Will the Red Wings Be Rewarded for Patience, Faith in Yzerman?
From The Silky Mitten State: Steve Yzerman is clearly secure in his job at the moment, but would a Red Wings GM by any other name have the same security based on his body of work in Detroit?
When you hear Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman speak, it's clear he doesn't feel like a man under pressure to deliver immediate results.
"I guess in my time here, I've been pretty conservative," Yzerman said last Friday, in relation to his approach to prospect development. "I've taken for the most part the approach to finish your junior career, stay in college, turn pro, spend time in the American League until you're ready to go. Even Mo [Seider] spent a year in GR, then a year in Sweden in the pandemic. Lucas [Raymond] spent one year after his draft [in Sweden] and we actually had him penciled in to play in GR and he played well and we never sent him down and he's been fine in the NHL."
That's a sound approach to prospect development, but it's not exactly the tone you'd expect from a manger five years into a tenure that has not yet delivered a playoff berth, for whom you might anticipate a more urgent need for immediate results. But, of course, Yzerman's tenure as Red Wings GM cannot be divorced from the weight his name carries as a four-time Cup-winning captain in Detroit and the architect of the Tampa Bay Lightning team that represents the gold standard for the last decade of NHL hockey.
Yzerman's résumé as player and executive (to say nothing of the reality of the roster he inherited when he took over in April 2019) affords him a patience a manager without his history could not command. On the most recent episode of The Silky Mitten State, my co-host Connor Earegood and I this dynamic, including the idea that, even if having faith in Yzerman at this juncture in his tenure has to be based on some level on his history rather than just his results since returning to Detroit, the organization can benefit from affording him an unusual degree of patience.
For an excerpt of that conversation, check out the video featured above. For the full episode, go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts:
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