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Wings with the ninth pick


yave1964

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The lottery was not kind to the Wings who slipped from 7th to 9th in the draft, a draft that has no real superstars but a lot of solid players.

 

  I am hoping they go defense, we actually have some decent defensive prospects in the pipeline, Cholowski could be a top pair guy but at worst is a middle pair puck mover, Hicketts looks to be a Rafalski clone, a puck mover but a bit smallish but can play and will be in the NHL next season he also has a nasty streak. Filip Hronek came over from Europe in time for the Griffins postseason and is tall and too thin but can fly and may be an early call up next season. Ville Saarjarvi is fast and skilled but small, he will be a Griffin next season and a Wing in two years.

  Combine these new guys with Oullet, Russo, Sproul and Jensen and the Wings have options going forward.

 The problem clear to anyone is they are either

A) middling prospects who are bottom pair guys such as Oullet, Sproul, Jensen and Russo

OR

B) Solid skill guys who can move the puck and are lightning fast but tiny, Saarjarvi, Hicketts, Hronek all fall into this grouping

OR

C) decent prospect but still years away. Cholowski fits into this category.

 

We desperately need a big guy who can replace Ericsson who after a decade is still meh most nights. It is a desperate need, a big body who can play with one of the little guys and allow them to roam freely. I just hope that Holland manages to get a NHL near ready talent with the first top ten pick for the Wings in years.

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9 hours ago, hf101 said:

@yave1964

 

How about 6'3"  204lb Callan Foote?    :tongue:

He is absolutely on my radar, my first choice all along has been Timothy Liljegren who was originally a top five prospect but has slipped a bit average size which would make him huge among our smurf d-men and a nice combo of skills, i hope that he slips to us at nine. If not one of Foote/Vaalimaki would make me happy as both our big and skilled. I would probably rank them:

1) Liljegren

2) Vaalimaki

3) Foote

 

  I was spot on with the Wings first rounder a couple of years in a row but the last few years i wanted Carlo and McAvoy both of whom went to the Bruins, one of my least favorite teams who addressed their need with an aging defense and have retooled the back end on the fly for the enxt decade with these two and Krug. The Bruins took McAvoy ahead of us which was fine but we passed on Carlo for Svechnikov who i admit is a solid prospect but plays the same position in more or less the same way as players we already have.

 

  Since Lidstrom retired we have added Mike Green, got a few minutes out of the ghost of Mike Commodore and something named Kent Huskins, preferring to give time to guys like Ericsson and Smith watching the same mistakes repeatedly all the while watching Kronwall erode. We have given top four minutes to kids who if they mature MAY be bottom pair guys on their best days. Cholowski was a solid addition to the ranks in last years draft, i would have rather had Carlo first or the monstrous Logan Stanley second but we had to trade down in the first to move the Datsyuk contract and missed out on Stanley and Chichrun both of whom would have been available. The time to address our awful back end was years ago now it is beyond criitical that we do so.

Climbing off my soapbox now :)

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I'm still going to hope against hope that Heiskanen somehow falls to us. But it looks like he'll be gone within the first 4 picks. Maybe Glass will still be available. If neither of those guys are there at 9, I don't really care what they do with the pick. Cal Foote does seem interesting, not sure why he isn't rated higher given his offense and size.

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  • 1 month later...

This has not really been our week.

 

First, the loss of Thomas Nosek in the Vegas draft, which was just about my worst case scenario loss, because it doesn't solve ANY of our problems that we currently have.

 

Second, our first round pick is another center. Not that I'm saying it wasn't the right pick. I'm just merely bemoaning the fact that the worthy Dmen prospects were gone long before our pick, thus giving us yet another center as our first round pick--not what we need the most.

 

Just goes to show you that Vegas leadership at least has some wits about them and so do the teams who picked before we did. We really were hoping for the slim chance that multiple teams would be stupid. False hope, really, I guess. 

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@SpikeDDS

 

Hmm.

Reading through this thread, I am wondering if Ken Holland was the one who was, shall we say, 'not smart' with the picks.

 

@yave1964 mentioned some guys who would fit in and benefit the Wings...Timothy Liljegren and Callan Foote.

BOTH those guys were available to the Wings at #9 because Tampa Bay got Foote at #11 and the Leafs got Liljegren at #17.

Hell, the OTHER guy Yave talked about, Vaalimaki, was available to Calgary.......at friggin #16.

 

So, sounds to me like Mr. Holland missed the boat, so to speak.

I know many Wings fans have been calling for the removal of Holland....if this draft wasn't the final nail in his coffin, I don't know what will be.

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2 hours ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

@SpikeDDS

 

Hmm.

Reading through this thread, I am wondering if Ken Holland was the one who was, shall we say, 'not smart' with the picks.

 

@yave1964 mentioned some guys who would fit in and benefit the Wings...Timothy Liljegren and Callan Foote.

BOTH those guys were available to the Wings at #9 because Tampa Bay got Foote at #11 and the Leafs got Liljegren at #17.

Hell, the OTHER guy Yave talked about, Vaalimaki, was available to Calgary.......at friggin #16.

 

So, sounds to me like Mr. Holland missed the boat, so to speak.

I know many Wings fans have been calling for the removal of Holland....if this draft wasn't the final nail in his coffin, I don't know what will be.

 

Jeff Blashill will be the next Red Wing leader on the chopping block, not Holland. That is NOT to say that Holland should not be on the block, but rather that I think there is ZERO chance that Holland is fired before Blashill is.

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Not that I am unhappy with Rasmussen, he is a fine prospect and center is our second need behind defense and while a lot of folk are saying we should have went Tippett or Vilardi players who play on the wing are a lot easier to get than  a true center and he is a big boy.

 

  The two problems that I see: while I believe that he will indeed be a capable NHLer IMHO he could be another Riley Sheahan (worst case) and we already have one of those. Nobody needs two Riley Sheahan's on the same team. He could be considerably better than that I see that as a worst case scenario but it is a scenario nonetheless.

 

 The other problem is I would have taken Liljegren in a heart beat at nine over anyone based off of need and upside. We need a puck moving defenseman in the worst way and he fit the bill. The last couple of years I have screamed loudly for us to pick Carlo and McAvoy who instead ended up in Boston in our own division, now Liljegren is with Babcock in Toronto. Yes we concentrated hard on defense on day two, especially big old farm boy types which aint a bad thing but we had a chance at the last difference maker on the back end and instead he is in Toronto. Several nice stay at home quality guys such as Foote and Valimaki were there if we had wanted them, they may have been a stretch at nine but our defense is awful, the worst most boring inept in a quarter of a century and I am losing patience with waiting on the team to address the problem.

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@SpikeDDS

 

I was not a big fan of Nosek, he strikes me as a AHL player, the type of guy who we talk about who is a alf a second slower than it takes to make the NHL. He was brilliant with the Griffs on their run and I tentatively listed him as the third best prospect among the forwards behind the brilliant Svechnikov and the pesky talented Bertuzzi. His age has been a concern, it kind of reminded me of when Ville Leino and Fabian Brunnstrom came into the league or Damien Brunner. I am always filled with deep and heavy skepticism of guys like that who suddenly pop up out of some Swiss Army League or some such and who are suddenly the newest hottest latest and greatest. Nine out of ten (at least) never work out. Yes, Nosek looked great at the AHL level but I still do not think he is gonna have a great career.

  I was hoping we would have salary taken someone like Abby or Helm or Mrazek to give us flexibility but the Knights didnt do that for anyone unless the other team gave back either picks or prospects and I agree with Holland that was not the way to go. I am sure McPhee told Holland he was gonna draft Nosek unless we gave up a pick to entice him to take a bloated contract and Holland said no and really, at this point it was the correct non move to make.

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3 hours ago, yave1964 said:

Not that I am unhappy with Rasmussen, he is a fine prospect and center is our second need behind defense and while a lot of folk are saying we should have went Tippett or Vilardi players who play on the wing are a lot easier to get than  a true center and he is a big boy.

 

  The two problems that I see: while I believe that he will indeed be a capable NHLer IMHO he could be another Riley Sheahan (worst case) and we already have one of those. Nobody needs two Riley Sheahan's on the same team. He could be considerably better than that I see that as a worst case scenario but it is a scenario nonetheless.

 

 The other problem is I would have taken Liljegren in a heart beat at nine over anyone based off of need and upside. We need a puck moving defenseman in the worst way and he fit the bill. The last couple of years I have screamed loudly for us to pick Carlo and McAvoy who instead ended up in Boston in our own division, now Liljegren is with Babcock in Toronto. Yes we concentrated hard on defense on day two, especially big old farm boy types which aint a bad thing but we had a chance at the last difference maker on the back end and instead he is in Toronto. Several nice stay at home quality guys such as Foote and Valimaki were there if we had wanted them, they may have been a stretch at nine but our defense is awful, the worst most boring inept in a quarter of a century and I am losing patience with waiting on the team to address the problem.

 

I would have preferred Liljegren with our first, although I hadn't seen much on Rasmussen, so I didn't think I should comment as if I did.

 

3 hours ago, yave1964 said:

I am sure McPhee told Holland he was gonna draft Nosek unless we gave up a pick to entice him to take a bloated contract and Holland said no and really, at this point it was the correct non move to make.

 

I would also agree with this. My gripe was not that we did nothing, but rather that our unrealistic hope that other teams would be stupid enough to let us have what we REALLY wanted was just that--unrealistic. It wasn't so much that we did horrible. We didn't. It's just that our recent history that now leaves us where we are basically counts on other teams being stupid in order to right the ship in any kind of timely manner, and the fact that we are ending up in the worst possible positions time and again validates the fact that other teams see the same thing--we are in trouble, and they are in no way obligated to help us out of it. We're gonna have to do it ourselves, and that's gonna take some time to do now.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 6/25/2017 at 4:29 PM, SpikeDDS said:

I would have preferred Liljegren with our first, although I hadn't seen much on Rasmussen, so I didn't think I should comment as if I did.

 

 

 Lilij was THE pick in that spot. I'm a huge Foote fan, but it was just a tad to high to take him at #9. Lilijegren would have been the pefect fit. The video I've seen of him shocks me, cause he skates an awful lot like Drew Doughty....like a LOT. Same stride. Same power. Having a talent like this slip due to mono is outrageous. It's a one time sickness that will play no meaningful role in his hockey future. He could have manned the top pp as early as next year, with an arrival time of no later than 2018. Just who is gonna be running the Wings pp in the coming years?  

 

 You rarely draft to address a weakness, but this way the one spot where it addressed a glaring weakness AND was the best overall pick. When Lili starts looking like a star, it could be the start of the end for Holland, which would help the Wings, not hurt them. Rasmussen is WAY to much of a project. Another kid that was overdrafted and overhyped due to sheer size accompanied with skill. If he was 3 inches shorter, he goes in the late teens. I have only seen video of the kid, but he is nothing close to a finished product. ...not like Vilardi, who might have cracked the Wings line up next year....a pure sniper with an NHL release and a total mismatch behind the net, when he goes to get the puck, it comes out with him, simple as that. 

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14 hours ago, jammer2 said:

 

 Lilij was THE pick in that spot. I'm a huge Foote fan, but it was just a tad to high to take him at #9. Lilijegren would have been the pefect fit. The video I've seen of him shocks me, cause he skates an awful lot like Drew Doughty....like a LOT. Same stride. Same power. Having a talent like this slip due to mono is outrageous. It's a one time sickness that will play no meaningful role in his hockey future. He could have manned the top pp as early as next year, with an arrival time of no later than 2018. Just who is gonna be running the Wings pp in the coming years?  

 

 You rarely draft to address a weakness, but this way the one spot where it addressed a glaring weakness AND was the best overall pick. When Lili starts looking like a star, it could be the start of the end for Holland, which would help the Wings, not hurt them. Rasmussen is WAY to much of a project. Another kid that was overdrafted and overhyped due to sheer size accompanied with skill. If he was 3 inches shorter, he goes in the late teens. I have only seen video of the kid, but he is nothing close to a finished product. ...not like Vilardi, who might have cracked the Wings line up next year....a pure sniper with an NHL release and a total mismatch behind the net, when he goes to get the puck, it comes out with him, simple as that. 

 

I really think that Holland has let his fear of the public reactions to perceived failure get the best of him for years. Paralysis on trades and oversigning current players has been the result. IMHO, "the streak" and the pressure to keep it going while anyone objective could see that by doing so it would cause our hole to become so much deeper to crawl out of on the back end kept him from doing what was necessary in the best interests of the franchise.

 

And I think it almost makes him think that he has to do the spectacular--find that diamond in the rough--to make up for it, rather than just doing the safe thing and taking the guy that we need. He's now feeling the heat, and I think it's clouding his judgment.

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4 hours ago, SpikeDDS said:

I really think that Holland has let his fear of the public reactions to perceived failure get the best of him for years. Paralysis on trades and oversigning current players has been the result. IMHO, "the streak" and the pressure to keep it going while anyone objective could see that by doing so it would cause our hole to become so much deeper to crawl out of on the back end kept him from doing what was necessary in the best interests of the franchise.

 

 

 The goal should never have been, further the "streak".The only goal should be to win the cup. To win the cup, you need forward thinking, you need to let go of guys who you went to war with, you need to make TOUGH decisions that could lead to you getting fired. For example, if the decisions by Lombardi to go STRONG after Carter and Richards (who had basically failed in Philly), that left him exposed, on an island....that could have easily backfired and lead to his firing...instead, the best case came out of it and they hoisted Lord Stanley....but the RISK had to be taken, and his spot needed to be put in jeopardy first. 

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