kipwinger

I don't agree with your conclusions. Recent history has shown that deep teams, with more top end talent throughout their lineup, are better than teams that have elite top end talent but not as much depth. I can't imagine too many GMs would rather be Edmonton than Florida despite the fact that the Oilers have the better "difference makers". Contrary to what most people think, I don't believe we need those pad the stats guys. We need guys that will allow Seider to go from 45 points to 65 (think Duncan Keith) points and still be a rock defensively. We need the guy who eats some defensive zone starts so Larkin can stay healthy and score 95 points. Same with Raymond. We haven't had those guys because we've've lacked qualtiy depth forever. So our top end guys get keyed on. Depth changes that. If Marco Kasper can eat those "Anthony Cirelli" type minutes, then Larkin gets to play "Brayden Point" type minutes. Same with Raymond and Seider. Those guys stand to gain a lot when they're not eating the best the opposition can throw at them for 20 mins a night.

I feel like this Pettersson situation is a lot like the Eichel one with respect to how the Wings should view it. I recall everyone in the league being afraid that Eichel's injuries would prevent him from living up to his lofty contract. Scared more than a view potential suitors away. But we're a team without an elite offensive center, and those players are REALLY hard to get ahold of. It was clearly a gamble for Vegas, but it was worth the risk in acquiring Eichel because they didn't have an elite center either. Nobody is going to hand you a top end 25 year old stud center for no good reason. Anyone available is going to have a question mark or two. With Pettersson the question mark has never been about his scoring. It's more than he doesn't really have that "killer instinct" that any decent 1C needs to thrive in the NHL. He's wilts when he's the top guy. But Larkin is the compliment to that. He's been getting nearly crippled (Jamie Benn? Mathieu Joseph?) for years because of all the hard minutes he plays and HE STILL scores 70-80 points. Give him the hard minutes and Pettersson the soft ones. It's the same deployment Edmonton uses with McDavid and Draisaitl. Watch them play, McDavid gets the soft minutes because he can score a zillion points if he doesn't also have to check top players (something he blows at). Meanwhile, Edmonton has a workhorse 2C that can eat the hard minutes AND provide offense. It's not a bad "direction" for the team IMO.

Look, I don't love Pettersson as a player. I think his game is too soft to be an effective 1C. And I think Larkin's offensive game isn't quite good enough to be a high-end 1C. AND we aren't getting a MacKinnon, Barkov, Matthews, etc. any time soon. So we are going to have to do things by committee to some extent. Pettersson has shown that if you have another center to log the heavy minutes (something Larkin has been doing for years) that he can deliver elite offensive outcomes...something we badly need. Trading one for the other would just be an exercise in "digging one hole to fill in another", but together they might add up to a winning recipe. I don't like the contract either, but I'd take solace in the fact that A) the cap is going way up, and B) we have Larkin, Raymond, and Seider on less-than-market-value deals already. If you can get them to take a bad contract (Tarasenko) in return to make the trade work then Pettersson's deal isn't really that big of a problem going forward.

Or we'd send someone on an expiring contract, like Tarasenko, to offset the cost. There's always somebody thrown into each trade just to make the money work.

Not to mention he's nowhere near as good as Larkin on a much worse contract. Hard pass. But... Given that Marco is looking really really good, I'd take Pettersson for something centered around Danielson tho. Larkin, Pettersson, Kasper down the middle would give McClellan a million options next fall. Let Larkin take the tough matchups, which he's used to (and that Pettersson can't handle). Give Pettersson the sheltered offensive minutes, which he's better at than Larkin anyway. And then absolutely cook teams with something like Sodorblom-Kasper-Berggren/Mazur on your third line. All for the cost of a really good prospect that we'd no longer need. Edit: Basically look at the trade that sent Sam Reinhart to Florida. A lottery protected 1st and a good but not great prospect (Devon Levi). I'd imagine any trade for Pettersson would look something like that.

Larkin is getting torched on Reddit for saying something that any Red Wings fan with eyes could see for themselves the last two seasons. The TDL is a time of extreme stress and uncertainty for players on bad teams. These guys genuinely have no idea whether they're going to lose friends, or have to uproot their families, or just "fold" on the season because your GM decided you were a "seller" again this year. So to put them through it year after year after year without committing to any particular direction is completely tone deaf. It drives ME nuts to see a flawed team that neither sells nor adds. I can't imagine how the players feel about it. What even is the point? It's clear going into the deadline that we're not good enough, everyone (including SY) can see it so obviously , and yet he decides to...bring in Craig Smith? Why even bother? Wouldn't the team have been better off just keeping Veleno...a guy they all loved?

Re-sign Kane. Sign Ehlers and Provorov. Trade for Cuylle (Tarasenko, Berggren, plus whatever else). If you can't trade Tarasenko then buy him out and waive Holl. Ehlers provides more pure skill to the lineup and is a really good producer of even strength offense. Cuylle also provides really good even strength offense and plays big and heavy. Provorov can handle 20 minutes a night, is a solid defender, has size, and provides complimentary offense from the back end. Cuylle-Larkin-Raymond Debrincat-Kasper-Ehlers Sodorblom-Compher-Kane Ras-Copp-Mazur Provorov-Seider Edvinsson-Johansson Chiarot-ASP Talbot Mrazek

Marner is a p*ssy. No thanks.

That said, I also think Debrincat counts. We technically did trade for him, but his contract was expiring and we had a new deal in place before the trade was completed.

Hossa

That guy's a f*cking disgrace! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vl8yXfnSMw&pp=ygUSZGlzZ3JhY2Ugc2xhcCBzaG90 Edit: Seriously though, leave this kid in the NCAA for his full term and let him develop his game more. Give him ample time to learn to defend properly, but at the same time let him get some of those offensive minutes as he becomes an upper classman on the team. If we can get to the point where he can kill penalties, defense at even strength, and just break the puck out I'd let him be my 6D any day of the week. Basically be Erik Cernak 2.0. Because how on earth do you not like that aggressiveness?

I know you're being glib, so I'm not taking your post TOO seriously but Marco and Edvinsson were genuinely better options than roughly 90% of the veterans available on any given night. Scott was right about that. The point is that's ALL we should have done. Keep Walman, keep Ghost, keep Perron/Fabbri/Sprong...just ADD EDVINSSON AND KASPER! It makes me feel crazy but it's so simple right? Why on earth did we give away better players and then pay the same money for worse ones? In what universe is Petry/Holl/Gustafsson a more capable defensive unit than Walman/Maatta/Edvinsson? Or Walman/Gost/Edvinsson? And you can't say "well nobody would want Petry or Holl" because we had to PAY someone to take Walman! Why not waive Petry, pay someone to take Holl, and then never sign Gustafsson? You could have added Berggren and Kasper to last season's lineup simply by...wait for it...not signing Tarasenko and Motte. That's all you had to do. I think that's probably was always implied in Scott's argument right? Get rid of the losers and bring in the kids? Only this time we kept all the losers, signed more losers, traded away actual contributors, and then brought up the kids. Hardly the same thing. It really is that simple. SY just chose the wrong guys.

In any other market he would have gotten roasted for the Walman trade alone. Forget the parts where he let all his decent defenders go and then stunk defensively. Or how he traded lost Fabbri, Sprong, and Perron, didn't replace those goals, and then predictably didn't have any even strength scoring all season long.

At forward I'd target Ehlers and one of Will Cuylle or Lawson Crouse via trade. On defense I'd look at Mason Lohrei from the Bruins. He's a big lefty that is an RFA with arbitration rights. Could be Yzerman's Red Wings version of Sergachev.

The Griffins' talented play-by-play man, Bob Kaser, filled in for Ken Daniels last night because Ken was tasked with calling the Montreal game. During the broadcast Kaser mentioned that you could visibly see the Griffins' locker room get a boost when they got Auston Watson and Dominik Shine back from their NHL call ups in March. The Griffs were struggling through a huge slump and had lost a bunch of games before those guys came back. They couldn't score apparently. After getting Watson and Shine back they broke their slump and outscored their opponents by some crazy margin. Those guys aren't superstars, they were just badly needed reinforcements for a squad that was absolutely going through it. That's the kind of thing I mean when I say SY doesn't pay attention to the mental state of the team. The answer is always "tough it out" from management. But what happens when they've been toughing it out all season already? How do you tell Edvinsson, Marco, or Johansson to do more than they're already doing as a rookies? How do you tell Seider he's going to get even tougher matchups than he's already facing? How do you tell Larkin that it's open season on his head by every rat in the league because every team knows we've only got one decent center to match up with? For the 2nd year in a row we've watched management run these guys into the ground and then punt the second they have an opportunity to lighten the load a bit. In Larkin's case this has been going on his entire career. He's never had even a decent 2C to share tough minutes with. Seider only finally got Edvinsson to help him out, but A) nobody knew Edvinsson would be so good, and B) SY did everything he could to make the defense WORSE than it was a year ago prior to the season. In "Work Me Lord", Janis Joplin sang: You ain't gonna find anybody who can say that they tried like I tried. How do you keep telling that person to tough it out until next year...over and over and over? Janis goes on to say: Can I show you how hard it is Trying to live when you're all alone? Everyday I keep pushing Keep trying to move forward But something is driving me, oh, back And something's trying to hold on to me Maybe it was the depression, or the alcohol, or the drugs, or maybe...just maybe...Steve Yzerman was her General Manager.