EP Rinkside’s Ryan Lambert has never been a fan of the Red Wings Way, and, after an underwhelming free agency performance, Lambert questions logic of the “Yzerplan” in a lengthy edition of “What We Learned”:
What this really reminds me of, quite a bit, is when the Florida Panthers in the early 2010s spent a bunch of money on veterans who fit this same profile: good but not great. Sign a bunch of good-but-not-great players and your results improve slightly.
The Wings missed the playoffs by 12 points last year. They haven’t come close to adding six wins while the four teams that finished ahead of them for the last wild card spot lost that much. Maybe the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida regress a little, maybe Boston and Toronto do too. But the gaps between them and Buffalo is significant, as is the gap between Buffalo and Ottawa/Detroit.
It’s admittedly a tough situation. The Wings couldn’t not-spend money this summer, because they had a bunch of roster spots to fill. It feels like it wouldn’t be particularly helpful to go out and sign a bunch of veterans on something close to league-minimum deals. They still have plenty of cap space to make moves.
The good news is that the market the last two summers means they have plenty of players they can deal at this deadline; only seven Red Wings are currently signed beyond 2024-25.
But again, it’s just tire-spinning. Because all these players ensure they’re going to be nowhere near the bottom of the league, which would allow them to pick high, and probably not much closer to the playoffs.
Continued (paywall)
Sure feels like it. I understood what he was trying to do last season to make the team more competitive, but doing the same thing again this year and blocking our prospects makes no sense. It’s straight out of the Ken Holland playbook. I thought we were done with signing over the hill veterans and giving 5 year deals to the Frans Nielsens of the world. Guess not… back to square one with overripening prospects. Instead of Kasper playing on the 2nd or 3rd line, he’ll probably be in GR or on the dreaded 4th line.