00:00You know, Doug, this will give you a little insight to how hot it is out here, how warm it
00:07is.
00:08I was offered a Coney Dog about a half an hour ago.
00:11I said, no, thank you.
00:14Wow.
00:15Yeah, that happened.
00:17That happened.
00:19Interestingly, I was not offered.
00:22The person looked at me and said, I'd ask him, but I know better.
00:25That's funny.
00:26Let's get back to the people on this day.
00:28If you're just joining us and haven't heard, Steve Eisenman out as GM announced this morning.
00:32We've got a bunch of theories as to why and certainly why the timing is probably the most intriguing part
00:37of this.
00:37But he's still going to retain a role in the organization, but will no longer be the director of hockey
00:45operations.
00:46Let's go to Rodney in Westland.
00:48You are next on 97.1.
00:49Hello, Rodney.
00:51How are you doing, gentlemen?
00:52I am the name of a gentleman.
00:55I got two comments to make, and I hope that the last comment is going to be about the huge
00:59trade that didn't happen.
01:03Chris Illich kind of surprised me.
01:05The only thing that if this will work, if Eisenman has nothing to do with the decisions and the hockey
01:12operations,
01:14anyone they bring in is going to need to be free and clear, any Eisenman people still in the organization.
01:22They need to get rid of Draper and Malfi and any people that still are connected with Eisenman for the
01:28new GM or whoever they bring in to have what effect.
01:32Now, the next thing I want to talk about the youth.
01:34Let me ask you this.
01:35What if the new guy wants to keep one of them or anybody?
01:38Okay, well, that'll be up to him, then.
01:40That'll be up to him.
01:42Okay.
01:43Okay, so if you're saying they shouldn't have an edict that you have to hang on to these people, I
01:46understand.
01:46I think everybody would agree with that, yes.
01:48Let them select their own staff.
01:49Yeah, let them select.
01:51Yeah, in other words, for it to work, and Eisenman whispering into other people's ears, it's almost like he's not
01:58going to be leaving.
01:59Now, I want to get back to the news thing like the other caller said.
02:03Go ahead.
02:04No, I just can't imagine that's the case.
02:08Okay, well, Hughes, if he came here, Eisenman should have went for it, because I would have traded, what's his
02:16name, the defenseman for him in a heartbeat?
02:18Evan Edmondson.
02:19Edmondson, yeah.
02:20I would have gotten Hughes instead of Evan in a heartbeat.
02:23So you're telling me that Larkin, or if Eisenman at the time, couldn't have talked Hughes into signing an extension?
02:31Well, okay, how much money would you have been willing to go on an extension?
02:36It all depends.
02:38Okay, it depends.
02:39I'll throw this at you.
02:41If it cost you $18 million a season, would you have done it?
02:46Maybe that would have cost you $18 million.
02:49You don't know.
02:49But what if it did?
02:50You'll never know.
02:50What if that's the going rate right now?
02:52Like, you think about why did he say no to the trade?
02:55First of all, I'm sure it was Edmondson plus plus.
02:57Well, it was all those things that were talked about before, whether it was first-round draft capital, players that
03:04were in the system, with addition to maybe a Marco Casper, and then you're going to throw on Edmondson at
03:10the end of it.
03:10I mean, you're talking about a serious haul, like what would be the equivalent of maybe five first-round picks.
03:16I'm not mad at Rodney.
03:19I agree.
03:20I would have loved to have seen Quinn Hughes where the only thing that it cost him at the NHL
03:25level was Edmondson, okay?
03:27And the question is, how much more would it have cost?
03:32And we don't know the answer to that question.
03:34But, and we don't know if Larkin could have talked him into signing here or he would have signed here.
03:41It's probably, though, probably a better option than what happened.
03:45That I would agree with.
03:47Probably whatever was on the table would probably not have us sitting here today.
03:52We'd probably be talking about how can they get to the second round next year?
03:55How can they get to the third round next year?
03:57Maybe.
03:57I mean, obviously there's no guarantees.
04:00Nope.
04:01And a healthy Quinn Hughes was going to be better than a not-so-healthy Simon Edmondson.
04:07He's probably right.
04:08But how much else was going to be, you know, taken from the active roster to accommodate a defenseman?
04:15You know, the defenseman, and he's dynamic, and I love Quinn Hughes.
04:18But is Quinn Hughes going to, you know, add to the forward goal total?
04:23Well, I mean, in some ways.
04:26I'm just saying there's a risk.
04:27It's not so much a slam dunk, I think, that everybody wants to say.
04:30I mean, it's door number two.
04:31So door number two looks better than doing nothing or just adding Justin Falk.
04:35And Justin Falk is fine.
04:36But that's the other thing you have to take in mind.
04:38If you sign Quinn Hughes, you're not adding Justin Falk.
04:41So, and you're subtracting Simon Edmondson.
04:44So how much does that make your overall defense better or worse?
04:47I think, though, the argument that they would have been better off trading for Quinn Hughes in the end for
04:51this era of Red Wing hockey would have been better.
04:54Maybe long-term it wouldn't have been.
04:56And since we are where we are, maybe we'll be happy they didn't.
05:00I would love to know someday what the ask from Vancouver was.
05:04That's always the thing of what was the ask.
05:09And the ask might have more people going, oh, okay, I wouldn't have done that.
05:12What was the ask for Quinn Hughes as far as a contract?
05:14All right.
05:16248-539-9797.
05:18Let's go to Ned in Oxford.
05:20Hello, Ned.
05:22Hey, Doug Gator.
05:23All I want you boys doing, no chili dogs, Doug, or Gator.
05:27Just strictly bottles of water, all right?
05:30Yeah.
05:30That's always kind of what we're doing.
05:32Trust me.
05:32A little iced tea.
05:34I want to make a quick comment.
05:37I think that we know that Steve Iserman is in love with growing the system and the farm system and
05:43that aspect of it.
05:46And I think I would have liked to see more from the RedWings.com article this morning that explained more
05:54of what capacity Iserman was going to stay with the team.
05:57Now, saying all that, I want to throw a name out there that I have thought for a long time
06:05would make a great GM, and that's Vaughn Carpin, and he's with Vegas Golden Knights.
06:09He's the current assistant GM and director of player personnel.
06:15And I think if anybody deserves a shot, I think that bringing him over with what he's done with McCrimmon
06:23and the short success that Vegas has experienced, I think he can bring that aspect to the Red Wings.
06:31And then depending on what Iserman's capacity is, what Illich wants to do, if it was what you guys were
06:38just talking about, where Iserman was so in love with his guys that he couldn't make the big splash moves,
06:44does this GM bring in the ability to make that splash move?
06:50So that's kind of my food for thought on this.
06:53I'm interested to hear what you guys think about what capacity he is in and who the next GM will
07:00be.
07:00Look, I think it's smart to look at good organizations and see who's available there, what roles they played there.
07:07So go ahead and shake that tree, and if it makes sense, yeah, I don't have any problem with that.
07:12If that makes sense, that's a place I'd look at.
07:15I'd look at Vegas 100%.
07:16Look at Vegas.
07:17You look at Florida.
07:18You look at Carolina.
07:19You look at teams that have been perennially really good.
07:23And I hope that they're going to take a look at all that.
07:27I think another one of the things that hurt this Red Wing team over the last couple years, when you
07:32talk about Steve Iserman liking his prospects, loving his own prospects, I think there's truth to that.
07:40But I also think that it gets dashed, unfortunately.
07:43He doesn't get to see it because guys got hurt.
07:45Nate Danielson was hurt most of last year.
07:48Hardly got a chance to see him play.
07:50You had Carter Mazur, who got hurt on his first shift as a Red Wing, you know, and missed a
07:56lot of the next year, too.
07:57So, you know, there's a couple of guys that you like to see, and they just weren't there.
08:01And I think they had high hopes for Kosa, but they never gave him the opportunity.
08:05But maybe they didn't give him the opportunity because they didn't think he had it.
08:08And that was, you know, a missed pick.
08:11And they've got players they've got to make decisions on right now if they're going to bring back.
08:15Let's go to Mike in Livonia next on 97.1.
08:17Hello, Mike.
08:19Hey, good afternoon, guys.
08:21What's up?
08:22You know, when Eisenman was in Tampa, their draft, I mean, their scouting team hit home run after home run
08:29with Kucherov, Point, Basilevsky, Palat.
08:32And I think they tried to model that here, almost like the Patriots, Arrow with the Lions, and it just
08:39didn't work out.
08:41They got Sider and Raymond.
08:43And I want to call those home runs a very good player, but they hit multiple home runs down in
08:49Tampa.
08:49I think you can call those home runs.
08:51Don't be afraid to say that.
08:52You've got a point-a-game guy in Lucas Raymond who's, what, 23 years old, 22 years old?
08:56And you've got Mo Sider who was the top five of the Norris Trophy voting.
09:00Those are home runs.
09:03But right now that's it.
09:04The truth is, the drafts, honestly, are paltry returns, especially outside of the top picks.
09:12Yes.
09:14There's not a whole lot that they got later in the draft.
09:17And I tracked this back to 2018, and there was a huge mistake made taking Zadina before Quinn Hughes.
09:26I think it was five and six.
09:27And if you take Quinn Hughes in that spot, you have access to his brothers.
09:31And I think this franchise looks completely different with that one draft pick.
09:37Was that Holland?
09:38That was Ken Holland, yeah.
09:39Well, it wasn't Eisenman.
09:40Was that Holland?
09:41Okay, you know, my apologies there, but nonetheless.
09:48All right, we're up against a break there, so I had to let you go.
09:50But, yeah, look, I mean, that didn't help.
09:54There's other examples of misses and a bunch of them in the Eisenman era as well.
09:58We've been talking about the drafts for a while, and the returns haven't been there.
10:02Carson Anderson, 97.1.
10:03All right, so let's go.
10:03Okay.
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