On September 17th, 2017, Detroit Red Wings General Manager Ken Holland made a surprise announcement that he has decided to step down as manager of the Detroit Red Wings. Holland has managed the Red Wings team for the past 20 years, winning three Stanley Cups and clinching a playoff spot in all but one season. Red Wings owner Chris Illitch told the media "We're greatly thankful for all that Ken has done for the organization. He was surely one of the greatest managers in the league but we've both mutually agreed that it was time to move on." The team also announced that Assistant General Manager Kris Draper will take the helm as the new General Manager of the organization. Draper spent the majority of his NHL career with the Red Wings and joined the front office immediately after his retirement. In a press conference Draper stated: "It's going to be a tough couple of years as we go through this transitional period. In time there will be some changes but for now we will see where exactly we are at and go from there." Ken Holland's resignation marks the end of an era for the Detroit Red Wings. Time will tell if Draper can bring the team back to glory it once had.
Rules:
- General Manager/Head Coach mode
- Challenge mode is enabled.
- GM firing is off
- No AI exploiting (Trades, waivers, etc)
I went for a fairly balanced attribute setup with a slight bias to forwards.
The Preseason was fairly rough. We went 2-3-2 but did manage to win 7-0 against the Avs in our final game. Our standout players were Henrik Zetterberg 1G8A and Anthony Mantha 2G6A. Martin Frk also impressed with 4 goals. We also have a lot of injured players that won't be back for the start of the season including key players like Tomas Tatar and Niklas Kronwall and Justin Abdelkader.
After only a week in command, GM Draper was able to sort out the Andreas Athanasiou contract situation and get him in Wings jersey before the start of the regular season. His contract is $4 million dollars over 2 years. We should be okay with the salary cap because it should increase with the amount of players we have on IR to start the year.
We didn't have much choice for our opening night roster due to injuries. Mantha played really well with Zetterberg in the preseason so I'm hoping the continue to do so as the regular season gets underway. I'd like to play Larkin at center but I'd also like to try to keep Nielsen in the top 6 throughout the year, so Larkin might be moved back to the wing depending on how the season starts but injuries are a variable.
I plan to make each update span the course of a month, so the next one should be Oct 5-Nov 1. All feedback is welcome. Let me know if the images are appearing properly, I'm pretty new to this.