from Jamie Samuelsen at the Detroit Free Press,

I’m not going to convince you that the decision to retain Ken Holland and Jeff Blashill is the right one or the wrong one. The gathering storm to oust Holland started years ago. Two straight years of missing the playoffs only makes that storm louder and stronger. I’ve long argued that Holland doesn’t get nearly enough credit for revamping the payroll on the fly after the 2005 lockout and rebuilding the team around Nicklas Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg to win the Stanley Cup in 2008. But I also agree that his draft picks, free agent signings, and perhaps worst of all, contract extensions have been mostly disasters in the last six years.

The most common complaint that you hear about Holland is that he’s too loyal to his players, he has stunted the development of his younger players and that he waited far too long to end the Red Wings quest for the playoffs when it was clear that they were no longer contenders for the Stanley Cup even though they were still contenders for a low playoff seed.

The final argument is 100 percent valid. The thought of “just getting in and seeing what happens” stayed around longer than it should have. It was bolstered by the 25-season playoff streak, the seven-game loss to the Blackhawks in 2013 and the seven-game loss to the Lightning 2015.

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