Detroit Red Wings: Analyzing Jeff Blashill’s Work This Season
Player Development
When the Detroit Red Wings drafted Tyler Bertuzzi in 2013, skepticism as well as claims of reaching surrounded the choice. Eight years later, Bertuzzi is one of the core players on a roster still adding talent to surround him. Add to that Anthony Mantha and Dylan Larkin–giving Blashill a pretty good pedigree of player that he has helped develop into one of the core players.
In addition to this, Filip Hronek, though not having the year fans were banking on, was relied upon last season heavily and was turning into a top four defenseman the Red Wings desperately needed. Filip Zadina is another player who has come along nicely, as the insistence on a more complete game was tasked by Blashill. Going back to the 2018-2019 season, Blashill said this about Zadina in the early stages of his career:
“Honestly, he’s got a long way to go, the maturity part in the game to make sure when he’s not scoring that he’s still a real complete player,” Blashill said. “I think what happens … he hasn’t scored tons down there and when you don’t score all the sudden you probably start cheating for offense, similar to what happened to us through that stretch in Montreal and Boston. The player has to realize he’s got to play the right way and the points will come from playing good defense.”
This is the Blashill credo, to be covered later. But if you look at Zadina’s maturity this season alone, he is undeniably a more complete player than he was even a season ago. He was making strides before injury derailed him and the pandemic wiped the rest of the season out.
Of course, there’s the issue of how these players are asked to earn ice time, which again, is another argument. But in the cases of Larkin, Mantha, Bertuzzi, and Zadina, there hasn’t been a massive regression among the five players considered key to the rebuild moving forward. They’ve either held steady or improved, and while there have been struggles at times, each of the five have been able to overcome them. You can even look at guys like Givani Smith, who are put in positions to succeed and does.
That’s a win for Blashill.
But when it comes to those young players, we have to examine what really sticks in the fanbase’s craw: deployment and lineup decisions.
Lineup Decisions/Deployment
I don’t know a single Red Wings fan who at some point hasn’t questioned the lineup decisions Blashill has made. The view from the fan’s perspective are the guys deserving of more play time aren’t getting it. The response from Blashill has been on any number of occasions, with any younger player you can think of, that the time has to be earned by playing well consistently with little room for error.
Just look at his comments regarding Dennis Cholowski and Michael Rasmussen in Ted Kulfan’s piece from the Detroit News:
“You can’t just come in and fit in, ultimately, you have to show you’re making us better,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “It’s not good enough to show, ‘I can kind of come in and play and help us lose.’ That’s not what we’re looking for. “We’re looking for our young players to grow to a level where they come in and help us win. That’s what good players do.”
This quote could be used in the past for guys like Mantha, Zadina, Larkin, or Smith. What we don’t see are names like Frans Nielsen, Valtteri Filppula, Darren Helm, Adam Erne, or Sam Gagner preceding a statement like this.
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This is where Blashill loses the confidence of fans. I’ve written about it before where the idea of players having to show they’re “making us better” is bunk if we apply it to those aforementioned veteran players. But the tie is still going to the veteran–and both guys who instilled that into the “Red Wing Way” are gone.
The more damning part of this has been the deployment of the veterans during close games when the team needs goals. They are not the group to get it done. Instead of shifting the
ice time to the players who could score those goals, there have been Nielsen sightings during the final minutes of a game when he’s generated absolutely nothing offensively. He hasn’t “made them better” in Blash speak.
If there is a flaw in Blashill’s coaching, it’s here. Coaches certainly have players they trust more than others, and even grow more comfortable with. Blash will default to the 200-foot/defensive responsibility schematic every time. They can still score goals while playing a more defensive style. It’s just that the wrong players are being deployed when they need that scoring.
It’s often coming at the expense of players who need to be on the ice during those situations to learn and grow. At some point, you have to trust those players to step up.
On Ice Success
This is where it gets dicey. Yzerman already says it has nothing to do with wins and losses because since the 2017-18 season, this organization finally acknowledged they were headed for a long, painful rebuild. Yzerman begged for patience when he took over in 2019, and in as much, warned it would be a long process. This was after Ken Holland finally admitted it was time and started managing that way.
So how do you judge a coach during a rebuild where the talent levels off after the second line? Let’s face it: Nielsen, Filppula, Helm, Erne, Gagner, and Glendening aren’t going to produce at a level you need to win games. (Glendening has been awesome in the faceoff circle so out of those names, he’s the one playing to his contract cost). So while Blashill insists on that defensive hockey to cover up the warts, The Athletic’s Max Bultman writes that the team has embraced this as its only way to stay competitive. Bultman writes:
But as Blashill talked about struggling to score, he also cautioned against losing defensive focus in pursuit of more goals. “Next thing you know you’re bad defensively and you’re still not scoring,” he said. “And that’s a recipe for disaster.”
Fair enough. But what about special teams?
The power play has been an atrocity, and this truly is what puts Blashill (and Dan Bylsma, who’s in charge of the mad advantage) in the crosshairs. It’s inexcusable that Detroit has a 7.5% power play. Even without having the talent level of elite teams, they can look at rivals like Chicago who are in a rebuild as well–and yet scoring almost 35% of the time on the power play.
That’s on coaching.
Blashill has gotten the players to buy in defensively and they haven’t given up on him. But until then, you have to maximize what you do have and offensively, they’ve fallen way short.
Final Thoughts
Going back to his original quote, if guys are going to make the team better, it has to be on both sides of the ice. All too often during this rebuild, younger players have been spurned in favor of the reliable veteran, who is beyond their best-by date.
Blashill hasn’t been as awful as he’s often portrayed, but he also hasn’t exactly moved the needle when it comes to special teams or enacting lineup decisions. He’s doing what he can with what he’s been given.
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Red Wings fans will certainly have their opinion of what should be done, but ultimately Yzerman will do what he deems necessary. He thanked Guy Boucher and sent him on his way, two years removed from being just a win away from the Stanley Cup Final.
Detroit is itching to take that next step. Will that include Blashill behind the bench?
Only Yzerman knows.