The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn posted an article containing NHL fans’ rankings of the 32 NHL teams’ front offices this morning. I can’t share everything from his report on the Red Wings, but the fan-led rankings of categories of roster management are all “C’s” and “D’s” as the Wings have dropped from 23rd to 30th in the NHL, earning a “D-” as the fans’ overall grade for the team’s front office:
A vacant GM chair makes the Red Wings difficult to rate at the moment, so consider this a final grade for the Yzerplan. And folks, it is rough.
There were many moments throughout the years where hope was high in Detroit thanks to Steve Yzerman, so let the Yzerplan serve as another lesson that tearing it down is the easy part. Actually building something is much more difficult. The public caught on to the struggles of Detroit’s front office quicker than the fan base did and it’s why it’s important to gauge how front offices are perceived from both inside and outside the base. But even within Detroit, the tide against Yzerman had already started turning last year.
There are obviously positives from the last decade, namely Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond. But everything else on the pro and amateur side was far from ideal. The biggest issue, though, was trying to take the cake out of the oven before it was done rising. What’s left is an underbaked mess for the next guy to clean up. The Red Wings aren’t unsalvageable, but they are in a very unenviable spot post-Yzerplan.
Continued; I would not argue that fan discontent is that significant an arbiter of the need for front office changes, but there’s some validity to Luszczyszyn’s argument…
And the Red Wings do have roster issues for the next GM or president of hockey hockey operations to address through better pro and amateur scouting. Everybody knows that by now, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that–or to begin addressing that when the next GM and/or president of hockey operations is hired
