Kenny approached a number of UFA defensemen with great offers, looking to overpay as usual -- only to have each and every one of them turn down his inept,fiscally irresponsible and abhorrently clueless yuppie @$$. Then he swallows his mysterious pride and re-signs the grossly overpaid mediocrity AKA Kyle Quincey. He was with the rest of the RWN and wanted to get rid of him before being so soundly rejected.
Times have indeed changed and nobody wants to come to Detroit anymore. The town itself may resemble a Zombie Apocalypse of the present, but living there isn't bad at all for well-paid hockey players who can afford the great life around the metro area.
We 're just not contenders anymore despite having a great scouting and farm system, arguably the best in the NHL for 3 straight decades, and money.
LOTS and
LOTS of money in a beautiful state where hockey is king.
So it looks like we have no other option than to go with our kids, all undervalued by the pundits because usually none of them are NHL ready before our farm system makes them into potential stars.
Of course when these kids become dominant players like Lidstrom, Fedorov, Osgood, Holmstrom, Draper, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Kronwall, Helm and Howard, there will be no shortage of quality UFAs lining up to win the Cup with us. That's reality. Only those of us in the RWN have faith in our bright future despite being critical, and we should be no longer surprised by the fact that the rest of the league doesn't see things the way we do. So we shouldn't be surprised by the reality of fair weather UFAs.
Good article from Ansar Khan about the next season in light of Kenny's most recent failure.
Quote:
The Detroit Red Wings will head into 2014-15 with virtually the same roster that finished 2013-14, barring a significant trade.
This isn't how they planned it. They desperately wanted to upgrade their back end by adding a right-handed shooting defenseman and pursued several free agents on Tuesday. For a variety of seasons, none of which were financial, Matt Niskanen (Washington), Dan Boyle (N.Y. Rangers), Stephane Robidas (Toronto) and Christian Ehrhoff (Pittsburgh) – the only lefty of the group – signed elsewhere.
It prompted the Red Wings to re-sign Kyle Quincey (two years at $8.5 million), leaving them in the same spot as last season – with the same seven left-handed shooting defensemen.
They will return 13 forwards (not including Daniel Alfredsson and Daniel Cleary, whose statuses remain undecided), losing only David Legwand, Todd Bertuzzi and Mikael Samuelsson from the season-ending roster. And they'll bring back the same goaltenders -- Jimmy Howard and Jonas Gustavsson.
It's a group that had to scrap for every precious point. They squeaked into the playoffs as the second wild-card in the Eastern Conference before being dispatched in five games by the Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs.
But while they have not improved thus far in the off-season, there is much room for improvement from within.
The Red Wings had 421 man-games lost to injury – second in the NHL according to mangameslost.com. They missed their best players for significant chunks of the season – Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg played 45 games each, Johan Franzen appeared in 54 games. Defensemen Jonathan Ericsson, Danny DeKeyser and Brendan Smith missed 62 games combined.
It was a wasted season for second-line center Stephen Weiss (four points in 26 games), who can only be healthier and better.
A team will have a lot of injuries every season, but not like that.
Fortunately, several young players stepped up. They must continue growing ...
... Having all or many of these players for the entire season, or most of it, will boost an offense that ranked 16th out of 30 teams. That is why acquiring a forward was not the priority. ...
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