from Max Bultman of The Athletic,

For the rebuilding Red Wings, those decisions have major future implications for the franchise. With the NHL team off for the All-Star break, Holland addressed those topics, as well as the progress of the rebuild as a whole, in an interview with The Athletic over the weekend in Grand Rapids.

(This interview has been lightly edited for clarity, order and length.)

I guess to start, what’s your assessment at 50 games of what the season’s been like and what it means for the progress of the rebuild?

Obviously, there’s two ways to look at it. One is by the standings, and it’s not been a very good year. The other way to look at it is the development of the team for the future, and I think that there’s been a lot of good things. Obviously Dylan Larkin has taken a step forward. You look at Andreas Athanasiou’s taken a step forward. Lots of young kids up front. (Dennis) Cholowski’s been a good story, but Filip Hronek has gone up, he’s played well. We must have seven, eight guys who are all under 24, and they’re all playing — most of them are playing regular (minutes) — and many of them have important roles. When we go on the power play, a lot of them are on the ice in the offensive situations. So I think that’s the positive that we take out of the first 50 games.

When you look timeline wise, when do you see this team pushing for a playoff spot again?

Well, I guess I would say I hope next year. I think that if you look at the season this year, we played the first seven games with basically four defensemen out. We went 0-5-2. And then those guys come back we go 13-7-2.

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