The Canadian faces a fragile club Thursday evening in Detroit. Red Wings fans began to dream big after a few weeks of activity, but nature seems to be returning at a gallop.

The Wings were 5-1 on October 22, scoring 30 goals and allowing just 15. New acquisition Alex DeBrincat had 8 goals in just six games on the clock, and an NHL-high 12 points.

Since then Detroit has won only two of its last seven games, scoring 18 times and allowing… 27 goals. DeBrincat has not scored in his last six games and has only one assist.

The Red Wings are currently clinging to one of the last two places giving access to the playoffs, but see certain rivals like the Islanders and the Sabers approaching.

After obtaining seven consecutive picks in the top 10 since 2017, ten first round picks and… 37 picks in the first three rounds during these seven vintages, Yzerman delayed the arrival in the National League of his best prospects with the acquiring a slew of veterans, including J. T. Compher, Jeff Petry, Shayne Gostisbehere and Justin Holl, not to mention the 25-year-old DeBrincat.

First-round picks, defenseman Simon Edvinsson, 6th overall pick in 2021, center Marco Kasper, 8th overall pick in 2022, and goaltender Sebastian Cossa, 15th overall pick in 2021, are all in the American League.

Edvinsson, 6-foot-6, 210 pounds, a smooth skater, is off to a good start to the season in Grand Rapids even though the farm club isn’t off to a great start. He has four points in eight games and is used in all situations. This 20-year-old young man has managed to ignore the fact that Yzerman does not yet consider him ready enough to make the jump to the NHL in favor of Jeff Petry being scratched from the lineup five times since the start of the season.

Things aren’t working as well for 19-year-old Marco Kasper, the only player from the 2022 crop to play an NHL game last year along with Juraj Slafkovsky, Shane Wright, David Jiricek and Owen Beck. Kasper has just one point in eight AHL games, already worrying production for a top-10 pick.

Goaltender Sebastian Cossa, almost 21 years old, is offering reassuring performances after spending almost the entire winter in the ECHL. He shares the work evenly with veteran Michael Hutchinson and the two have a similar record. Cossa has a 2.50 GAA and an impressive .923 save percentage.

Detroit gave the illusion a few years ago of having a young club on the rise with the resounding entry into the NHL of first picks Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond at a young age, but the failures are more numerous than the successes .

The 6th overall pick in 2018, Filip Zadina, was jettisoned by Yzerman this summer and he’s still finding his feet in San Jose where he has just two points in twelve games. Wings fans still blame management for choosing him over defenseman Quinn Hughes, a local product of sorts since he played at the University of Michigan.

The ninth overall pick in 2017, center Michael Rasmussen, appears destined to play on a fourth line and defenseman Dennis Cholowski, the 20th overall pick in 2016, now plays in the American League for the Islanders’ farm club and has already been submitted to ballot a thousand times.

But Yzerman is not responsible for these bankruptcies since these choices were made by the former administration and boss Ken Holland. Yzerman also replaced head recruiter Tyler Wright with his former teammate Kris Draper when he arrived in 2019.

And here’s where we still have to give the benefit of the doubt to Yzerman and his gang. Did they decide to scuttle the rebuild because the old guard’s choices weren’t so good and to give their own hopes more time to develop at their own pace?

But why surprisingly trade his defenseman Filip Hronek, who is only 25 years old, to the Canucks for a mid-first round pick and replace him with Petry? To then acquire DeBrincat, 25, for a first-round pick?

Yzerman, it must be admitted, is difficult to follow. He is entering his fifth season in Detroit. The Red Wings still haven’t made the playoffs, or moved up to 24th overall. They had also missed the playoffs three years in a row before his arrival.

In Tampa, the Lightning reached the final four in their first year, in 2010-2011. Tampa had a 103-point season three years later and reached the Stanley Cup Final in the fifth year of Yzerman’s reign. Time will tell if the presence of Julien BriseBois didn’t help him look good, but don’t we already suspect that?

Former Canucks president Trevor Linden delivered a stab to former general manager Jim Benning on Wednesday on a Vancouver radio station.

Linden holds Benning responsible for choosing defenseman Olli Juolevi fifth overall in 2016, ahead of Matthew Tkachuk, Clayton Keller and Mikhail Sergachev, among others, and for Elias Pettersson not being Benning’s preferred choice at fifth overall in 2017.

“Our new head recruiter Judd Brackett was in his first year in 2016 and I didn’t like how our meetings were going,” Linden said. So I pushed the following year so that he could express himself more freely and have real discussions during our meetings. I insisted that Judd could make his own choice of Pettersson at number five, which was not necessarily Benning’s. »

Jim Benning defended himself in the following hours by affirming that Pettersson was a unanimous choice and that he had even notified the team owner the day before.

Pettersson, 24, had his first 100-plus point season last year. He already has 21 in 12 games this season. The center chosen after him, Cody Glass, is trying to hang on to the NHL. Juolevi has played in 41 career games in the National League and is playing in Sweden today. In Benning’s defense, most observers saw him as the best prospect on defense.

Brackett, one of the best in his profession, left for the Minnesota Wild in 2020, during Benning’s reign in Vancouver.

1- Guillaume Lefrançois took advantage of his trip to Switzerland to get to know Canadian hopeful Vincenz Rohrer and his coach Marc Crawford better.

2- CF Montreal has just fired a tenth coach in thirteen years. Jean-François Téotonio has the details.

3- The years go by and seem to be the same for the Canadian. Richard Labbé explains.