Wings fans chant 'Fire Blashill' after falling 5-2 to Senators - The Detroit News
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/sp...rs/7242957001/
I think they play the Senators again tonight, followed by a game with the B's.
A few posts ago, IIRC I said there was a 75-80% chance he's not going to return next season. I think that forecast has gone upwards of 90% at this point. If true, the only thing that keeps him unavailable for the next UNH AD is getting offered a high paying front office job in Detroit. And while that's possible, Yzerman already has a lot of his old playing buddies in situ, so he would have to either replace one of those guys OR invent a new job for Blashill. Again, 50-50 at best.
Hockey Operations | Detroit Red Wings (nhl.com)
Before I go too negative on Blashill, I just feel the need to point out that he's the walking talking advert for the Peter Principle with North American hockey coaching. It's not an exaggeration to say he's been successful at every stop, every level in his career, with the exception of this one. Heck, even with this "failure", one could determine that after a generation of excellent drafting and acquisitions, Yzerman's predecessor (Kenny Holland - like Blashill, another former goalie BTW) eventually ran out of luck, and the hole he put the organization in ended up SO deep that even a competent NHL coach (Blashill?) couldn't turn things around quickly enough. The "plan" ultimately ended up being an effort to stitch the last vestiges of the great DRW Cup era dynasty (Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Kronwall) onto the guys emerging from their AHL farm club. But the older guys ran out of juice, and the younger guys turned out to be good but not good enough. More on that later.
But this is a UNH thread and not a DRW thread, so rather than focus on why I think Yzerman has no choice this time but to give Blashill his walking papers, or why it's increasingly unlikely he's going to ask him to stay on in Detroit ... I want to remind the readers why this guy who's being boo'ed in Motown could be a transformational figure in Durham. Dan can speak better than anyone as to his success as an assistant at D-1 Miami, which in turn led to his short successful stint as HC/GM with the Indiana Ice in the USHL (Clark Cup winners), followed by a year at Western Michigan which got his program into the tourney, and got him named USCHO Coach of the Year, and put him on the DRW radar. He left there after a year, and after assisting the NHL team, spent a 3 year gig running Grand Rapids in the AHL, where they won a Calder Cup and he won COTY the next year after that. He was working with prospects like Nyquist, Tatar, DeKeyser, Mrazek, Sheahan and Glendenning, guys who are still in the NHL, but who turned out to be somewhat less than what was needed to carry him as HC when he too finally arrived at the NHL level with them.
FWIW Blashill's younger brother coaches HS hockey in Michigan, and has coached as a college assistant as well, so maybe an approach to the "Brothers Blashill" by the new UNH AD would really put a compelling offer out there for someone who knows what needs to be done to have success at virtually every level of hockey (except for the NHL).
Or Commish Nigel can simply extend MS7. We'll see soon enough ...
