What's the criticism for? Everyone has an opinion once they leave their job.

He picked players at that time had potential and gave them moderate to great term deals. You don't know how players will pan out when you get them on your team, all you can do is best guess. Look at the teams we're in a race for the last spots and look at our roster.

What's the Lightnings' excuse for playing where they are with all the talent they have? How come the Hurricanes finally started playing up to their talent level after they got Jake?

The D trades were made based on unknown prospects and they needed time to get acclimated. How long did it take Hronek to become what he is now?

Many of the gap filler players won't likely be back. That's expected. You then slowly fill in your prospects with trades.

How's Holland doing?

The Stars came out of nowhere and are now leading the West.

Yes, absolutely.

Should this question be asked when we are 100% eliminated?

Sure why not, its everybodys right.  Theres multiple ways to go about rebuilding a team, and the drafting assets had been looted by Holland.

This chart I posted last year when FSD/BSD/Ken Daniels were trying to praise the improvements in the Wings year to year.  

Below, both the NYR (blue) and the Wings were 100 point teams in 2015, and both slid for 3 years to fall below 80 points. 80, below .500, is pretty bad in todays NHL with the 3 point games. Currently 24 teams are .500 or above, only 8 below .500.

What the chart does show is that while both teams fell over 3 years from 100 points to below 80, the NYR publicized The Letter in 2018 announcing they were going full scale into rebuild.  This eventually resulted in the buyout of Henrik Lundquist and the trade of popular core defender Marc Staal - to Detroit no less .

The NYR hit on some draft luck and in just 2 years were back among playoff teams. Meanwhile Detroit remained below 80 points for 7 seasons. If updated this chart would show NYR again over 110 points while the Wings are edging to the mid to upper 80s.

Oversimplified?  Probably, but one franchise got results quickly, the other still searching for the right roster.

With no lottery luck and not many valuable assets he didn't have a lot to work with when he got here. He's been doing all he can in accumulating picks and throwing high volumes of darts at the free agent dart board. He's had some pretty solid misses on the dart board and hasn't found a Braden Point in the 3rd round for us (yet), but I doubt many other GMs would have done much better. The Yzerplan is still the way to go.

While disappointing if the Wings do not make the playoffs this year because they held their destiny in their own hands on at least two occasions, the bigger disappointments this year are Ottawa and Buffalo.  Both have high end young talent and almost all writers who made predictions placed both of them over Detroit.

That doesnt help any disappointment for a Red Wing fan this year, but maybe they overachieved for a while.

Yes, he does. He's my favorite hockey player of all time and has proven he can build a winner in TB, he's one of the bigger reasons i'm the fan I am today and have the optimisim I do. That doesn't mean I agree with every move or that he walks on water.

I'll admit that they're where I had expected/hoped for them to be when we made predictions at the beginning of the season, playing meangful games into March (and even April!). 

Now the hard work really starts. Two huge RFA signings at the top, followed by the task of blending some of that #4 rated prospect pool in without a big regression. Where/when do Danielson and Kasper factor in with Larkin, Copp and Compher down the middle? What about Berggren, Soderblom and Mazur, Johansson?  

I understand the pressure to improve the team incrementally and the strategy to bring in known commodities to do that, but eventually you have to turn the corner. The guys in GR aren't going to get NHL experience in GR.

Does Yzerman deserve criticism?   Sure, no one is perfect at their job.   I have my complaints.  Copp and Holl among them.

Here is the big question I see being asked:

Why all the free agent signings?  Why arent more of the prospects in the lineup?

I agree the Wings take the over ripe prospect philosophy too far.  But, speaking of the draft lottery, does anyone really want to think about what this season would have looked like if the Wings had done that? 

In addition, its been seven years without playoffs.   Yes it might well end up being eight.  But the fact is the Wings needed to create some heat and they did.  Steves trying to sell seats and hot dogs too.  Im excited to see what the new guys can do, but this year was never gonna be their time.  Lets be honest.  A stop gap period was needed to stop the hemorrhaging while our new get ready.  Just look at our capfriendly page.  Its obvious space is being made for these guys.  

On the pro side had Larkin not been hurt, were taking about a 40 goal season.  He is signed long term.   Debrincat wont be in a funk forever.   He is signed long term.  Stevie took a big swing and hit a home run with Kane.  

Im disappointed about December and March for this team.  I think people are losing their perspective.   This year was always about playing with house money.   Theyve been exciting to watch for most of the season.  In my opinion, I am sad they might well fall short.  But a lot of what Im seeing contra Steve Yzerman is a failure of fans to manage expectations.   

Criticism goes along with the job, as Yzerman is well aware of. I can't figure the Holl signing, along with some others.🙃

Of course he does, I'm not a huge fan of some of the multi-year contracts he signed last summer. But Compher was tearing it up early before he got hurt. Copp was a much-sought-after C when he signed - he's probably the most disappointing player of last summer's signings. I still like Chiaroit, he's played well this year, and I always thought he was a good role model for Mo. Petry and Holl got too much term, but they didn't even know if Edvinsson was going to be in camp after surgery when they signed. Ghost started out looking great, but has fallen off quite a bit, so he won't be back. I still think Perron was a good signing, even tho I won't be sad when he's gone elsewhere. Yes, some of the term is longer than we'd like, but none of them are more than 3 years (unless DeBrincat turns into a bust) and few no-move clauses.

I still trust (with a bit of blind faith) in the Yzerplan. I think I grok what he was trying to do this year, looking to the future. There will def be some kids coming out of camp next year, and we have most of our picks for the next while, plus more cap room than most teams. And we weren't supposed to be anywhere near the playoffs this year (most picked us 7th in the division), but with BUF and OTT being huge disappointments, we passed them into the playoff conversation. We may even have a worse record next year, if those two teams figure it out. 

Yzerman deserves criticism--

• He basically put an inferior product on the ice SEVERAL YEARS AGO to evaluate what he had instead of trading players with upside that were out of favor of the organization while they still had value (Zadina and Veleno come to mind).
  
• He's signed bad contracts (from Mantha's all the way to Copp and Holl).
  
• He refused to move on from a coach that couldn't make adjustments and proved he wasn't the developer everyone thought--Blash (not Lalonde in case you are wondering).
  
• He also signed/traded for guys that clearly didn't work out (Klim Kostin--plus Yamamoto's dead cap space, Nick Leddy, Vrana, Namestnikov, Nedeljkovic, etc).
• He's traded away talent for lottery picks (Bertuzzi, Hronek) that may never hit.
• He traded up for a first round goalie (a risky position to draft in the 1st).
  
• His UFA haven't always worked beyond term (see Copp) or gotten less effective before they hit the end of their contracts (Perron)--term issues.
  

This year: hard to fault what he did. He had extra cap space and chose to spend some of it and try to make a playoff push while not sacrificing the future capital. The team was in that position at the trade deadline so beside Kostin he stayed put.

His biggest challenge though is yet to come: the salary cap structure starting this summer. Particularly of Seider's, Raymond's, and now Kane's contracts in 2024.

He also needs to improve the team (whether to go after a player that needs a change of scenery like Johnny Gaudreau and send out a like-wise struggling player like a Copp) or send out the prospects and capital to acquire a #1 centre (Larkin finally proved to me he was up to the task only to get hurt and be reminded he'll be 28 with over 600 NHL games. Some of that will come from the ELC guys that now won't be able to be kept in the minors because the salary cap restrictions will require them to balance the coming contracts.

...but blind faith in the Yzerplan is something I have been criticizing for years on here.