Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff certainly has his timing right in examining several reasons why “the game passed by” former GM Steve Yzerman this morning, especially in light of the Free Press’s Helene St. James’ report that the Wings are looking to build an analytically friendly front office.
Duff suggests that Yzerman’s legacy could still be at least a mixed bag in that he did build a strong core of prospects for Detroit…
But Duff believes that the Red Wings didn’t pursue trades aggressively, and that the team didn’t do enough to build enough of a core of young players:
The Red Wings did insert some young players. In the case of Seider, Raymond and Edvinsson, they were able to count on them to fill key roles. Still, it always seemed that they were only half-committed to a youth movement.
Yzerman stayed with the traditional Detroit philosophy of letting prospects ripen on the vine with the AHL Grand Rapids Griffins. It meant that they traded goalie Sebastian Cossa, a 2021 first-round pick, after he’d played less than a full game in the NHL.
The Wings inserted way too many mediocre journeymen into roles that could’ve been filled in house by prospects.
Meanwhile, teams like Buffalo, Ottawa, and Montreal fully embraced youth and sailed past Detroit in the standings.
I do agree with Duff that the Wings didn’t give the team’s prospects enough opportunities to make the team. Under the previous management, there was almost a glass ceiling between the Red Wings and the Grand Rapids Griffins, and that’s not how you build a team with a young core.
Duff also believes that the Wings didn’t do enough to build an analytically-based front office:
To be clear, analytics aren’t the only metric that a team should be using to determine their path for the future. At the same time, to not embrace what the data can tell you, or to blatantly ignore it, would be foolhardy.
The Red Wings did give lip service to the concept. How many times did we hear former coach Derek Lalonde refer to the underlying numbers? Still, you just never got the sense that the club was fully on board with the value of analytics.
It’s known from sources within the organization that Red Wings owner Chris Ilitch is quite enamored with Tigers GM Scott Harris. Ilitch admires the way the Tigers are utilizing analytics in that club’s turnaround from basement dwellers to playoff team. Was Ilitch alarmed by the lack of the same from the leadership group of his hockey team?
I don’t believe that analytics make a team great–building a core of talented players matters most–but in building a team, you have to combine the “eye test” with the metrics available to teams these days, and that means embracing the data-driven movement that the game is taking.
I don’t know whether coach Todd McLellan embraces the analytics department, but I do feel that he and assistant coaches Alex Tanguay and Trent Yawney are the best chance the Wings’ mixed bag of young players and older vets have to salvage their potential.
