Per Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff, former Red Wings head scout and assistant GM Neil Smith, who went on to win the Stanley Cup with the New York Rangers, has weighed on the state of the Red Wings at present while speaking on his NHL Wraparound Podcast alongside host Vic Morren:
Again, per Duff:
“What I’m really sad about is where the hockey team is right now,” Smith said. “Dylan Larkin, a player that has given everything to the Red Wings, played on their last playoff team, is the captain of their team, has told the team way back that he wanted to be traded.
“That was sad enough. Then Steve Yzerman, a player that I drafted for the Detroit Red Wings, who became general manager after being in Tampa with the same role, has been let go after seven seasons of no playoff hockey. And now we’re coming up to the end of August.
“They don’t have a general manager. They’re still on the lookout for a general manager. I don’t know how it’s possible that you could be at this point in the summer without a GM.
“The Dylan Larkin saga continues to go on. He’s going to have to either expand his list of teams that he’ll let Detroit trade him to or just resign himself to the fact that he’s coming back to training camp and going to play on the team.
“And until those two things are ironed out— who is the GM and where is Dylan Larkin going to be this year— the team will stay in chaos until those things are figured out. And to me, having worked for that great Original Six team, that’s very sad.”
