The Athletic’s Craig Custance took on the gargantuan task of ranking the NHL’s best post-salary-cap teams today. Custance believes that the 2007-2008 Red Wings gave the Red Wings a significant boost in his rankings, but today’s Wings are obviously not what they used to be per his points scale:
6 (tied). Detroit Red Wings
Total: 27
The Red Wings gathered most of their points early on in the cap era with a 2008 Stanley Cup and 2009 near-miss. The rebuild under Steve Yzerman is still early in the process and the Red Wings are likely years away from adding to this point total but fans can look to Yzerman’s fingerprints on the 2020 Stanley Cup champions for a little optimism of what may be coming when he’s done building in Detroit.
Total playoff years: 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 09SCF, 08SC, 07CF, 06
Average: 1.80 points per season
Continued (paywall); along the rebuilding lines, The Athletic’s Max Bultman also wondered aloud whether these Red Wings can be built into a Stanley Cup contender again by their current GM, Steve Yzerman:
Even if he stopped short of claiming satisfaction for his former team’s success, the fact Yzerman has been most of the way down that path as a GM is meaningful. Just as the Lightning fell short last year before reaching the pinnacle, and just as the Red Wings first stumbled before becoming a dynasty when Yzerman was a player, coming up short can be a hell of a teacher.
And now, the successes, failures and lessons from his time in Tampa Bay can still be applied in Detroit, while inevitably carrying more weight as tried-and-true. Even if he won’t get plaudits for finding the final puzzle pieces in Tampa, his role in the foundation is unquestionable.
So, with a crucial 2020 offseason now officially in full gear, Yzerman is out of the Lightning’s championship frame, working again just to establish the foundations of an organization. He has essential RFA deals to ink, impossibly important draft picks to make, and, maybe, another surprise or two yet to come.
He won’t do any of that with a 2020 championship ring sitting in the background.
But as Detroit looks up from the bottom, seeing its GM’s former team now at the top, the climb up has to look a bit more attainable.
And if Yzerman can some day get the Red Wings back to that summit, for this city, satisfaction won’t even begin to cover it.
Continued (paywall)…
