Abdelkader to Zug

[yave1964]

Justin Abdelkader unable to find a single NHL team willing to give him a shot this season coming off his zero goal three assist minus 14 season has signed with Zug in the top Swiss league.

 Not the KHL, the second best league in the World. Not the top Swedish League, arguably the third best. Not the very fine German League. 

 Switzerland.

 

  That says it all about the Wings team from last year, God were they awful, here is a list of the free agents that elft the club

 

Trevor Daley Retired

Jimmy Howard unable to find any takers-retired

Abdelkader- no takers off to Zug

Perlini gone to Austria

Ericsson No takers not officially retired but nobody interested

Bowey AHL contract with the Blackhawks

Green retired

Ehn Sweden

 

Eight players all who saw regular shifts on the team last year unable to find a job in the NHL this season.

 

Ugh.

 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Funny you should mention Abdelkader, @yave1964 , I was actually thinking about his style of play as I watched the Bolts dismantle your Wings today.

Nobody on Detroit was able to really match physicality with Tampa Bay....let alone skate with them.
Mantha? Maybe. Larkin? Certainly. And no Bertuzzi.... but everyone else on the Wings looked completely outclassed on the ice.
And honestly, I am not trying to be a troll about this....just that the DET-TB game honestly DID look that lopsided.

While Abby wouldn't have been able to skate with most TB players, I was thinking his physicality would have DEFINITELY gotten the Bolts attention at least.

Hard to believe that no one in the NHL could use what would amount to a 4th line grinder making the NHL minimum.

From what I understand, and from what I've read from you, Abby IS a good teammate.....just not a particularly skilled one.

I wonder if enough teams get desperate, especially as we close in on playoff time, if someone would try to reel in Abdelkader from the Swiss league to man a 3rd or 4th line for them.....or just continue to rely on AHL fodder players like they have been doing.
 

[yave1964]

@TropicalFruitGirl26

 

I watched the game, studied Tampa as they went up 3-0 before fans would have normally been settled into their seats and then put it on cruise control and the final was 5-1 but it could have been so much worse if Tampa had not taken their foot off the gas.

 

 What Abby brought..... The entire game everyone on Tampa finished their checks on Larkin who entered the game a bit banged up, he had been questionable on Saturday and is clearly laboring a bit. When Schenn dumped him behind the net and Larkin skated slowly to the bench it was clean but hard but the type of abuse you do not get to do against the captain of a team who is playing hurt. Not a single Wing retaliated with so much as a hard check on Point or Stammer, let alone running Schenn. Again, clean hit the kind of play that I love and wish was still a bigger part of the game but Abdelkader would have said, 'enough that is our captain who is playing hurt'. Instead, crickets. To be fair Bertuzzi who is out would have found someone to send a message to. But the wings are soft and unskilled, voted the least watchable team in hockey for a very good reason.

[WordsOfWisdom]

14 hours ago, yave1964 said:

Eight players all who saw regular shifts on the team last year unable to find a job in the NHL this season.

 

Ugh.

 

Worst team in NHL history I believe.  If you prorate  their stats to 82 games, and eliminate the loser points, they were worse than the expansion Senators or Capitals.    

Edited February 4, 2021 by WordsOfWisdom

[SpikeDDS]

@yave1964 @TropicalFruitGirl26

 

I was recently having a discussion about Blashill with my brother, who is incensed that he still has a job. When it comes to the consistency, year after year, of PP ineptness, we agree. But his argument was that the problem with the Wings is his coaching, but I don't really think that's the biggest problem.

 

As a coach, you get to play with the players you have been given. When you are dealt 7-2 in poker (the worst possible hand to be dealt in Hold 'em, for those of you who might not know poker), you don't win very often. Your list above is just from last year. I went back numerous seasons to analyze those who left our team and how they did after they left, taking into consideration the talent level change possibly affecting that outcome. What I found was that there are really only 5 players who left who did "better" not taking talent into consideration--Drew Miller, Nick Jensen, Tomas Tatar, Petr Mrazek, and AA. And of these, the only one who has done better without having a bunch of talent around them to help them play better is AA, and then only this season so far with the LAK. He was a non-factor even with McDavid and Draisaitl and company in his short stint at Edmonton. And Tatar only raised his game once with Montreal, a team that is still clearly better than the Wings are and have been. Mrazek is playing solid, but now has one of the biggest and most solid blue line cores in the NHL.

 

In short, VERY few players have left Blashill's Wings and gone on to play at a higher level without significant talent increase around them on their new teams. And let's face it--most other NHL teams have more talent than the Wings have had. It's one of the best ways to measure it a coach is getting the most out of his players.

 

And if you go back to even Tomas Jurco times, start there and list all of the players that have left, most of them either stopped playing, couldn't break the lineup, or their play diminished. Brendan Smith. Riley Sheahan. The list is LONG and continuous. Most players were either washed up at the ends of their careers or young prospects in whom we had high hopes that just never developed into true NHL players.

 

And the truth is that Danny Kekeyser, whom @yave1964 will vouch that has been a favorite of mine for his value--especially early--we both recognize that on MOST NHL teams, he is a middle pair guy. He has been our BEST D-man for several seasons, when he's been healthy. That should tell you everything you need to know about what the problem is.

 

This is a talent deficit, plain and simple. Stevie Y knows that this is the biggest problem with the Wings right now. That's why he was willing to give up AA--who had the most potential talent that could make that decision seem like a bad one--because he knew we needed the picks, and AA wasn't really happy playing on a losing team, nor for Blashill, anyway.

 

My biggest concern right now is that we appear to still have a couple of prospects in Rasmussen and Cholowski that we have been hoping will develop into solid NHL players, but they still aren't even able to crack the lineup on the second-worst team in the NHL. Even after several attempts for both of them. Their downside at the NHL level is still greater than their upside, and playing in the AHL is still the right place for them.  The good news is that our hope is shifting to the young talent that is now either playing in Europe or at least were until they were injured (Seider). The bad news that we may have to admit to ourselves is that these two prospects--still somewhat young, especially Ras--do not appear to be heading toward elite hockey status any time soon. They appear to be, at best, supporting players, which is a letdown considering their draft positions.

 

I concluded the same as Yzerman has so far--that there isn't anyone who is going to be able to come in and do much better than Blash is doing right now, because they are still going to be playing with 10-2 talent. Better than last year (when healthy), but not much better. Better is coming, and it will likely begin arriving next season. Until then, watchability will be highly dependent on injury status and COVID. That's just the reality.

 

And we're not even talking about a team that can compete. We are nowhere close to that. The TBL game just showcased that for you if you weren't sure. 

 

But the PP is still the argument that continues to make Blash a target for replacement, IMO. If the influx of talent next season doesn't see an upswing in the PP, it will be time to move on.

Edited February 5, 2021 by SpikeDDS