The Hockey News’s Ryan Lambert, an outspoken critic of all things Red Wings-related, offers a surprisingly circumspect column this afternoon, suggesting that the Detroit Red Wings’ next managerial regime needs to consider three important topics, including the following:
3. What’s The Timeline For Being Competitive Again, And How Competitive Is “Competitive,” Really?
This is a question lots of NHL teams have to ask themselves. While everyone would like to win the Stanley Cup, the vast majority of teams in the league aren’t especially likely to truly compete for it consistently. Some teams can make a conference final almost out of nowhere, but for most, their big prize at the end of the season is maybe getting into the second round.
The Red Wings are a team that should have higher aspirations than that, given their overall financial health (they don’t need to rely on revenue sharing to make ends meet) and their status as one of the league’s most important franchises.
But when you miss the playoffs for 10 years straight with no obvious end in sight, barring the kind of out-of-nowhere success teams like the Pittsburgh Penguins or Buffalo Sabres just had this past season, maybe the math is a little different. Will they be content building a team that reaches 96 or 98 points just to end the playoff drought, or will they take the longer view and try to build a team that can be Cup-competitive again further down the line?
Those goals aren’t mutually exclusive, of course. Still, there are a lot of teams around the league that have shown the former kind of more modest aspirations, and you don’t want to end up like the Columbus Blue Jackets, Vancouver Canucks, or Calgary Flames.
So it’s as simple as whether they want to take shortcuts for short-term gains, even if that means building a more robust prospect base for the future, or they’re taking the longer view.
That, too, feels like a decision that will ultimately be dictated by ownership.
Continued with two more topics (Dylan Larkin’s future and the shape of the roster-building to come), and it’s nice to hear that even he believes that the Red Wings shouldn’t suck forever.
