Hockey is a funny sport. Of all major sports it's the one where energy (and maybe good goaltending) can allow a team to play far better than it is for a fairly extended period (or even low energy resulting in a talented team playing worse than it should). But in the end, talent will out, and the high level talent Yzerman has been able to add on the ice is still a very short list. Two skilled but small forwards in Raymond and Debrincat, one great and one potentially good defenseman, and Kane, who is probably just passing through - and he has given up one pretty good defenseman to get there. What the Wings have is a pipeline and a lot of optimism about it.