The Hockey News’s Jared Clinton and Adam Proteau discuss the Red Wings’ rebuilding process in a positive light, suggesting that the Red Wings’ coaching staff and front office are attempting to balance building a playoff team with affording the team’s younger players a place to grow:
Even the most pragmatic fan can get swept up in romanticism. It was difficult to look at what Yzerman had accomplished with the Bolts without having visions of a Red Wings resurgence. At their height, the Wings had become the paragon of competitiveness not only in the game but in all of professional sport, a model organization that was, for a time, the destination for the NHL’s title-hungry stars, each of whom knew the path to glory almost inevitably wound its way through the now-shuttered Joe Louis Arena. Surely, the thinking went, the Red Wings would rediscover that former glory now that Yzerman was at the helm.
Somewhere amid this fervor, ‘The Yzerplan’ was born.
Four-and-a-half seasons later, the Red Wings still haven’t sniffed the playoffs. In a business where careers are made and reputations tarnished on the basis of wins and losses, that might be enough for another GM to get his walking papers. But that Yzerman has been given leniency and more than a little latitude should come as no surprise. After all, he was allowed to take to the business of reshaping the Red Wings following his arrival less with pruning shears than with gasoline and a blowtorch.
When he was unveiled as GM, Yzerman referred to a core, the centerpiece of which was Dylan Larkin. In that regard, nothing has changed: the Michigan born-and-bred Larkin is now the Wings captain, and even then, he was the heir apparent for the ‘C.’ But different fates have befallen Anthony Mantha, Andreas Athanasiou, Tyler Bertuzzi and Filip Hronek, the other players Yzerman cited on that day as part of the foundation. None of those four are still with the Wings. In fact, Larkin and Michael Rasmussen are the only NHL regulars remaining from the roster that Yzerman inherited.
Though this dismantling took place over the course of the past four seasons, the broader picture it paints is instructive of what exactly Yzerman’s grand designs were for the Red Wings, at least initially.
“If we follow the process, we do our job right, and, truthfully, we get a little bit of luck,” said Yzerman during his introductory press conference, “we’ll get back to where we need to, where we’re expecting to be.”
Continued; and this is a “teaser” excerpt from the Hockey News’s “Future Watch” edition, which apparently takes a “deeper dive” into the Red Wings’ attempts to revive the franchise.
I don’t believe that Yzerman would have been fired elsewhere; I happen to believe that the Red Wings needed so much work–and still need more–as a franchise with a talent base necessary to sustain itself that we really are somewhere in the middle-starting-toward-the-end of a much longer rebuilding process.
It’s been six years. We may have three-to-five more years to go. That’s just the reality of rebuilding in the NHL, especially when you don’t have first-round lottery luck.
