It’s Time To Give Jeff Blashill The Boot

In 2015, former Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock looked for a new adventure, joining the rebuilding Toronto Maple Leafs. And even with Babcock’s exit, there were still reasons for optimism. Babcock was handing the torch off to an up-and-coming head coach who had an AHL championship under his belt. Gustav Nyquist and Tomas Tatar were going to be the faces of the franchise. Dylan Larkin was being compared to Steve Yzerman, and Anthony Mantha was an elite prospect, tearing up the QMJHL a year prior.

Fast forward to the present, and the narrative is a bit different. Nyquist and Tatar are regular names heard on the trading block. Larkin isn’t going to become Yzerman, and Mantha gets criticized by the coaching staff on a weekly basis. Through all of this, that once shiny new head coach, isn’t so shiny anymore.

Under his guidance, we’ve seen regression from the likes of Abdelkader, Dekeyser, Nyquist, Sheahan, and Tatar. There are coaches out there, like a Babcock, who can get the most out of his players. They can turn Connor Brown into a 20 goal scorer and can keep their group in check. Is Jeff Blashill Mike Babcock? No. Is he Scotty Bowman? No. He’s Jeff Blashill.

And Bashill just isn’t the right fit for this group. The team that he’s inherited isn’t a Cup contender by any stretch of the imagination, but yet, he’s been unable to live up to the standard that management and ownership expect. Two and a half years into his tenure, and he continuously refers back to his old philosophies that don’t work.

But you already know this. So why am I rambling about the obvious?

Well, during Monday’s practice, he opted to place the team leading goal scorer on the 4th line.

We’ve heard Ken Holland say numerous times, how he believes in this team and sees the playoffs as a possibility. We know Chris Ilitch isn’t afraid to rebuild with his massive overhaul of the Detroit Tigers, and yet he has remain stagnant with changing the direction of the franchise. Now 32 games into the season, the playoff hopes they had look to be riding off into the sunset. Whether you agree with management and ownership’s current ideology or not, it’s clear Blashill isn’t meeting expectations.

Some may claim the move of Mantha to the 4th line is to send a message, but it really looks like an attempt to save his job. Are we looking to have a coach at the helm, making panic moves, in order to scrape mediocrity and gain a bit more pride in himself? Already losing the locker room on numerous occasions this season, it becomes evident with the relationships he’s established with the younger players, along with failing to get results, that he’s not the right fit and creating a legacy that isn’t pretty.

His career in Detroit as a whole, has been consistently inconsistent. His notorious line blender, favoring of certain players, push for development in the wrong way masked all of his ambitions. We’ve dealt with this for a while, but moving Mantha to the 4th line, is the pinnacle of his inconsistency and inability to sustain any sort of culture.

Again, the roster he has to work with isn’t exactly top of the line, but why keep playing the same broken record? It’s clear he’s not garnering the desired results, his fault or not, a change of throne looks necessary before things get too ugly.

Is the answer out there? You’ll never know until you try, and you won’t find it, if you continue the misdirection with Blashill. The misdirection that turned the optimism the organization once had following the departure of Babcock into a directionless abyss.

Are the faces he makes on the bench funny?

Yes.

Is he the answer?

No.