Red Wings

[Forsh]

They might ... have a bad coach. Hopefully next year Gallant is here (the guy who led the expansion team you mentioned)

[chemiclord]

They might ... have a bad coach. Hopefully next year Gallant is here (the guy who led the expansion team you mentioned)

That "bad coach" seemed to be just fine when he had talent that was on par with his peers.

They might... have a shitty team. Hopefully next year Yzerman will start to fix that.

[froot loops]

Lets hope so, all four of these teams suck bad.

[jaadam4]

Lets hope so, all four of these teams suck bad.

All day long

[jaadam4]

This team is so bad. The shit thing is that no matter how bad they are we could still end up with the 4th pick depending on the lottery.

They need to revisit that shit.

[jaadam4]

[Tom]

They might not be as good as you think.

[The King]

It's going to really suck when we wind up with the 4th pick. These lotto odds are so terrible.

[froot loops]

The spirit of having a lottery is correct, you don't want teams all out tanking but the Wings are just very bad. There are many more important reasons why they are bad, but continually losing spots in the lottery ever year hasn't helped.

Its crazy how powerless they seem to be in improving the team. From the mid-80's on they were always proactive by wheeling and dealing to steadily improve, not all those teams were cup contenders but they could find guys who helped for a couple of seasons and then they would ship them off for an upgrade. I'm thinking of guys like Ray Sheppard and Paul Ysebaert. They got Sheppard famously for a dollar and they traded Lee Norwood and 4th rounder for Ysebaert. They had that period where they signed 7 college free agents, most of them flopped but they got Adam Oates out of it. Right now we get to hear reports about Seider and hope Robbie Fabbri turns out to be a contributor to a winning team.

It's like if you are Wing fan, watching them is like being a methane worker in BarterTown.

[Tom]

[Forsh]

Murray was a pretty good coach, and it seemed like the trades made during his regime were good. The Euro drafting was monstrous but that was pre- Murray. The Wings made 2 horrific trades in short order in 1989 ... that would've destroyed another team. They drafted Primeau over Jagr too. All pre- Murray. Still ... Carson got them Coffey. Primeau and Coffey got them Shanahan I think. Could've easily had Adam Oates, Joe Murphy, Adam Graves and Jagr around instead from 1990 until whenever. Probably would've won sooner.

The influx of Fedorov, Lidstrom and Konstantinov was huge. Massive

[froot loops]

My point on that was those years was they were very active in trying to improve the team. The current Wings are going to need to draft well but they aren't going to get better by drafting alone. The Wings of that era were very creative, hopefully Yzerman can get them back to that.

A good current example is of a guy like Athanasiou. The old Wing front office would have dealt him by now for good value. They were great about moving on from a guy who was pretty good but flawed. The Wing moves of the last 10 years has been marked by very uncreative solutions like bringing back former players. It's kind of why I was complaining heavily about Filpulla.

[chemiclord]

AA is heading to Edmonton, the Wings getting a cap casualty and two seconds back in return.

That's not a bad haul at all for a guy who was apparently on his last straw with the Wings. Even more curious that Holland, after effectively bad mouthing the dude for two years, was the one to pull the trigger.

[jaadam4]

[jaadam4]

Primeau and Coffey got them Shanahan I think.

Yes indeed.

Bringing Shanny to Detroit was like bringing Sheed to the Pistons. Both of those players brought something those teams were missing.