Bleacher Report’s Adam Gretz offers “final grades” for every NHL team’s offseason moves (or the lack thereof), and I cannot disagree with his reasoning for giving Detroit an “F” grade (except for the fact that the team does have an interim general manager in Shawn Horcoff):
Detroit Red Wings
Offseason grade: F
Dysfunctional. That’s how this whole operation comes across right now.
Dylan Larkin requested a trade at the start of the offseason, Steve Yzerman was removed/stepped aside as general manager, and now with the season just days away they still do not have a new general manager to run the team.
That has resulted in Larkin not being traded, while nobody actually knows if he still wants a trade, and the organization stripping him of his captaincy.
Restricted free agent defenseman Simon Edvinsson (who also happens to be one of their best and most important young players) also remains unsigned because they haven’t had a general manager to get a new deal done with him.
Their big offseason additions before all of that chaos started were Viktor Arvidsson and Keegan Kolesar. Arvidsson is a solid addition, but that’s not a difference-maker for a team that has missed the playoffs for a decade and keeps collapsing late in the season.
The depth is still sketchy, the roster is still mostly mediocre, and they are about to head into the season with an interim general manager. It’s bad. Really bad.
Continued; I don’t think that it’s Armageddon in Detroit, but the fact that the Red Wings were unwilling or unable to make more aggressive moves to bolster scoring during the off-season hurts the Red Wings’ cause.
I still remain somewhat optimistic that the Wings can pave over the departures of Patrick Kane, James van Riemsdyk and David Perron’s collective offensive output, but it’s not going to be easy…
And a dysfunctional team is a dysfunctional team, whether we like to say it or not.
