Speculation always starts to pick up in November. The season is deep enough for hot streaks to cool down and cold streaks to heat up. By the twenty game mark of the season, teams have a good idea of what they’ve got going for them. For the struggling teams, it’s a good time to evaluate where changes need to be made to change the course of the season. A natural place to start looking is at the top of the chain, with the head coach.

Last season, the first casualty came on November 27 when the Florida Panthers fired Gerard Gallant after going 11-9-1 to start the season. The year before, it was the Ottawa Senators letting Paul MacLean go on December 8 after the Senators went 15-8-5 through their first 25 games. This year, the jury’s still out, but on last Saturday’s Hockey Night in Canada broadcast, Elliotte Friedman speculated that Detroit’s Jeff Blashill could be on the chopping block.

You can hear Friedman’s hesitation by the way he emphasizes his “if”. Detroit is coming off of a six game winning streak and, as long as they don’t go on another of similar length, Blashill’s job is safe. While Detroit’s 6-6-1 record is trending in a way that’s much worse than coaches have been fired for in the past (only last year three of the coaches who were fired had winning records), firing Blashill at this point in his contract is just not Detroit’s style.

Remember, we’re talking about an organization that’s fiercely loyal to its personnel. They allowed Ken Holland to remain as GM despite having Steve Yzerman ready to go; They allowed Pavel Datstyuk to walk away from his contract, leaving them with $7.5-million in salary cap dead-weight; and they signed Justin Abdelkader and Darren Helm to multi-year, $3+ million contracts. When this team puts their confidence in you, they will stick with you until the bitter end.

And that’s what’s happening with Jeff Blashill right now. In his April 2017 edition of 30 Thoughts on Sportsnet, Elliotte Friedman quoted Holland backing Blashill up, stating that he’s been successful at every level of hockey and that he’d be sticking by him.

Besides, it’s not like Blashill is a terrible coach. He does mess with the lines a lot, but he’s come out and said that he won’t be tinkering anymore. With his second line being made of Anthony Mantha, Dylan Larkin, and Andreas Athanasiou, it’s a good first step in mending a broken relationship with the fan base. From a special teams perspective, he’s definitely got some work to do with the powerplay, but the penalty kill has been much better this year. Finally, Detroit’s offense was clicking at the start of the season before running into the six game cold streak. There’s only so much he can do with a poor defense corps and an average bottom-6. If he could inject some more skill and a little more speed into that bottom-6, it would be interesting to see if his systems would work.

All that being said, Friedman’s suggestions of a possible replacement certainly make for interesting discussion. Todd Nelson just lead the Grand Rapids Griffins to a Calder Cup Championship in his second season as the team’s head coach. At the time of this writing, he has a 267-164-54 all-time record as a head coach in the AHL (per hockeydb.com). He also spent two seasons behind the Atlanta Thrashers bench as an Associate Coach and 46 games as the head coach of the Edmonton Oilers, going 17-22-7 after the firing of Dallas Eakins. Nelson has a track record of success and players love to play for him. He’d definitely be an interesting next option for the Red Wings.

The one that really got me thinking, though, was Dave Tippett. Tippett spent six years as the head coach of the Dallas Stars and another eight years as the head coach of the Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes. With the ‘Yotes, Tippett won a Jack Adams award and lead the team to three playoff berths, including an appearance in the 2011 Western Conference Final. His 282-257-83 record with Arizona had a backdrop of off-ice drama that included team bankruptcies, arena changes, team name changes, and ownership changes. It certainly was not an easy storm to navigate his players through.

Tippett could be the most desirable coach on the market right now. Other names include Dan Bylsma, Bob Hartley, and Paul MacLean, who had experience behind the Red Wings bench as one of Mike Babcock’s assistant coaches.

Despite these proven success stories currently available on the market, Red Wings fans are destined to watch Blashill and his many faces behind the bench until at least the end of this season. If the team doesn’t undergo a total breakdown on the ice this year, they can even expect him back next season too, for the final year of his contract. The Wings haven’t fired a coach since they let Jacques Demers go in 1990 and I don’t anticipate them doing it now.

It’s probably time to start that Blashill Faces account on Twitter.