Nah, I mean I'm not saying 'fire this idiot', because that's not helpful either- going through GMs every couple of years is what kept killing the Panthers for so long (for example). Let a guy get his system in place and build- and accept that things may take a while to get looking good.
But.
At some point, after a few years, there has to be at least some tangible movement. A direction, able to point and say 'we were HERE, and now we're HERE, and that may not look like a lot, but it means we're aiming to be HERE in a few more years, and that looks an awful lot like a Cup run." Colorado comes to mind- as god-awful as they were when Roy quit, Sakic was under fire, but he stuck to his plan- the team stuck by him- and the result was draft picks that turned into great players, veterans that filled positions that needed filling, and things went pretty well.
The other side of that is sticking with a guy for too long, who either has lost sight of the plan he had (think Chiarelli in Boston), or had no idea what he was doing when he got hired to begin with (...Chiarelli in Edmonton). The damage from that can be far longer-term than abandoning a bad plan and restarting from scratch. I'm pretty sure, to my dismay, that we're seeing that play out in real-time in Columbus, where ownership grumbled, the GM made panic-moves to save his own ass in that lockdown-bubble year, and the result was a thrilling defeat of Tampa... then all those rentals left town, and there's no plan after that. Draft picks got sent out to get those guys like Duchene to begin with, bad contracts went out to guys like Laine and Gaudreau, and the only plan at this point feels like 'save my own job' rather than building a reasonably-competitive team. Same idea- Kekalainen should have been shown the door a couple of years ago, and whomever comes in to replace him (assuming they finally ditch his ass) will have a long, difficult road to... I almost said 'rebuild' this team, but honestly I'm not sure Columbus has ever been built to begin with since entering the league, can't really 'rebuild'.
Is Detroit closer right now to where Boston was in 2009-10, where things weren't great but they were on the right track, and the results finally started coming in a year or so later? Or are they more on that Columbus track of thowing things at the wall and hoping they stick? I really don't know, and I'd wager no one- Yzerman included- really does. But it feels like there should be a bit more out of the Wings at this point for all the hype and time, and while their start to this season looked good they've cooled considerably since. Another year of missing the playoffs- or even a first-round shellacking by a high-ranked team like Toronto or Boston- and the Wings may need to really ask themselves if it's time to figure out where to go from here.
