GM Ken Holland: The Wings will protect 7 forwards, 3 defencemen and one goalie in the expansion draft.

Ken Holland appeared today on Sportsnet Radio in Calgary, to chat about a lot of things. You can listen to the interview here. It’s only about 14 minutes long, so it’s a quick enough listen.

Why exactly he was on the radio in a different city with a team in another conference with no major history against the Wings is a little odd, but all things aside, he had a decent interview.

There were two real notable things that came out of the talk.

On the expansion draft, Holland had this to say:

It’s not overly surprising, as that’s the model maybe even 30 teams take.  We’ve covered this issue a few times here at the site as to who the Wings will probably protect.

Whatever route they take, we are talking about the 2016-17 Detroit Red Wings here. Losing their 11th best player is not a big deal at all. If Holland were to trade away a pick to protect anyone, it’d almost certainly be a mistake.  Holland continued by saying how far away the Wings were from a playoff spot, and had to continue to build for the future. A true rebuild, perhaps?

And then, there was this:

Maybe it’s just lip service, but… at least we know what they’re saying publicly. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out that the Wings, unless they can drastically improve their roster, are still quite aways away from being a competitive hockey team.

If nothing else, it’s a bit of mixed messages from the man in charge.