Abel to Yzerman

Abel to Yzerman

Thoughts On The Wings

10/19/2020 at 6:17am EDT

from Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press,

Yzerman’s progress is remarkable, even for a man who was known as a great competitor during his playing days.

Here are 18 thoughts on his first 18 months in office.

Depth charge
Only having one effective line on offense was among the many things that hurt the Wings in 2019-20. Injuries to Mantha (28 games), Andreas Athanasiou (17) and Filip Zadina (17) limited coach Jeff Blashill’s options because the Wings had no depth. Yzerman addressed the dearth of effective forwards by signing Vladislav Namestnikov (2 years, $4 million) and Bobby Ryan (1 year, $1 million). Those two, along with Mantha, Bertuzzi, Fabbri, Zadina and Dylan Larkin give the Wings good options for the top six and beyond.

Cleaning house
Since Yzerman took over as GM two weeks after the end of the 2018-19 season, 13 NHL regulars are no longer part of the roster. In addition to buying out Abdelkader and trading de la Rose, Yzerman opted not to re-sign Howard, Thomas Vanek, Luke Witkowski, Trevor Daley, and Jonathan Ericsson, did not make qualifying offers to Martin Frk, Madison Bowey and Christoffer Ehn, and traded Andreas Athanasiou and Mike Green at the 2020 deadline. That's 12.

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Welcome to Abel to Yzerman, a Red Wing blog since 1977. No other site on the internet has better-researched, fact-laden and better prepared discussions than A2Y. Re-phrase: we do little research, find facts and stats highly overrated and claim little to no preparation. There are 19 readers of A2Y. No more, no less. All of them, except maybe one, are juvenile in nature. Reminding them of that in the comment section will only encourage them to prove that.

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