Petrella’s got a long one about the need for changes this off-season. It’s a great read with a lot of points for discussion.
One thing I would like to inject into the discussion is coaching. No, I don’t mean Mike Babcock. I’m talking about Bill Peters and Jeff Blashill. My admitted outsiders view is that those two need to go and need to be replaced by more experienced hands.
My theory is that the Wings’ decline as we’ve seen it began with the departure of Todd McLellan. Last year’s departure of Paul MacLean exacerbated it as Peters and Blashill seemingly had no slowing effect.
Mike Babcock is, as Petrella notes, one of the best minds in the game. However, even Scotty Bowman had strong assistants (yes, Dave Lewis was a strong assistant).
In all likelihood, nothing will change on the bench, but that doesn’t mean nothing should. I get the feeling that Babcock is too involved rather than maintaining the traditional distance of a head coach maintained by a strong assistant coach layer. That’s a problem.
I’m all for seeking out changes in the forward corps and blueline, but where I disagree with Petrella is on the issue of whether or not this lineup or one similar to it can win. Many of these players were a part of the 2008 Cup, so we know there’s a group that has what it takes. There are viable pieces throughout the lineup that just haven’t produced the right mixture. That goes back to coaching shortcomings, which by my reckoning goes back to Peters and Blashill.
Where Babcock does play a role is clear: refusal to effectively punish underproducing players or reward those that do produce. Scotty Bowman didn’t hesitate to drop the hammer on guys who weren’t up to snuff, but with today’s Wings, we see guys like Johan Franzen continue to get top line minutes even when he’s dogging it, precluding most any rise by a guy further down the chart. That’s another great insight by Petrella: the lack of competition in the lineup or in the organization.
Look at a guy like Gustav Nyquist, which we fans have been lobbying about for weeks. The guy’s obviously a great talent and one that’s going to be a major asset to this team. Yet rather than his obvious ability resulting in him working his way up the lineup in any kind of predictable way, he was mostly shunted down the lineup by less effective players because of the Red Wings Way Petrella so correctly pillories. Looking back on it now, I’m actually kind of amazed he got as much as he did because a young guy getting even that much hasn’t happened a lot since Datsyuk and Zetterberg. That needs to stop. The Red Wings Way works 9 times out of 10, but there are going to be Nyquists, or exceptions.
And an older version of the Red Wings Way was punitive action against players not cutting it.
So, an actual coaching change in the assistants and a coaching change in philosophy is what I’ll be looking for, along with whatever improvements can be made to the actual lineup.
