As certain as the Chicago Blackhawks will face the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup final, Jeff Blashill will be the next coach of the Detroit Red Wings.
The Wings won’t make any formal announcement until the Grand Rapids Griffins, the team Blashill is currently coaching, is finished with the AHL Calder Cup playoffs – they are currently deadlocked 2-2 with the Utica Comets in the Western Conference final - but it’s no secret that Blashill is Detroit’s guy.
He’s been their guy for more than a year now; the man Wings management kept in their back pocket in case Mike Babcock opted to leave, which he did, taking an eight-year, $50-million offer from the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Last season, five NHL clubs approached Detroit general manager Ken Holland seeking permission to interview Blashill regarding their vacant head coaching positions.
Holland wouldn’t allow it. Instead, he gave Blashill a raise, doubling his salary to a reported $400,000, an unheard of sum for a minor-league coach.
“Certainly Jeff Blashill is a legitimate candidate,… was as far as Holland was willing to commit. “I think Jeff Blashill is an NHL coach in the making.…
A man who you can expect the Wings will soon announce as their next coach.
If Blashill wasn’t their guy, the Wings would have never allowed the Edmonton Oilers to hire former Detroit assistant Todd McLellan, another coach who is highly thought of by the Red Wings brass. They wouldn’t have let Dan Bylsma go to Buffalo.
They did so because they know that they already have their guy locked up within the organization.
Babcock as much announced Blashill as Detroit’s next coach the day that he accepted the Toronto job.
“I should keep my mouth shut, shouldn’t I?… Babcock said. “Blash is a real good buddy of mine. Jeff Blashill, I hired him. I’ll never forget. I left him a message. He had just been one year at Western there and I phoned him and said, ‘This is Mike Babcock; I’m the head coach of the Detroit Red Wings. Could you give me a call?’ “He called me back and laughed and said, ‘Yeah, I knew who you were.’ And then I interviewed him and nobody had ever heard of him. He coached with us one year and he’s gone down there (to Grand Rapids) and he’s been real good, and we talked five times a week ever since.
“He’s a great man. He’s a great coach. I told you earlier that I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish here. I think the best CEOs of companies have a succession plan. I think that’s what Ken Holland’s done is just keep building people, developing people, giving people opportunities.
“This guy’s ready to be an NHL coach. If he’s not in Detroit he’s going to be somewhere else for sure. He’s trained all of these guys that are his kids.…
There’s lots to like about Blashill, and many reasons why it makes perfect sense to simply promote him to Detroit rather than hold a league-wide coaching search.
First of all, he’s written success stories at every level he’s coached.
“He seems to have something, he wins wherever he goes,… Holland said. “I look at what he did in Western Michigan in getting them to the NCAA tournament. I think he had a tremendous positive influence in really building that program. Prior to that, he won a championship in, I believe Indianapolis (with the USHL’s Indiana Ice in 2008-09).
“We’ve got a thing called the prospects tournament in Traverse City. It's now eight NHL teams. When he took over (in Grand Rapids) we’d never won the tournament. The first year we hired him as Grand Rapids coach, he coached in that and they won the tournament.
“They won the Calder Cup (in 2012-13). Last year, with all the injuries we had in Detroit and all the players up here, they had the same thing down there, I think they had 99 points, he was the coach of the year in the American Hockey League.
“They got 100 points this year, they're now in the third round of the playoffs. They were down 2-0 to Toronto in the first round of the playoffs (and rallied to win the best-of-five series).…
Secondly, there’s familiarity. A dozen current Detroit players skated for Blashill in Grand Rapids. Another 12 know him from his 2011-12 season on Babcock’s staff in Detroit.
“He’s a guy I would pretty much do anything for,… Detroit center Landon Ferraro said. “He’s taken me from a guy that had the tools to get here and get a chance to someone that’s actually got here. “I trust him and he’s got the respect of the all the guys in Grand Rapids.…
Ferraro sees many similarities between the way Babcock operates and how Blashill does things.
“Just the attention to detail I think is the biggest part,… Ferraro said. “They both are really good hockey minds and they care and they want to make sure they give their teams everything to succeed on the ice.
“With Blash, for him it’s all about work and if you do your part, it’s going to come together.…
Soon, it’s going to come together that the Wings will fill their vacant coaching position.
“I believe when I stand up here and we have a press conference to introduce the next head coach of the Detroit Red Wings, I believe we're going to have a very good coach,… Holland said.
You can also believe this: that coach is going to be Blashill.
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