Ken Holland Talks Yzerman in Alumni Game And Gustav Nyquist
By: Jeff Riger
@riger1984
The Wings seem like they are snake bit right now. They don't get all that much secondary scoring and they can't win a game, despite picking up points rather routinely.
Detroit has lost their last 6 games in a row, 5 of which went into overtime and 3 of them that ended in a shootout.
Of course the above sentence doesn't sound all that good, but it also must be pointed out that even with the recent struggles, Detroit sits in 4th in their division and 4th in the entire Eastern Conference. Which means that, the Wings actually aren't doing that bad or that they're extremely lucky not to be in the West anymore. The Wings have 25 points on the season which would tie them for 9th in the Western Conference, if you're into the "whole comparing the conferences thing."
I had a chance to catch up with Wings GM Ken Holland to ask him about his team, the many fans that want Gustav Nyquist up with the big club and his thoughts about if Steve Yzerman should play in the Alumni game come New Year's Eve?
As to how Holland feels about his team at the quarter mark...
"We haven't been consistent enough" Holland said. We're still talking about the same things that we did last year, secondary scoring."
Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk have a combined 21 goals this season, the rest of the team have 33. That pretty much says it all.
Fans also continue to be upset that Detroit hasn't found a way to get some of their younger players into the mix at the NHL level and they have a right to be. Gustav Nyquist, who was good in the playoffs last season leads the Grand Rapids Griffins with 21 points in 15 games. Nyquist makes too much money right now to find himself in Detroit because of some questionable signings that Holland made in the offseason.
"I'm talking to teams, trying to get creative, trying to figure out ways to make a move or two. Certainly we would love to have Gustav here, but when we made the decisions in the summer-it obviously affected Gustav Nyquist."
One of those decisions was bringing back Dan Cleary who has just 1 goal and 2 assists in 20 games and has a cap hit of almost 2 million dollars.
Holland also has thoughts about if Steve Yzerman should come back to Detroit for the Winter Classic Alumni Game on December 31st?
"Obviously we would love to have him, I don't know if it's once in a lifetime, but it's probably a once in a decade thing. It will probably be another decade before we host another Winter Classic" Holland said.
Listen to the entire interview as Holland goes into greater detail about Nyquist and Yzerman.
