buddha

i think its too late to trade larkin.

come on, jason. 7th round pick hits are pure luck. getting a plugger like finnie is nice, but it doesnt show any particular acumen. gibson for a second was a decent trade. debrincat told ottawa he would not sign an extension and would only sign an extension in detroit. that's not yzerman finding a good deal, its having a deal thrown into his lap. i dont give him much credit for that. every prospect who we are expecting to be good will not pan out. we expected kasper to be good, buium, wallinder, tuomisto...where are they? he's reponsible for the final product and the final product hasnt been good enough. in fact, its failed in spectacular ways in multiple seasons now. none of us can say with any certainty that "firing yzerman wont help." how do you know that? the criticism about yzerman's plan when he started this was his signing middling talent to long term deals, thus raising the floor temporarily but in a way that prevents them from bottoming out long enough. the second criticism was in his drafting "try hard" players who dont have elite skills like danielson and kasper. well, how are they doing? third, the "plan" to get cap space and sign free agents failed because he refused to sign any top free agents while we had space and now EVERYONE has space and there is no one to sign. no kyle connor. no mitch marner. no gavrikov. no guentzle. and stop dreaming about trading for austin matthews because 1) they traded their asset for justin faulk; and 2) the bidding would start with mo seider. we need to stop blaming kenny for taking zadina over hughes and realize yzerman's failure to draft quality depth players and inability to sign quality players has resulted in this season's collapse.

the flyers trade a second, fourth, and ryan poheling for trevor zegras. zegras has 66 points this year. would that have been a decent trade for us to make? the flyers beat winnipeg 7-1 yesterday while the wings folded. the flyers are rebuilding and were supposed to be terrible! and who do they play in the playoffs? the penguins. kyle dubas makes a bunch of moves that work for them, what great moves has yzerman made lately? "drafting mo seider" only gets you so much cachet anymore. raymond is a nice, small scoring wing who has failed down the stretch in two straight seasons. edvinsson is coming along nicely. anything else?

its been seven years, this is no longer kenny's problem. this year's collapse was on yzerman. in seven years you cant get a decent second pair that doesnt get caved in regularly? in seven years you cant get a scoring wing to go along with larkin/raymond? i love stevie and i acknowledge that he was put into a tremendous hole by kenny and bad lottery luck but come on. kenny didnt make him miss on 5 of his six second round picks in his first two years. kenny didnt make him sign compher to a ridiculously long deal or rasmussen for any amount of time. he's spent his years in detroit not "overpaying" for impact players (in his words) but then overpays for marginal talent like copp, compher, and chairot. regardless, its been seven years and the team has failed time and again. its HIS team now. this is his failure.

how do they get rid of ras and compher? youre going to cut and stretch both of them? they attached a second round pick to get rid of jake walman, who was actually GOOD! What asset would you have to attach to get rid of those two?

Another late season fade by cossa. by all means bring him up, he'll fit right in.

For once, MCS's ridiculously over the top hyperbole overreaction is justified.

this thread should be closed on march 1st of every year. just to save us all some time.

dude. no.

if they fired mcclellan i wouldnt be surprised. this is probably their worst collapse in a long time. even worse than last year. there must be something going on that this happens every year. what's up with that locker room? its hilarious that they bring back 50 year old david perron and he leads the team in shots in this must win game. the dude cant skate, has almost no skills left, and he puts all these young players to shame by just trying hard. they must have felt the locker room needed a guy like him. if so, what does that say about larkin? or anyone else on the team? theyre just floating along? mcclellan calls them all out and what happens? nothing. cant change all the players so mcclellan probably gets the axe.

Everyone clamored for the great carter mazur to come up. well, come up he did. in the last six games on the season mazur finished with 0 goals, 0 assists, 0 points, and a whopping 3 shots on goal.

marco kasper finishes with 8 goals in 78 games. he had 2 goals and 3 assists in the months of march and april. 18 points on the season.

i'll repeat what we all said last year: i hope that is the last we see of michael rasmussen in a red wings jersey. if so, he'll finish his career getting scratched for AHL old boy Dominick Shine. Ras completes this season with a whopping 14 points in 64 games. in his last 5 wings games, he has 0 points and 0 shots on goal.

they deserved to be booed. what a terrible team finish.

how about now?

sure. but they wont trade him to us and if he's on the market were likely to get outbid, just like we did for hughes. and we dont have a first round pick to trade this year.

ottawa wins

there's a lot of rationalizing and cherry picking in that article.

They should sign or draft better ones.

i'd much rather play toronto than cleveland.

you could be right, i dont know enough about hockey to know.

if you want that many rookies, you are looking at another tank. look at finnie, danielson, kasper, and asp this year. finnie started strong when he was playing with healthy larkin/raymond but fell off dramatically. every other rookie was bad to borderline unplayable. To the point jason makes, its possible that yzerman always saw this season as another bridge year. blood some rookies and they'll be ready for larger roles next season and the year after. i question whether that's true and the real reason the rookies havent been brought up is because theyre injured (mazur, buium) or not developing fast enough to make a difference now (danielson, asp), or blocked (cossa).

its not the system, the players just arent good enough.

the problem with a trade now is that you dealt away a lottery pick for justin faulk. so you dont have the first to trade anymore and i dont know how comfortable i am with dealing another first rounder unless youre getting a star back. we can rewind to hongbit's argument (and max bultman's argument) about quinn hughes. should he have given up edvinsson for hughes? i didnt think so at the time and i still have reservations about it. that said, they need 5x5 offense and hughes/seider would bring that. the problem is that i dont think it would be enough because the rest of the team would still suck. as weve seen. and more than that, the STARS of the team have sucked. THAT'S the real reason theyve tanked in march/april the last two seasons. larkin and raymond havent been good enough. and the other reason being yzerman hasnt signed enough good secondary players to help them. debrincat, yes. but debrincat fell into his lap. he could have re-signed gosthisbhere but didnt. he could have kept walman. traded for guentzel. done SOMETHING other than sign quite marginal players. they signed a 60 year old jvr to PLAY ON THE FIRST LINE! only finnie's early season hot streak bailed them out there. and finnie has been bad for most of the second half of the season.

you would have to attach assets to trade compher or rasmussen. copp might get you a pick, but copp can still play. i wouldnt want to trade copp for a low round draft pick. johannson might get you a 4th round pick or so. maybe a 3rd. what did maata get? that's what i would expect johannson to fetch. and what does that do for you? not much.