Professional sports is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business and lately, what Ken Holland’s Detroit Red Wings teams did was lose.
There hadn’t been a playoff appearance since 2015 and no playoff advancement since 2013. To a generation of social media-driven Wings experts mostly too young to recall the horrors of the Dead Wings Era prior to the arrival of the likes of Jimmy Devellano and Holland on the scene, this was an unforgivable sin.
It’s easy for some to paint a narrative that Holland, hired Tuesday as the general manager of the Edmonton Oilers, played no role in the long-range success of the Wings, who made the playoffs every season from 1992-2016. It’s also patently false.
The funny thing about narratives is that they so often conveniently rearrange history. Hakan Andersson gets all the credit for Detroit’s European success stories, but the fact of the matter is that Christer Rockstrom was Detroit’s European scout in 1989 when they landed Sergei Fedorov, Nicklas Lidstrom and Vladimir Konstantinov in the NHL entry draft.
To fault Holland as a scout by suggesting Detroit’s best players were Europeans is to conveniently forget that from North American development leagues they added Chris Osgood, Martin Lapointe, Mike Knuble, Jiri Fischer, Dallas Drake and Darren McCarty on his scouting watch, all of whom won Stanley Cup rings in Detroit.
Was Holland a perfect GM? Nope. Not even close. He was too loyal to veteran players. He signed undeserving players to lengthy, cap-crippling contracts. He added underachieving free agents, though in some of those cases - Stephen Weiss, Carlo Colaiacovo and Jordin Tootoo, to name a few - they were moves made at the insistence of coach Mike Babcock.
There’s no doubt this franchise went off the rails in the last few seasons. The truth is, it happens to all the great teams. Holland deserves some of the blame for that development. But to not offer him some of the credit for Detroit’s long-term success is pure folly.
History Lesson
How about this for an interesting twist? On this day in 1971, another long-serving Red Wings GM also embarked upon a new job with a different team.
On May 7, 1971, Sid Abel was hired as coach of the St. Louis Blues. His tenure as GM of the Wings lasted from 1962-71.
Not A Done Deal
While it still seems likely that Finnish defenseman Oliwer Kaski will sign with the Red Wings following the world championship, his agent was quick to advise that it’s not a certainty.
“We’ve spoken with a number of teams,” Todd Diamond told Mlive.com. “Detroit is in the mix. It’ll be finalized with someone shortly.”
That decision could come as soon as the end of the week.
Diamond acknowledged that the Wings, “are under strong consideration and one of the finalists. Obviously, they have a very good chance.”
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