Duff on Zadina and the Wings’ draft misses under Ken Holland

My feelings regarding Filip Zadina are pretty simple right now:

1. I wish him all the best in his endeavors to find success in the NHL;
2. And, at the same time, I don’t give a shit about where he lands, or which team’s fan base believes that a player who has struggled in the NHL thus far is going to represent an “unbelievable steal” for their fan base.

As Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff notes, Zadina’s decision to walk away from nearly $5 million in pay was perhaps the exclamation point upon an era of sub-par drafting by the Red Wings under the late Ken Holland/Tyler Wright regime:

On the surface, that the sixth player chosen by the Red Wings in the 2018 NHL entry draft didn’t pan out is certainly an alarming situation.

“Theoretically or statistically, the higher players are picked, the more likelihood you’re gonna get that impact player,” Detroit GM Steve Yzerman said.

For example,  in 2019, Yzerman’s first draft as Detroit GM, he got defenseman Moritz Seider with the sixth overall pick. Two years later, he tabbed another defenseman, Simon Edvinsson, in the same draft slot.

“There’s no guarantees,” Yzerman said. “The first pick overall, usually you’re getting a pretty good player. Sometimes you’re getting a superstar. With each pick, the numbers decrease a little bit.”

Not hitting on the sixth pick is devastating, and even more so for a rebuilding club like the Red Wings. But it’s also an indication of how the previous Detroit regime, through a combination of poor drafting and some ill-advised trades, were leaving the cupboard virtually bereft of talent when Yzerman took over.

Detroit’s current lineup includes just three first-round selections made by the combination of GM Ken Holland and amateur scouting director Tyler Wright – forwards Dylan Larkin (15th, 2014), Michael Rasmussen (9th, 2017) and Joe Veleno (30th, 2018). It certainly hasn’t helped Yzerman’s cause that first-round picks such as Zadina, Dennis Cholowski (20th, 2016) and Evgeni Svechnikov (19th, 2015) didn’t pan out as NHLers.

Continued; many first-round picks don’t pan out. As Steve Yzerman suggested, it hurts, but it’s not surprising. That being said, swinging poorly in three of the final five Holland drafts didn’t help the cause…

But Ken Holland has moved on, the Red Wings have another scouting staff in place, and the team is doing its best to bolster their draft picks with free agent signings like Alexandre Doucet.

We’ll see what the future holds for both Zadina and the Red Wings. I hope the latter case is brighter.