It’s no secret that Jeff Blashill wasn’t handed the best Red Wings roster, but their 25-year playoff streak is coming to an end and Detroit is only better than the Arizona Coyotes and Colorado Avalanche this season. It has been a frustrating ride in 2016-17 and begs the question, should the Red Wings fire head coach Jeff Blashill? Our staff dives into it.

When considering if a coach should be fired I think the most important aspect is to assess the open market. Firing the coach for the sake of firing isn’t the answer. There’s no need for a shakeup or ‘new voice in the room’ like the Islanders or Bruins had to do this season to make that push. This team is toasted. The question is who is your guy going forward to rebuild this team.

How does the market look? Pretty good in terms of veteran coaches with all sorts of accolades but is that right for this team to build from? Hitchcock is a legend but his biggest issue in St. Louis was mismanaging young talent. Hiring Hitch is a sideways move in my books. Another coach looking to clog the neutral zone and play a ‘heavy’ style with all these up and coming young skilled players.

How about Lindy Ruff? Rumours swirling that with Dallas missing the playoffs he may be on the block. He’s used to playing with no defenceman so that’s a plus but he’s like Hitch with the kids, ask blue-chip prospect Valeri Nichushkin how Russia is.

Gerrard Gallant? While he put up a season for the ages with the Panthers last year, much of his firing had to do with roster management. He was another guy upset when Erik Gudbranson and his other bruisers were traded or removed from the lineup. Again, not exactly the mentality the Red Wings need. They already have that with Blashill and it’s clearly not working.

The other issue is the Wings seem to do everything internally. But for once, this may not be an issue. Todd Nelson has been doing wonders for the Grand Rapids Griffins down in the AHL. He has some NHL experience already taking over in Edmonton after the Dallas Eakins firing and extensive AHL time including a Calder Cup wins on the staff of the Chicago Wolves. He’s already working with Detroit’s future in Grand Rapids (Bertuzzi, Russo, Svechnikov, Hicketts) and already had brief stints with Larkin, Mantha, Athanasiou, Jensen, Ouellet and was coaching in the AHL while Tatar, Sheahan and Nyquist were playing there.

He’s also still young in his mid-40’s and this is key. You don’t have the luxury of snatching up a high profile coach because they generally go to where they have a chance to win. This team is years out from competing and are likely going to have to look younger to find someone willing to take on the task. Blashill was an internal hire as well but it may have been the incorrect choice. Nelson has more experience, more success and a style that’s working for both the kids and the veterans in Grand Rapids, a balance Blashill can’t seem to strike up with the big club.

Blashill’s repeated mismanagement of the roster, especially when it comes to the younger players has been deflating to say the least. The penalty kill is bad, the power-play is bad, he plays an outdated system despite the rest of the league adapting and even having the personnel to transition successfully into a speed game and the only good aspects of this team are an elite veteran playing his ass off and a number of high skill guys able to win shootouts (the most uncoachable situation in the game of hockey). Nearly everything he has his hands in this year has been a weakness for the team.

As much as he might not have been given a full, fair shake, it is time to transition and he’s not the man for the job.

Blashill is probably going to end up getting the boot either way. The guy was fed a shit sandwich and has made more shit out of it. What do you expect? He has dealt with a fair amount of these players before in Grand Rapids, you’d think that he could manage them a little bit better. It leads me to believe that other forces are at play and this isn’t just Blashill’s doing.

Regardless, each team needs a fall guy. Blashill will likely be that person and the team can come in with someone new for next year at Little Caesars. It isn’t fair to Blashill but between the expectations he was handed and the person he had to follow up, it was always going to be a no win situation.

Look, Jeff Blashill was given the unenviable task of coaching the Red Wings after the great Scotty Bowman and Mike Babcock. Not only did he have massive shoes to fill but he had arguably the worst Red Wings roster in over two decades this season. Losing a player of Pavel Datsyuk’s calibre obviously put him behind the eight-ball, but there’s no way this is the third worst team in the NHL. Before I get right into it, I personally like Blashill as a person. Seems like a great guy. A guy I would want to have beer with. I wish no ill-will on anyone, but it might be the right choice at season’s end.

I think Blashill deserves to be fired because of the way he has used his players this year. He appears to be scared to scratch or discipline veterans, continuously giving free passes to players like Niklas Kronwall, Jonathan Ericsson and Riley Sheahan, but punishing young players like Andreas Athanasiou, Tomas Jurco, Ryan Sproul and then of course Anthony Mantha tonight. I’m not even going to get into how he used Jared Coreau when Jimmy Howard was hurt. Petr Mrazek never should have been sitting as much as he was.

The biggest issue this season has been the power play. The Red Wings sit at 12.6%, which is last in the NHL this season and is the second worst PP% in the last decade—only team worse is the 2013-14 Florida Panthers, who were 29-45-8. This is a team that should be more than capable of having an above average power play because of names like Mike Green, Henrik Zetterberg, Tomas Tatar, Gustav Nyquist and Thomas Vanek before he was dealt. Instead, he continues to trot Niklas Kronwall, who is a shell of his former self, out there on the top unit and Justin Abdelkader playing two-plus minutes a night with the man-advantage. It just hasn’t worked, but that power play hasn’t made the necessary adjustments all season-long.

It’s just seems he has made mistake after mistake and given the quality of coaches who have been fired this season and decent quality of coaches available, it is time to fire him and move onto a new coach heading into the new barn next season.

Many fans in Detroit are pleased to see a rebuild unfolding and believe this is what management should have been doing all along. The problem with this is that they got here by accident because the GM made signings in the off-season that were supposed to improve the team but didn’t and then the coach took that mediocre team and led it straight to the bottom of the barrel.

The Red Wings are in last place not because they chose to rebuild, it is because the coach could not do his job and take a middle of the pack roster to battle for a wildcard position.

Blashill’s defense from some may be that this team was doomed from the beginning and could not overcome poor roster management to have success. I would counter with the argument that I cannot think of a single player in the last 2 season’s that has made any sort of advancement due to coaching. Every roster player from the PB (Pre-Blashill) era besides Zetterberg’s numbers have gone down since Blashill took over. Most of the young players have stepped in and played well but they did it from the minute they entered the lineup. Larkin entered as a rookie and dominated but has since failed to show any improvement this year and is making repeated mistakes defensively. AA and Mantha have done well but it has been consistent performances since they got a chance in the NHL and at times they still can’t even crack the lineup on a last place team. The only reason they’re even playing the remainder of the games should be to advance young talent. There has been no progression from players like Sheahan, Nyquist, Tatar, Dekeyser, and Smith while he was with Detroit, even Helm and Abdelkader are all players in their prime years and have gotten worse since Blashill stepped in as head coach. The lineup may be bad but the individual advancement has been worse and it is time for a new approach from a new coach to get more out of this group.

I’m going to play devil’s advocate here, and say that no, I don’t think Blashill should be fired just yet. Has Blashill been given a great roster? No, he’s essentially been given an aging core that was a shell of it’s former self, all while his general manager screws him over by destroying their cap with atrocious contracts. Has Blashill optimized the roster he’s been given? No (see Mantha scratching), but to be fair, what coach really does? Even the greatest coaches have their issues. Mike Babcock thinks Matt Martin, Matt Hunwick, and Roman Polak are better than Josh Leivo and Martin Marincin. Ken Hitchcock benched Vladimir Tarasenko from time to time. Jon Cooper decided that he’d rather have an “on the cusp of retiring” Brendan Morrow in the lineup instead of Jonathan Drouin during Tampa Bay’s 2015 cup final run. Guess what, all coaches are stupid.

However, we’ve yet to see any development from the players on this team since his arrival, which leaves his coaching ability in question. However, this helps my second reason.
If Blashill is indeed a terrible coach, and we aren’t just looking at the results of a terrible roster, would it not be wise to keep him around for a couple more years if the team plans to “tank”. Look around at some of the up and coming teams, and some of their best players are a result of bad coaching helping the tank. The Leafs got William Nylander and Mitch Marner because of Randy Carlyle and Peter Horachek’s coaching. The Sabres got Sam Reinhart and Jack Eichel because of Ted Nolan’s coaching. The Oilers got *breaths in* Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Darnell Nurse, Leon Draisaitl, and Connor McDavid because of all of their terrible coaches. If Blashill truly is bad, would it not be a good idea to keep him around as a scapegoat while you’re intentionally losing to get better for the future?
Also, it wouldn’t make sense from an optics standpoint. The team, and fans, always boasted about how great their coaching in the minors was, and that the second Babcock left, they’d be able to replace him. Well, firing him two years after you brought him up to replace Babcock wouldn’t look too good, would it? God forbid Ken Holland would actually have to eat his words.
Finally, look at the coaching market. Aside from Ken Hitchcock, who probably doesn’t have the time and patience to coach a rebuild in Detroit, there isn’t much. Everyone always throws out Gerrard Gallant and Jack Capuano’s name whenever a coach is fired, but let’s be honest, both of them are quite average. Both of their team’s sucked when they coached them at the start, and now look at them, both teams in playoff contention (yes, I know, injuries and luck had some impact on it, but that fact the teams are performing similarly from an underlying numbers standpoint, or have improved, shows that it’s more the team and not the coach). You can’t look to the minors either, because Todd Nelson hasn’t exactly shown to be a great NHL coach either. It’s a very poor market right now, and unless it opens up significantly in the summer, I see no reason to make a change, unless it’s for a young, innovative coach, who can bring some new ideas forth.

In the two years since taking over from one of the greatest coaches in Red Wings history, Jeff Blashill has shown very, very little in terms of competency as an NHL head coach. Not only has he pushed the Red Wings to the bottom of the Eastern Conference, but he’s iced a unit that’s looked so disorganized and uncoordinated this past year you’d have to wonder if they were taking any orders from a coach at all.

(Side note: How much would the NHL change if teams straight up had no coaches? Worth a thought.)

Not only have Blashill’s Wings managed to miss the playoffs, they’ve found a way to do so in a season where their own coaching staff and management began the season with enough delusions that they’d manage to put out a compatible and competitive team over the course of an 82 game season. That, of course, has not been the case.

Last season Blashill’s Wings overperformed, exemplified by inexplicably making the playoffs despite a goal differential of -13. This year’s Wings average a regulation win just once every four times they step on the ice, and have been carried by shootout wins in nearly a quarter of their victories. Blashill’s teams have been so severely outshot and outpossessed on most nights that only an early-season Vezina-like performance from Jimmy Howard is saving them from fighting with Arizona for 29th in the league.

It would be unfair to ignore the fact Blashill hasn’t exactly been handed a superstar roster, but his inability to recognize the skilled parts of his lineup have pushed the Red Wings into a deeper canyon than necessary. In this situation you have to maximize as much as possible, and yet Andreas Athanasiou is only the most glaring example of extreme misuse. A player who’s second on the team in p/60 averaging the 21st most ice time is just a hilarious messup. Let’s not forgot the OMG line, the extreme love for Abdelkader… benching Mantha… the list goes on.

Back to the question. Should Jeff Blashill be fired? Unquestionably. Whether he’d be seen as better coach with a better roster is unseen, but for this current moment in time he’s not the man to return the Wings to their former glory days. That being said, it doesn’t necessarily require him to vacate the office immediately. Let him down easy at the end of the season, but if the Wings are serious about doing a quick retool to try to be competitive again, they’ll need a much more talented coach to ooze the best out of this roster.