By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag.com
May 30, 2013
Not seconds after Brent Seabrook’s deflected shot had evaded Jimmy Howard in overtime of Game 7 sending the Chicago Blackhawks into the Western Conference Finals and the Red Wings to the Eastern Conference offseason did I start to wonder what could have been.
The underdog Wings had just played as tight a series possible against one of the best regular season NHL teams in the 96 years the league has been in existence. A Hawks team that would have been on pace for an incredible 132 points if the season wasn’t reduced to 48 games because of the lockout.
And yet, after 21 periods of play, the series between the juggernaut and the team that didn’t qualify for the postseason until the last day of the season was deadlocked. Game 7 was tied 1-1. Chicago had scored 15 goals in the series. Detroit had scored 15 goals in the series. If these two teams were any closer after seven games, Trent Reznor could have serenaded them with “I want to fuck you like an animal …… I want to feel you from the inside.”
So, you can imagine how aggravating it was to realize just how close the Wings came to the upset knowing the Wings were playing at a huge disadvantage in this matchup. First of all, a franchise that was only one of a handful in the league that tried to block the salary cap from existence spent the 2013 season almost $7.5 million UNDER the cap.
Secondly, while the Hawk players celebrated the 3-1 series comeback on their home ice, the Wings had another TEN MILLION DOLLARS in cap space watching from the United Center press box in the form of healthy scratches Todd Bertuzzi, Ian White, Mikael Samuelsson and Jordin Tootoo.
Yep, the Wings pushed a team that at one point played HALF THE SEASON without a loss to the brink of elimination with basically $52 million of a $70 million salary cap being utilized!!!!
This was David versus Goliath if David’s only weapon was a cheap ass, hand-me-down slingshot at his disposal.
But, did anyone in the Detroit media question Wings General Manager Ken Holland for his failure during the past couple of seasons to add the necessary pieces to win a series like this?
Was there one voice in town that questioned why in the last few years of Nicklas Lidstrom and Pavel Datsyuk’s careers and the prime of Henrik Zettberg’s has Holland failed to do anything to give this organization a fighting chance? Of course not. Instead, we get the slapdick fucktards at 97.1 Tweeting out what a great job Holland has done rebuilding on the fly.
This THING believes she is a journalist? Instead of ripping Holland for his asinine signings of Samuelsson and Tootoo in the offseason and his failure to improve his club at the deadline for a second straight year, she fellates him because the team was somehow doing well DESPITE HIM.
Seriously, I’d like to take that scarf she is always wearing and choke some god damn sense into her. And what is she covering up with that accessory anyway? A hickey that Holland gave her?
Only in Detroit can you go four years without making it past the second round and get a column written in a major daily that commends you for doing NOTHING.
While an exec like Ray Shero spends every waking moment as the Penguins GM thinking of ways to add players at the deadline, or pulling off a blockbuster deal or how to sign an unrestricted free-agent who will actually DRESS in the postseason, Holland continues to live off his reputation built on the 1989 NHL Entry Draft (when he was a scout for the team) and Håkan Andersson’s scouting abilities.
At this point, I’d love to know Holland’s plan. He hasn’t made a blockbuster trade since he dealt Slava Kozlov to the Buffalo Sabres for Dominic Hasek. And that was THIRTEEN YEARS AGO. And that trade was precipitated by a phone call from Hasek’s agent, Rich Winter, telling him the vertebrae-less goalie wanted to play in Detroit.
His last monster free-agent signing was Marian Hossa. That occurred when he received a phone call while pumping gas from RICH WINTER telling him that Hossa wanted to play in Motown.
Now, here is what happens when Rich Winter doesn’t call Ken Holland’s cell phone. He trades first round picks for Kyle Quincey. He gives worthless bums like Tootoo and Samuelsson $5 million instead of spending that money on Jiri Hudler. He decides to make it a priority to re-sign a floater like Johan Franzen instead of keeping a world-class player in Hossa.
And as some of my Twitter followers have pointed out, if Franzen played in a Canadian city instead of Faux Hockeytown, the Swede would be getting absolutely KILLED for his horrid play of late.
Making a Sophie’s Choice of Franzen over Hossa is so AWFUL that it would be the equivalent of Meryl Streep choosing to save that little kid from “The Twilight Zone” who banished anyone who didn’t do exactly what he wanted to a cornfield for them to never return over Willow Smith.
Look, if Holland is just going to idly sit by the phone and wait for someone to call him with an unbelievable offer like some sort of glorified order taker, why don’t we just replace him with one of the hipsters who takes your corned beef order at Zingerman’s?
And not only did Holland fail to acquire any help at the trade deadline AGAIN, he passed up a golden opportunity to deal underachieving Valtteri Filppula who will be an unrestricted free-agent on July 1st.
In an interview with Greg Brady of Sportsnet 590 in Toronto on Memorial Day, Holland insinuated that he could have received a first round pick (in a deep 2013 draft) if he dealt a guy who somehow believes he is worth $5 million a year.
And it isn’t hypocritical of me to pine for that sort of trade and also complain about Holland’s failure to improve this squad. Ya know, he could have done BOTH. Hell, the Sharks traded Ryan Clowe at the deadline to the Rangers and they lost a seven game series to the defending Cup champs. Making a shrewd deal like that could have opened up other options.
(And I am not sure Tomas Tatar off his point-per-game playoff performance in Grand Rapids wouldn’t have outplayed Filppula anyhow for the remainder of the season. Fil kinda sucked this season.)
Also, can we stop hearing Holland’s famous, “Adding Player X from the injured list is like making a deadline trade.” No, Ken, adding an injured Bertuzzi or Samuelsson to the lineup in March is just like ADDING AN INJURED VETERAN TO THE LINEUP.
This season Holland justified his inactivity by telling the fawning media that adding Danny DeKeyser as a free-agent and Darren Helm from injury would be the equivalent to making a trade deadline acquisition.
Do you know what is like making a deadline trade? MAKING A FUCKING DEADLINE TRADE!!!!!!
So stop used-car selling us on this other bullshit. Please.
Also, can the media stop whining about what a great loss to the front office Jim Nill will be. As far as I can tell, Nill’s main responsibility was drafting North Americans. And how the hell has that gone for us recently?
It would seem that Nill’s biggest contribution to the Wings was being a family friend to DeKeyser. If the offshoot was going to be lousy North American drafts over the last decade, I would have just preferred to hire DeKeyser’s pastor as an advanced scout.
Furthermore, while 2011 draft pick Tomas Jurco was getting ready to take on the Oklahoma City Barons with Grand Rapids and looking forward to his 2017 call-up to the Wings, the kid Detroit passed on (Brandon Saad) was on the ice to start overtime of GAME SEVEN in a crucial 4-on-4 situation.
The same Brandon Saad who is a finalist this season for the Calder Trophy.
The same Brandon Saad who played with the Saginaw Spirit of the OHL.
I mean, the Dow Event Center is a good 90 minutes away from the Joe so I can understand how Holland and Nill missed unearthing this phenom. Not that Saad would have been in the Wings lineup this season EVEN IF they had drafted him.
Ya know, Detroit still likes to let their young lads marinate in the AHL for five years before giving them an opportunity. In fact, Holland is so adverse to inserting young boys into the lineup, he probably thinks any fellow GM who gives a guy like Saad a chance before they turn 25 should have to go door-to-door when moving into a new neighborhood and introduce themselves. Or be part of some sort of registry.
Look, Kenny, just because you call up a prospect before they are legally allowed to rent a car from Hertz, doesn’t make you a member of NAMBLA. It’s okay, pal.
And please spare me the “future is bright” nonsense that is mainly coming from a bunch of morons who didn’t watch one Red Wings regular season game and all of a sudden became experts in the playoffs™ (Mitch “Condescending Baggins” Albom.)
You might think some of the dead weight contracts are coming off the books …. but they are not. The Wings have ten million dollars tied up in 2013-4 contracts for Bertuzzi, Samuelsson, Tootoo and Carlo Colaiacavo. And don’t even get me started on the $7 million allotted to Jonathon Ericcson and Kyle Quincey.
AND the salary cap is going down to $64 million. AND arguably the second best forward who will hit free-agency this summer is a guy on the team who wants too much money and should have been dealt for a first-round pick two months ago.
And while guys like Joachim Andersson, Gustav Nyquist, Tatar, Ryan Sproul, Xavier Ouelett, Calle Jarnkrok, Martin Frk and Jurco might be nice serviceable NHL players, none of them is an heir apparent to Pavel Datyuk, Henrik Zetterberg or Nick Lidstrom.
NONE of those young players are considered by talent evaluators to be among the top thirty prospects in the world.
Holland has built a stable of fifth and sixth defenseman on the current roster and some nice second and third line forward prospects. That’s it. So don’t get carried away with the youth movement narrative.
Like most intelligent Wings fans, I was desperate for guys like Nyquist and Tatar to get quality minutes this year. Not because I thought they were the second coming of Vladimir Tarasenko or Dougie Hamilton, but because they WEREN’T corpses like Dan Cleary, Bertuzzi and Samuelsson.
Which would all be fine and good if Ken Holland was living in 2004 and not 2014. Holland’s supposed plan when Datsyuk went back to Russia or Zetterberg got old was to replace those $6.5 million level contracts with unrestricted free-agents who would just be dying to play in Detroit.
Well, we saw last summer that NOBODY is dying to come here anymore. Justin Schultz went to Edmonton and Zach Parise and Ryan Suter signed in Minnesota. Not exactly the equivalent of “taking your talents to South Beach.”
The ugly truth is the Wings play in one of the worst arenas in the league. The JLA is dilapidated and you are as likely to see a dead rat in the Joe’s bowels as a discarded octopus.
And if Holland was still relying on being able to sell UFA’s like Hossa on the Wings “mystique” and their dominace, well, the city’s glowing reaction to a second round EXIT tells you all ya need to know about the “mystique” that remains.
And yet nothing will happen. Ken Holland probably has the same job security of a Supreme Court Justice in this town. And I am not insane enough to go “Pelican Brief” on him.
This team needs their own Ray Shero to navigate the changing NHL and the fact that the team’s best players are getting up in age.
I love Pavel, but if the rumors are true and he is only going to play one more season in North America, well, I would put him on the market and see what I could get. Even if Datsyuk’s plans are known, some team would still give up a TON for the perennial All-Star.
Zetterberg wouldn’t be untouchable either. Hell, NOBODY on that roster should be.
Ken Holland does not have the imagination necessary to get the Wings back to the top and his vision is directly opposite to the not so distant history of this organization as one of espionage and outside-the-box thinking.
Shuttling players out of Czechoslovakia in the trunk of a car, assisting prospects in defecting from the Goodwill Games, setting up fake meetings with oncologists to test pale looking defenseman for cancerous tumors.
I mean, do you think ANY of those ballsy moves would have occurred under a Ken Holland regime?
We are talking about a pussy who outright refuses to draft Russians due to the lack of a KHL transfer agreement. This is the type of guy who would have risked an international incident?!?!??
I.
Don’t.
Think.
So.
And it was those types of risky maneuvers that led to the Wings “Dynasty.” An era that Holland had less to do with than Jimmy Devellano or Håkan Andersson , yet Kenny receives accolades from the Detroit sports media like he was the grand architect. (Please See: Samuelsen, Jamie.)
Like, just today, Holland had the nerve to say the following:
“We hope to have a healthy Todd Bertuzzi. We hope to have a healthy Mikael Samuelsson. You can look forward to September 2013, and think we are going to have a real good competition.”
No, no, no!!!! What you should be doing is using your two buyouts gifted to you by the recent CBA on those two UNMITIGATED DISASTERS!!!!! But, ya won’t.
And if you think I am the only one who believes that Holland has dealt Mike Babcock a compromised hand over the last few years, well you should read this quote:
“To be at the level we’re at we have to improve our hockey club.”
That was Babcock’s annual dig at Holland from last night to DO SOMETHING this offseason and that barb is as predictable as the player’s cleaning out their lockers.
Don’t worry, Mike.
Maybe Rich Winter will think of something.