Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen suggests that the Red Wings are going through another “Dead Things” era under the Ken Holland/Steve Yzerman rebuild, but Allen lets Yzerman’s remarks on the team’s attempt to turn its ship around as well:
GM Steve Yzerman was asked after last season whether he had concerns that this young group only knows frustration when it comes to trying to qualify for the playoffs.
“I guess I do,” Yzerman said. “I look at last season and this season, although we didn’t make it, we’re fighting every night for a playoff spot if you like, believe it or not, we are trying to win, our players are trying to win. We need to be better.”
What the Red Wings want to avoid is to make the playoffs once, like the 1977-78 Red Wings, and then miss again for a few years. They are trying to build a team that can make the playoffs every year for an extended period.
“I look around our locker room led by Dylan Larkin, led by Alex DeBrincat. I say those two probably because they’re two of our leading scorers who are 28, 29 years of age. Can be here for a long time,” Yzerman said. “Then down through Mo Seider, Lucas Raymond, Marco Kasper, now Albert Johansson… We’re building the nucleus of a good team with the idea that this team is going to win. I don’t measure success by making the playoffs one year and bowing out the next year. ”
To Yzerman, the key is continuity. He wants to qualify for the playoffs and continue to be a playoff team, like the Red Wings that won four Stanley Cups from 1997 to 2008.
“You’re aiming for Stanley Cups,” Yzerman said. “That’s what we’re trying to do here. So. And to do that, you got to do things, you got to be well-run. I think I know we have world-class top ownership here. It’s incumbent upon the hockey ops department, led by me, to do a good job to make sure we don’t become a perpetual losing team. And again, you wanted a rebuild 10 years ago after 25 straight years in the playoffs. We’re living it now, and it’s not a lot of fun. We’re going to stick with it, and eventually this organization will get there.”
Continued; again, my understanding is that the Red Wings raised prices for season ticket-holders, and some of them were willing to invest in the team’s improvement, but some fans are plain old pissed off that the team has raised prices despite a relative lack of progress.
Teams raise ticket prices every couple of years regardless of team performance, so I can only shrug my shoulders, express disappointment, and let the fans vote with their butts, frankly.
This has been a hard time to be a Red Wings fan for sure, and at this point, I really wish that we could share the kind of successes that the Wings sustained in the late 90’s and 2000’s with an entire generation of young people who don’t remember what it was like to have a dominant NHL team…
But it takes a significant amount of time to turn a massive ship bereft of prospects back into a prosperous team, and Yzerman’s relentlessly patient approach to, as Allen points out, build through the draft for the most part…
It’s probably added a couple of years to the rebuilding process, but the team is where it’s at, and as such, all of us have the right to complain, but patience is required as well.
I try really hard to stay level-headed about the team’s stead, and all I can do here is try to be a bit cautious and skeptical but not cynical regarding the lengthy nature of the Wings’ rebuild. I’m just not a cynic, and in my own way, I have hope for and faith in this process, bloody long as it has been.
