The Athletic engaged in a fan survey of opinions as to each and every one of the NHL’s 32 fan bases regarding their teams’ respective front offices.
Today, Dom Luszczyszyn reveals that the Red Wings’ fan base thinks highly of their team’s braintrust. The Wings finish 3rd overall in the survey, despite Luszczyszyn’s jab at the Wings’ current status:
People know this team is still terrible, right?
Kidding aside, there is a lot of deserved belief in the Yzerplan which has been careful, slow and methodical with no immediate rush or hurry to take the next step. That’s fine, this team is far from ready and that patient approach has been extremely beloved by Red Wings fans. There is hope here that the man in charge can take the team back to where it needs to go with incredible faith in Steve Yzerman’s ability to make trades, signings, draft, develop and navigate the cap. The vision is crystal clear and the future looks bright.
Where this is warranted disagreement is in the first category, which is roster building. Yzerman and friends have done the easy part so far — actually building a roster is where things get difficult. I can see why there’s a difference as it comes to the philosophy of what this survey even tries to answer. The public may not be confident in the team’s roster building because the roster itself is still currently in its flaming wreckage state. But with how good everything else is going, it’s also completely fair for fans to have complete unwavering faith in management that the roster building part of the process will go just as smoothly as everything else. It’s the team doing things from the ground up and fans appreciating that even if there are no tangible results yet.
Red Wings fans have been patient and a rebuild deserves that trust. Detroit’s management team belongs in this spot, but I do wonder if the lustre begins to dim the longer the rebuild goes on. At some point, the results have to be tangible and not theoretical.
Continued (paywall), and the rebuild has to start delivering tangible results this year…
At first I thought it was a Typo but StevieY has and seems to have been born with NHL Roster management. He should continue with that asset, Very Happy Fan!