Howard Ericsson and Helm are pointless to continue talking about. Its like beating a dead horse. No one disagrees with those so they are hardly worth talking about. Dekeyser is fine hes our best defenseman so I dont really see why everyone is complaining about 1 mil more than 4. Is he worth 4? probably but we wanna keep him so we pay him 5 its really not that crazy. Nielsen again....its too long but either that or we get no one. If Hollland doesnt offer these guys contract and we get no one ppl will complain just the same. Fair enough have your opinion...I dont love a lot of things from this offseason but just for ppl to complain about every single thing (and then punch numbers in a chart to make them feel knowledgeable) makes no sense. Call KH an idiot? lol hes likely smarter than any of us will ever be in Hockey regards...so simply because you dislike moves its just dumb. Makes this whole site boring cause no matter what there is no objective intelligent thought. Simply whining and complaining no matter what
- HomestyleMelt
I definitely get why hearing all the negativity is wearisome. But unfortunately I think a lot of it is warranted (although I usually go with "I don't think Ken Holland is very good at building hockey teams in the cap era" instead of "Holland is an idiot lol.")
I don't think all of his moves this offseason have been atrocious. The Datsyuk trade was masterful. Mrazek, Sheahan, Marchenko, and Pulkkinen were all signed to very reasonable deals and will all still be RFAs when they're up.
I'll take this bit by bit:
Howard Ericsson and Helm are pointless to continue talking about. Its like beating a dead horse.
I feel these deals (and others) are pretty good evidence that KH is not very good at valuing his own players properly. I (and many other fans) loudly complained about the Ericsson and Howard deals from the very moment they were signed, and sure enough, they turned out to be very bad. We could see it a mile away -- why couldn't KH?
I'll give the Zetterberg and Kronwall deals a pass. Both are going to end ugly but I think they were very reasonable bets when they were signed. I'll also give Franzen a pass since I think if he had stayed healthy $4 million would have been a steal for most of the life of the deal. And Datsyuk was worth every penny.
But Howard, Ericsson, Helm, Abdelkader, Nielsen, DeKeyser, Ericsson, Glendening -- those are EIGHT guys who got deals that were obviously both too long
and too expensive from the minute they were signed. It's okay to overpay one or two guys (nobody's perfect, and sometimes it's necessary if you have a glaring need to fill) but that's a lot of money locked up over a long period of time to players who are frankly not worth that much even in the short term and not getting any better, either.
Dekeyser is fine hes our best defenseman so I dont really see why everyone is complaining about 1 mil more than 4. Is he worth 4? probably but we wanna keep him so we pay him 5 its really not that crazy.
Disagree with you that DDK is our best defenseman. It's hard to put together a definitive depth chart because the Wings have so many ruthlessly average defenders, but I would put Green, probably Smith and maybe old man Kronwall ahead of DDK.
Nielsen again....its too long but either that or we get no one. If Hollland doesnt offer these guys contract and we get no one ppl will complain just the same.
To be honest with you I would have been 100% fine with Ken Holland simply re-signing his RFAs, picking up maybe 1-2 undervalued guys in mid-July, and calling it a summer. If your plan is to overpay guys just to avoid coming up empty handed, then what you wind up with is a mediocre team in cap trouble -- which is exactly what the Red Wings are. If there's someone else out there crazy enough to pay Helm $4 million, then let them make the mistake.
I don't have unrealistic expectations -- at least I don't think I do. I understand that even the best GMs in the game make mistakes and won't be able to keep a team on top forever.
But when I honestly look back at Ken Holland's track record in Detroit over the last 11 years -- since the cap was initiated -- I have to admit that, in my opinion, most of his moves have not really panned out. He's had some successes, but a lot more mistakes. I think he has never really learned how to build a team since the advent of the salary cap and the new age of analytics, but the fact that he had Lidstrom, Datsyuk, and Zetterberg as holdovers from a previous era were able to hide his shortcomings. Now that they're gone or on the decline, those shortcomings are much more apparent.
