What stories revolve around your team?

Zetterberg and Blashill spatted. It turned into the "Swedish Mafia" story but beat reporter Helene St. James used one of her next articles after that to drop that Blashill was catty, too.

The biggest change the Wings made last season was behind the bench, where Jeff Blashill took over after a decade of Mike Babcock. Blashill has proven himself successful at different levels of hockey, but going forward, his biggest challenge may be to change some of the culture in the Wings’ dressing room. A very telling incident took place late in the season, when Blashill was told Zetterberg had commented he’d like to see what rookie Andreas Athanasiou could do with 18 minutes of playing time rather than half that. Blashill asked if Zetterberg had said he’d be willing to give up his minutes to make that happen

(Poor AA caught up in dad and dad fighting and ending up with no minutes.)

There was no Swedish Mafia, but stories came out like out of Quincey's mouth on locker cleanout day that he and DDK called a meeting with Blash to pressure him to let them play together instead of DDK and Green. (They are both North Americans!)

Datsyuk in particular decided his own linemates. Helm ended up on the second line, then Richards. Datsyuk is swell but his coaching is questionable. (Our only center who can make goals happen demanded non-scorers on his line instead of Tatar and AA/Mantha who were all scoring. Great.)

Blashill just isn't an imposing dude and I think it's safe to say he 'lost control of the room'.

For example, he pulled Jimmy Howard when the skaters didn't have control of the puck in the last game against NYR for an immediate goal and Jimmy blew up at him.

It was all real entertaining and all but goddamn the adults need to act like adults next season. Torchetti may fix that up. Blash recruited an angel (Houda) and devil to have his back, but he needs to develop some actual gravitas himself. I hope.

I honestly think the guy can run a system that can win hockey games, but not during Mutiny on the Bounty.

I don't, like, feel sorry for him atm, tho. Obviously passive aggression was not the answer. You've gotta inspire confidence to get folks to make major changes to what they've been doing for years. Your team's gotta buy in.

You can't have Jurco having no idea whatsoever why he was scratched or Tatar saying at the end of the season it'd be okay to be traded because maybe there's another team that needs him more.

Pitting Mrazek and Howard against each other was a mess, too, and Mrazek is always blunt in Czech interviews and earlier in the season made it clear their former friendship was suffering. They seemed to get it back together by the end of the season (maybe in solidarity of disrespecting Blashill every chance they got? he can't sit them both) and Mrazek had a much more positive something like "We focus on our own games. I can't speak for him but I think we're both happy when the team wins" in Czech after the season.

Here's to a less dramatic next season!

/r/hockey Thread