The Minnesota Wild played homage to the late, great Prince during their farewell Stanley Cup game of the season on Sunday and a day later, as the Detroit Red Wings cleaned out their lockers following their first-round exit at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning, they opted to channel another recently deceased rock star, David Bowie.
Ch-ch-changes could be coming to the Wings this summer.
They want to get bigger. They intend to explore trade talks more aggressively than in previous summers.
“We’re trying to make some moves to be a little bit different,… Detroit general manager Ken Holland acknowledged. “We’re going to continue to try to move some young people onto our team and some of the young people we’re going to try to move up in responsibility with more ice time.
“We’re going to explore the trade route as we head into the draft, we’re going to look at the players that will be available (via unrestricted free agency) on July 1.…
The Wings aren’t any happier about the way the team is trending – three straight years out of the playoffs in the first round, a franchise first – than the team’s fan base and they don’t intend to take a beating lying down.
“I would say this is the first off-season since Nick Lidstrom retired (in 2012) that I’ve got to look at trying to do more than adding to what we’ve got,… Holland said. “Maybe we’ve got to shake up the pot a little bit.…
The Wings do have some tradable assets, starting with goalie Jimmy Howard.
“I think that I can see on the one hand that having two goaltenders, it’s a nice luxury,… Holland said. “Certainly Jimmy Howard played an important role down the stretch in us qualifying for the playoffs when Petr (Mrazek) hit the wall a little bit. But certainly I could also see if things could work out better by a trade.
“It might good for some careers and good for the organization. I’ve thought about it lots. That’s what I’m paid for. I’m going to get to the draft and I’m going to talk to a lot of people and see what’s out there.…
Holland made it abundantly clear he won’t be in the market to make a move simply to try a new tack. In his mind, it must be the move that makes his team better.
“If I go and I make calls and we start talking about the players on our team, we can’t be in the giving away players mode,… Holland said. “There’s got to be deals out there that make good business sense, or we’ve go to keep what we’ve got and try to support it better, differently, bigger, heavier. And get some secondary players in here that bring some dimensions that we lack.…
Addressing their size disadvantage is one area that the Wings intend to make a priority, but don’t expect them to go into beast mode by next fall.
“As we head into the summer time one of the criticisms about our team is, and I think it’s a legitimate criticism, is the size,… Holland said. “We’re too small, we’re too small, we’re too small.
“That’s one of the things we talked about at the draft. You pick late . . . we had a lot of success for a long time with smallish, skilled players. You’re picking 20-22-23-24, so do you want to pick a six-footer who’s got a high ceiling of skill or do you take a 6-foot-3 guy who’s probably going to be a third line player but brings in a dimension of size? Possibly we went too much one way.
“The last 2-3 years, (2015 first round pick Evegni) Svechnikov is 6-2, 215 pounds, Anthony Mantha is 6-5, Riley Sheahan is 6-2, 215, Abby (Justin Abdelkader) is a big man. We’re trying to get bigger.
“I’d like to make a move or two this summer to move a couple bigger people onto the team but we aren’t going to go from being who are we to these big bruisers over the course of a summer time.
“At the same time you need those small players, you need small guys that can dart around and they bring creativity and they bring skill to the team. You need different dimensions.…
As much as they celebrate their 25-year run of playoff appearances, just being there isn’t good enough for the Wings.
“We’ve won enough in the regular season to be in the playoffs but we’ve lost too much in the playoffs to be a factor come playoff time,… Holland said. “This is the first off-season in my opinion where what we did over the last eight months wasn’t good enough.
“Over 82 games we never got any traction to put any really good runs together and we finish it off by losing in five games to Tampa Bay. It was a very disappointing season. Last year it was very disappointing to lose the Tampa Bay series but I thought there were lots of positives to build on. This year, lots of our players that we thought were going to take a step forward didn’t take a step forward.
“It’s a different disappointment.…
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