level, that and continuing to upgrade the players. Best of luck to Blashill wherever he ends up, I'm sure Stevey can get a great replacement.
I think Benoit Groulx is the odds on favorite.
Time to call the Professor back to his rust belt home.
There are rumors out there of Blashill to Michigan and Pearson out
if there is any truth to those rumors, is that good or bad? i think mel is doing a great job, though i realize there is an investigation going on.
Mel's twitter still has "Head Hockey Coach University of Michigan #GoBlue" but not sure if that means anything. https://twitter.com/CoachPearsonUM
It's still April.
Tomorrow, though....
Blashill coached one year at WMU where he exceeded expectations which led to him getting hired by the Griffins.
This is the first I've heard of any possibility we might not bring Mel back. I didn't realize he was on an expiring contract and given the date, we will probably find out one way or another tomorrow.
I sort of forgot about the investigation because it didn't seem to yield anything immediately damning, but if it turns out there is a lot more fire than thought, that is extremely disappointing and a very big waste of a career for Mel.
Under those circumstances though, I can't imagine a better scenario than replacing him with Blashill. Surely he bears some reasonable blame for the Red Wings woes, but I don't think even Scotty Bowman would have had any of the teams Blashill has coached winning any Cups and he has a long track record of success with young, developing players, including the instant turnaround he did at WMU that they leveraged into getting into the NCHC and sticking as a serviceable program under his successor.
No guarantee it works out of course, but can't think of getting anything closer to a better option considering that promoting internally is unlikely with the reasons we'd be making a change.
so red wing fans, who will be the next coach? who will stevie-y hire? the rebuild continues....
What’s Gerard Gallant up to these days?
He's coaching the Rangers. If Gerard was the guy then Steve should have fired Blash after last year.
We can hire Sergei to coach AND retire #91 at the same time!
Probably Urban Meyer, I hear he's well-practiced at penetrating the neutral zone in unconventional ways.
Scotty Bowman is only 88.