Am I missing something? Its only been 3 games.
Its not so much the result for this season, if you look at the team there is a lack of talent and major pieces have been leaving with no one coming in to replace them. For the last 3 years the wings have had room under the cap to sign players but have stood pat and done nothing. Even this year they are 8 million under the cap. (
http://www.capgeek.com/redwings/?) If you have paid attention you saw this coming, losing Rafaslski was a surprise but Stuart and Lidstrom were not. That's 3 top rated D-men and no one has replaced them. Smith and Lashof look to be good but not top line material yet. White is a good second line D-man but there isn't a top shut down defender on the wings roster.
Now Holland does have to take some of the blame for this because of the lack of action on his part but its not all of his fault there are a few major reasons for this as well.
1. the salary cap, If you look at the way the NHL is now structured it is more like the NFL in terms of cap than the MLB like it used to be. No longer do the wings have the advantage of simply out bidding other teams to amass super stars like they have in the past. Offering ludacris contracts to free agents will get you killed in the long term. (this is going to happen to the wild in a few years those contracts they signed with Sutter and Parise will end up killing them as they have to move the supporting cast to continue to afford those players.) This is what happens in the NFL there are cycles of being good and bad due to having massive contracts and not being able to keep the supporting players around then you have to rebuild through the draft to get cheap talent.
2. The wings have had bad draft position for the last 20 years because they have either traded their picks or have finished towards the top of the NHL. Now good teams find a way to find useful players in the Draft and the wings haven't been able to find the gems they used to late in the draft due to better scouting in Europe by most of the NHL teams.
3. Contract lengths , now this is Holland and the wings fault, they were the first to use the loophole of 10-12 year contracts to have minimal cap hits. Now this seemed like a good idea at first. (until we signed Franzen to that deal.) but that has the effect on the whole league that the major star players may only come up for free agency once maybe twice in their whole careers. Meaning if you miss out on those free agents your only option is finding talent from the draft.
Now that being said i don't buy the Wings as a place players don't want to go to. The organization treats players very well. They will always have the best as far as coaching and are willing to spend money on the team in other areas that don't count against the cap. (the new stadium will help) as Mark Cuban has done with his NBA team in Dallas. The wings will be fine long term but these last few years have not been Hollands best and a few more like it i do believe he will be shown the door. Detroit has a loyal and passionate fan base but one that expects results and no one will be spared their job based on the past if there is a continued downward trend with the team.
