Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen posted a subscriber-only article discussing several changes which Allen believes that Steve Yzerman’s successor must incorporate into the next building/rebuilding plan. Among Allen’s points are the following:
2. A Different Plan to Infuse Prospects
Defenseman William Wallinder is no longer waiver exempt and he’s coming to training camp with no NHL experience. Antti Tourmisto signed with Las Vegas without getting an NHL shot from Detroit. Eduards Tralmaks didn’t get an NHL game and he signed with Edmonton. You hear other general managers talk about opening roster spots for their younger players. But the Red Wings have been conservative when it comes to development of young players. They want to know their youngsters are ready before promoting them. But that’s no longer the way it’s done in the NHL.
The Red Wings cannot utilize the Grand Rapids Griffins as an impermeable membrane by which Detroit’s top prospects cannot graduate from until they’re out of waiver options any more. It’s fair and right to afford Detroit’s prospects the opportunities to “steal jobs” and earn short call-ups simply to see what the organization has in terms of self-developed depth players.
3. A Goaltending Ascension Plan
The Red Wings have done a quality job of building a strong stable of young goalies, but haven’t done a good job of making their goalies NHL-ready. Sebastian Cossa had 45 minutes of NHL experience when the Red Wings traded him to Utah this summer.
If the Red Wings send Michal Postava to Grand Rapids at the start of the season, it would make sense for the team to schedule some NHL games early for him to see if he is ready to be the team’s next goalie up.
Maybe more importantly, The Yzerman replacement should have a plan in place for Trey Augustine to experience NHL time even as early as this season. If he is now the goalie of the future, it makes sense for him to have NHL experience before he gets a spot on the roster. They can’t treat him the same way they treated Cossa.
Continued (paywall); agreed regarding Postava and Augustine (and Michal Pradel, Michal Orsulak, Rudy Guimond, etc. etc.). The Wings’ crease isn’t going to be best-served by forcing Postava and Augustine to watch John Gibson and Daniil Tarasov split the next 82 starts.
None of Allen’s other plans are exactly jaw-droppingly shocking, but witnessing the Red Wings more aggressively engage players at market-value salaries instead of incorporating a roster player salary cap, and actually trading draft picks from time to time make sense…
And offering more internal competition for roster spots, instead of, for example, ensuring that grinding players like, say, Michael Rasmussen, J.T. Compher, etc. become “too important to fail” seems logical as well.
All of that being said, the whole point of why Allen’s saying what he’s saying is not to stir up revolutionary roster-building changes, but instead, to encourage the organization to re-engage the rest of the league’s best practices.
