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When You Don’t Pay Attention…

by IwoCPO on 03/14/07 at 09:33 PM ET
Comments (7)

...you miss stuff. I know that for a fact because my wife kinda tells me sometimes.  And here are two things I haven’t paid attention to, mainly because I just don’t care.

(1) The Saskin email/pending dismissal thing.  I suppose because Chelios is so heavily involved I should show some interest, but I really have no interest. 

(2) The revised draft order.  I suppose because it was influenced by our Wunderkind Kenny, it should interest me.  But it didn’t, until I browsed some other blogs today and saw what others were saying about our innocent Wings.

We begin with Jes Golbez.

Could it be the Red Wings proposed this format because they often choke in the early rounds and want a good draft position for themselves? It’s not as if they need it! Give them all of their picks in the 5th round and they’d be just fine.

And Tyler Dellow.

It’s kind of funny that Detroit is pushing this - I’m sure that they’d like to do it retroactively, given their playoff success the past few years as opposed to their regular season success.  In any event, it strikes me as a bizarre decision for a league that theoretically is interested in parity.

And a jab from JP at Japer’s Rink.

No, it’s not a huge difference for Detroit, but it punishes a lesser team for a good playoff run and diminishes the importance of the regular season even further - give me an 82-game season as a measure of a team’s ability over a 4-to-28 game snapshot any day.

So who’s brilliant idea was this?

The change, apparently spearheaded by Red Wings GM Ken Holland, gives teams with good regular-seasons that flop in early playoff rounds better spots to pick from.Uh huh.

And finally, from me.  I agree. I agree with all of the above and it makes the Wings look like the petulant short guy who has some pull, doesn’t like the way things are going and uses that influence to turn the tables his own way. 

Win a damn playoff series.  Ice a team that is built to grind and battle.  In other words, bring in a Todd Bertuzzi and Kyle Calder, make the conference semi’s (at least)...then you’ve got the credibility to
push a change like this through.

Now?  It looks like what Jes, Tyler and JP are calling it...the move of an influential team tired of getting spanked when they shouldn’t.

Filed in: Blogs I've Stolen From But Not Without Attribution | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
 

Comments

Just found your blog.. and I like it. Looks like a good place to maturely taunt you Red Wings fans. (avs fan here.) But I can see you are a level headed blogger if you agree that this change is in poor taste for the league. It feels like they are rewarding teams for underacheiving (for example the Red Wings of late… sorry i had to at least throw a jab in my first post) and penalizes a team for overacheiving (like the 05-06 Oilers.

While the difference isn’t probably that much, I am suprised so many people agreed with this rule change in the league offices.

Posted by Colin S. from San Jose, CA on 03/15/07 at 01:47 AM ET

Everyone in the hockey universe agrees that the true test of a team is their performance in the Stanley Cup playoffs.  Every team also recognizes that the further they advance in the playoffs, the more money the team makes. 

Any team who has won it, especially the Red Wings, knows that the regular season record (and the President’s Trophy) are a loser’s paliative.  (Think NIT tournament).  I suppose that would be just fine for Philadelphia or Chicago.

Who better than the Red Wings to recognize this and bring it to the league’s attention?

I think the new draft system is more appropriate. 

I also think there is a huge bias out there against the Red Wings.  If Ken Holland were to propose that the NHL suppport Timbits Hockey, it would, among many, be seen as another “Red Wings conspiracy”.

Posted by w2j2 on 03/15/07 at 05:44 AM ET

Check out the Hockey Rodent’s take on foxsports.com.  I can see what the league is trying to do, but I don’t know if this change in the draft order will have the effect they intend.  No matter how high the picks, the draft is to some extent a crap shoot, eapecially if a team does not invest in a decent scouting department so they can save money.

The vote was pretty lopsided (23 to 6), so I am actually more interested in the six teams that voted against it and their rationale.

Posted by Baroque on 03/15/07 at 06:15 AM ET

DRAFT ORDER: The NHL draft order had bothered Holland since 1995, when he saw Stanley Cup champion New Jersey pick ahead of Detroit because the Devils had finished lower than Detroit in the regular-season standings.

“They were the better team,” Holland said. “They had just beaten us head-to-head in the Stanley Cup finals. No one was gong to listen to me telling people that we were a better team.”

Posted by w2j2 on 03/15/07 at 06:30 AM ET

My point wasn’t so much to bash the Wings because, really, if they win the President’s Trophy and lose in the first round, they pick 26th, versus 30th if they win the Trophy and the Cup.  To me, that’s no big deal.

The bigger point is how badly it screws Cinderella.  The Oilers last year, for example, would have picked 17th under the old system but 29th under the new.  I think that last year, and perhaps more importantly this year, have borne out that they’re much closer to a “middle-of-the-pack” team than the Cup contenders they posed as last spring, and their draft positioning should reflect that.

Posted by J.P. on 03/15/07 at 06:57 AM ET

I disagree.  In the playoffs last year, the Oilers were a dominant team.  This was partially due to rental players:  Roloson, Pronger, et al… If they had managed their personnel better, they would STILL BE a contender.

Should rental-player “cinderella” be rewarded with a high draft slot?  I think not.

In 2006-2007 the Oilers are also-rans, because they lost their rental Pronger, they lost Peca and others due to the cap, and instead of signing Smyth in the off-season, they sold their soul to New York.

Their 2007 draft position will reflect that mismanagement with a better draft slot.

Posted by w2j2 on 03/15/07 at 08:43 AM ET

Good point about the rental players, but teams still play 1/3 of their season after the trade deadline. That’s still a bigger sample size than you’re going to get in a short tournament and a better judge of talent in the orginization.

And I disagree that the Oilers were a dominant team last year in the playoffs, they were a hot team with a hot goalie, which is all well and good for them. But as far as team talent goes they were not the second most talented team in the playoffs last year. Personally i think their draft status should reflect this (and it does).

Posted by Colin from San Jose, CA on 03/15/07 at 05:27 PM ET

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