Red Wings

[chemiclord]

I root for the Wings but don't follow them that closely. It seemed like they finished well last year, so it surprised me to see them start so poorly this season. Is Lalond bad, or did he wear out his welcome?

The Red Wings were roughly a .500 team last year. They are (roughly) a .500 team this year.

They didn't take the steps forward they needed to. Part of that is that the core they were leaning on to take the next step haven't. Part of it is that Yzerman hasn't found good complementary pieces. And part of it is that Chris Illitch is a penny-pinching miser who simply won't make the investments he needs for the franchises he owns to take that step forward.

You can have one of those things and still be successful. You can have a middling core if you have competent management that finds good players in FA and trades and an owner willing to invest. You can have a cheap owner if you have a solid core and capable management. You can have middling management if your core is sound and an owner willing to paper over mistakes with a lot of money.

But you can't have all three elements and expect to be more than mediocre.

[froot loops]

They are right at the cap, it's not like they can spend more. They lost players last year because Seider and Raymond are no longer in rookie deals.

The team has looked lifeless, you can't change the players, change the coach.

[chemiclord]

They are right at the cap, it's not like they can spend more. They lost players last year because Seider and Raymond are no longer in rookie deals.

The team has looked lifeless, you can't change the players, change the coach.

You keep saying that they are right at the cap as if that is a hard, inflexible barrier that they simply can't cross. It's not. Teams frequently cross the cap for moves they feel they have to make. Yes, there are costs for doing so (which is why the "up against the cap" Red Wings are in the bottom third of payroll like the other Chris Illitch run team), but if there was a move that Chris was willing to pay for, he could.

And another part of the "miserly" nature of Chris Illitch is how little investment he puts into the developmental teams, which is a bit of a problem when you're trying to "build from the farm." He's gotten better in that regard, but only to the extent that he's gotten player development and analysis up to the point where other "build from the farm" teams were about a decade ago. He's still doing the bare minimum, at best.

Now, what I will concede is that I wouldn't particularly trust Yzerman and his plan to make those decisions right now. He's a big part of the problem as well. A lot of the dead cap the Wings have are due to him have to eat salary to make up for his own bad choices.

[froot loops]

The NHL cap is a hard cap. The only way around it is by putting players on LTIR. They have no injured players to do that to.

Please propose how they could have went over the cap? You keep on saying things like this and do not explain a damn thing on how to do it.

[froot loops]

The Red Wings have exactly 2.2 million in cap space. The teams that are far over the cap are all far over with LTIR salaries.

[froot loops]

If you can find a player for 2.2 million that can turn this team into a playoff contender, please suggest him

[chemiclord]

LTIR is one way to dodge the cap. Other tricks that teams do is lean heavily into cash signing bonuses and "3-way deals" that allow teams to elude the cap for the sake of balancing their ledger (the Wings have had to do this the wrong way because of bad contracts). There aren't many tricks, but they exist, and most teams happily use all of them.

So yeah, the "hard cap" isn't as "hard" as you want to pretend it is. But it does require being really, really good at your job, or being really, really bad at it. Yzerman has been more of the latter than the former. Again, the problem isn't necessarily that the Wings aren't exceeding the "hard that isn't really all that hard" cap. It's that even if the opportunity was there, I have no faith Chris I. would take it because the "hard" cap is a convenient way to keep payroll as low as he thinks he can get away with.

[froot loops]

Can you make one of these signing bonus deals that allowed a team to get over the cap?

[chemiclord]

Boston, as I recall, did it on a couple of occasions as they were building that ridiculous payroll team a couple years back, and have done something similar-ish with Swayman this last offseason. It's wonky, it's kinda weird because the math adds up in every way but in regards to the cap hit. I certainly wouldn't want to make a habit of it for the same reason that I wouldn't want to make a habit of the 15-year deals the Red Wings liked to do before the salary cap era; it seems like a LOT of effectively dead money if it doesn't work out.

Then again, if you don't care how much money you're truly spending... maybe you're fine with it.

[froot loops]

What deal with Boston? I've never heard of it.

If you have to find a third team to take on salary, the it is a hard cap.

The Wings issue is the free agents Yzerman did spend on are not performing.

[Tom]

Supposedly, Yzerman has a lot of talent in the minors but the fact that the main team hasn’t made the playoffs during his tenure is pretty bad.

I think the Wings have some talent but they’re really bad defensively. When I watch, they seem to give up a lot of odd man rushes. They give up a lot of scoring chances when they’re on the power play. I’d be surprised if other teams are close to them in giving up short handed goals.