How Short of a Leash Will Jeff Blashill Be On?

Detroit Red Wings fans hoping for wholesale changes following another playoff-less season received some more bad news this week. The team announced that Jeff Blashill would indeed be returning as head coach in 2018-19. It’ll be his fourth season behind the bench in Hockeytown, and some supporters will continue to be disappointed by ownership’s willingness to stand by Blashill and Ken Holland.

It’s a situation we’ve got to live with for the time being, but one has to wonder just how long of a leash the bench boss will have. The Red Wings expect to make the playoffs every season, after all, and Blashill has missed twice in a row now. What happens if Detroit gets off the blocks slowly next October?

We don’t have any inside information, but one has to expect the head coach’s leash to be quite long moving forward. It’s difficult to imagine a scenario where Blashill gets kicked to the curb early in 2018-19, no matter how badly the Red Wings struggle. The reason for that is relatively simple.

Holland was (very) blunt during his season-ending news conference, and was open about the fact that the Red Wings are going to be younger next season.

Keeping Blashill on indicates that Holland and Co. want this to be his hockey team. The Red Wings want to get more youth into the lineup, and it’ll be up to the coach to mold them into the kinds of players he wants them to be.

If Detroit had even the slightest hesitation about bringing Blashill back, then odds are good that he wouldn’t be given the opportunity to see the rebuild through. They would have identified external and internal replacement possibilities — such as the recently fired Alain Vigneault — and went through the process of determining who they wanted their new “the guy” to be.

With the admittance that the Red Wings will be more inexperienced next year plus the subsequent choice to keep Blashill around, it’s not too hard to read between the lines. Holland has liked the way Blashill coaches from the get-go, and the reality is that there hasn’t been a whole lot of talent to work with over the last two seasons.

Yes, Detroit missed the playoffs this year and last. But does anyone really think that Blashill could have made enough different coaching choices to get the Red Wings into the postseason? His deployment can be aggravating, but there aren’t many coaches in the NHL who don’t make questionable moves sometimes.

He’s done a perfectly fine job of developing a handful of up-and-coming forwards into full-fledged NHL regulars. Dylan Larkin has come along well under Blashill’s tutelage, Anthony Mantha continues to grow and Andreas Athanasiou finally got some playing time this year.

These are positive indicators for the Red Wings as they initiate a public youth movement.

The defense is still in shambles, but that is more on Holland than it is Blashill. It isn’t like any of the Red Wings’ blueline castoffs have gone on to crush it elsewhere. Brendan Smith is what he is. Ryan Sproul is what he is too. Ditto for Jakub Kindl. The head coach wasn’t holding any of these players back while they were in Detroit; they simply weren’t that effective.

For Blashill’s preferred system to work, he has to have defenders who can skate the puck up the ice. Perhaps the same can be said for a lot of head coaches these days, but the fact remains that the Red Wings just haven’t had those kinds of players on the roster. That could change over the next year or two, and the bench boss has done enough to deserve an opportunity to see what he can do with quality skaters in place.