The Hockey News’s Ken Campbell reports that Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman, bade farewell to long-time scout Glenn Merkosky in a puzzling manner.
In one of his first acts as Detroit Red Wings GM, Steve Yzerman fired longtime pro scout Glenn Merkosky, who was with the Wings for two Stanley Cups, and replaced him with Chris Yzerman, Steve’s brother who had been scouting for him with the Lightning. Discuss amongst yourselves.— Ken Campbell (@THNKenCampbell) June 25, 2019
I don’t think that the move was completely self-serving, but it is certainly curious.
Expect the Red Wings to make more front office moves (the team has already added Pat Verbeek as an assistant GM) as executives and scouts’ contracts expire on July 1st. Yzerman is not going to make wholesale changes for the sake of change, but there will be front office moves.
FYI: For what it’s worth, Chris Yzerman has always stayed in the Ottawa area, so he’s probably going to serve as the Ottawa/Quebec area scout…
And I have some skin in the game as Merkosky follows me on Twitter, and is a very nice man. I have to believe that given all that he’s done for the team over his years as an amateur scout, he was not let loose out of spite.
It’s not unexpected for Steve to make changes and shore things up to his liking. As long as Drapes and Malts are kept because I believe they all can work well together.
Being in Western Canada, I saw on SportsNet that KH would be signing some Red Wing scouts to work for the Oilers (after the Draft). I assume KH will sign some more after SY releases them. Not sure where Stevie wants to sign scouts that he is comfortable
I wrote on another article, Merkosky just wasn’t good at his job. A pro scout provides input on UFA signings and trade targets. The list of awful players is very long and spans multiple years. Merkosky is partially responsible for this. He has a history with Holland for 30+ years so its no surprise that as soon as someone that has no personal attachment looked at the situation it was obvious this guy needed to be fired. The fact that he’s a nice guy and follows Malik’s Twitter account is totally irrelevant.