One of the worst-kept secrets in the Detroit Red Wings organization was officially unveiled Tuesday morning when, as had been anticipated for weeks, Jeff Blashill was given a two-year contract extension as coach of the team.

In this era of instantaneous social media angst, naturally a lot of 140-character assassination was immediately initiated.

One fellow insisted that they should hired John Quenneville, and while we’re pretty sure that John Quenneville is available, so are Lonny Ruff, andTrent McLellan. Hey, maybe they could lure Scooter Bowman out of retirement.

Another couldn’t believe that Dave Tippett still was without a job. Well, actually he isn’t. Tippett is working as a senior advisor for the NHL’s new Seattle franchise.

Anyway, it’s all immaterial. Hate the move all you want, it was right for the current time.

Regardless, Wings GM Ken Holland did acknowledge the unrest among the fanbase.

“We’re in a rebuild but certainly the fanbase wants to see that we’re headed in the right direction,” Holland told Mlive.com. “I believe that the record would indicate that we haven’t had a very good year when you just look at the standings.

“I think if dive deeper - and I dive deeper because I’m sitting in the press box on a night to night basis - we lose a lot of games really close. We’re still learning how to win but we’re competitive on a night to night basis.

“The team is being taken over by the young people on the team, which is the direction that we want to go.”

The fact of the matter is that the players on this team have displayed a commitment to the way they are doing it and a confidence in the man who is directing them. As a group, they are growing collectively.

“Like us, I think he’s gotten better in his strategy,” Wings forward Dylan Larkin said. “He wants to be better, he wants to be better as a person and as a coach. Really, everyone in here respects him and he respects everyone.

“We’re happy to have him back.”

When the Wings have been healthy, they’ve been competitive most every game. In this last stretch, the growth in those young players - many of whom have come up the ladder from the AHL with Blashill - has displayed exactly how much they’ve improved under his tutelage, winning six of the last seven games.

“We got out of the gate 0-5-2,” Holland said. “We lost our first seven, didn’t have our defensemen. With my recollection, I think (Jonathan) Ericsson, (Mike) Green, (Trevor) Daley and (Danny) DeKeyser were all down. And then they all came back and we went 13-7-2. We played our way back into the playoff hunt. I think we got back to within four points of the last playoff spot.

“And then shortly thereafter we lost Green and DeKeyser for six weeks. I think we won two of our next 15. We were basically . . . we were starting to run out of real estate. But I think that when our team was healthy, we were competitive.

“As I analyzed the whole year, even when we did lose those players, we lost a lot of games but we lost them close. As I sit here today, there’s like four games for me, four or five games where we were not competitive and it was a tough night. For the most part, on a night to night basis we’re competitive.

“I think as I watched the year go on the players responded to Jeff. He was playing the kids. The kids got lots of minutes. The young players were getting better, improving, they were talking over the team.”

The two-year deal was essential on both ends. It shows the players that the organization believes in Blashill, but if things should begin to go south, it offers them the flexibility to change coaches on the fly without being required to eat a lot of term.

“I’m not going to do a one-year deal,” Holland said. “I think Jeff has to walk in that locker room and the players know that he’s the boss.”

At the same time, the growth must continued.

“As Jeff said, the arc that we’re headed is up,” Holland said. “If we’re not heading up, then it’s gotta be reassessed down the road.”

At some point soon, the growing pains must turn into a grown up team that can do some damage on the ice.

“Certainly to go longer than that (two years), we need to continue to have . . . we’ve gotta get to the point here shortly where the results are on the ice, we’re getting wins and we’re competitive for a playoff position,” Holland said.

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