Can Steve Yzerman save the Detroit Red Wings again?
After eight successful seasons with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Detroit Red Wings will be bringing Steve Yzerman in to be their next general manager.
On May 25, 2010, the Tampa Bay Lightning hired Steve Yzerman to be their general manager. Eight seasons later, the team had five playoff runs, including a Stanley Cup Finals and three Conference Finals. Now, the Detroit Red Wings will be bringing their legend back home where he belongs. Yzerman will reportedly be their next general manager.
While Yzerman made some massive trades to bring in key players like Ryan McDonagh, Ben Bishop, and J.T. Miller, his biggest strength was drafting. After establishing a clear core in Tampa Bay, he was able to fill out the roster with players that exceeded everyone’s expectations.
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In 2011, the team drafted some guy named Nikita Kucherov in the second round and Brayden Point in the third round in 2014. Both players finished top-15 in scoring this year, and neither of them were first-round picks.
Yzerman has a knack for finding star players that got passed over in the first round and that’s what makes his team so dangerous. His talent pool is constantly full and he can go to it whenever he needs a player to step up or when he makes a big trade.
What Yzerman brings is exactly what the Red Wings need right now.
A huge problem Detroit has had for years is their goaltending. In 2018-19, Jimmy Howard and Jonathan Bernier played tandem and neither of them had a save percentage above .910.
Unless you have a ridiculous offense like the San Jose Sharks, you’re not going to win games like that. Luckily for the Red Wings, Steve Yzerman has a terrific track record for finding good goaltenders.
Back in 2013, the Lightning had horrible goaltending and Yzerman fixed that by trading for Ben Bishop, who turned out great for the team and was a Vezina finalist twice. In 2017, Yzerman traded him to the LA Kings to give the reins over to Vasilevskiy who turned out to be one of the best goalies in the league. Yzerman knows when to move on instead of signing extensions, which is something the Red Wings have been unable to do for years.
Detroit has a track record of keeping their veterans for the sake of keeping them. Even when they’re getting old and they’re not the same anymore, the organization refuses to deal them away. In the cap era, you can’t win like that.
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The league is getting younger, faster, and the Red Wings need to keep up. Yzerman’s track record of amazing draft picks, combined with his ability to use logic over loyalty is exactly what Detroit needs to get back on track. At the end of the day, the NHL is a business and Yzerman treats it as such.