Ha ha, you Holland's think modus operandi is to sign free agents to reasonable term and money and to make trade that nets decent players..... post that on a Detroit Red Wings forum and see your responses. That is why he was being so heavily criticized the last few years. That and NMC/NTC's.

Get ready for no-trade clause contracts to 3rd/4th line players. Contracts that look really bad after year 3.

Let me help add some words to your vocabulary that you will be come familiar with.
"kicked the tires"
"trades are hard"
"trades only make sense if it is a significant upgrade"
"can't buy from the hockey store/tree"
"work the phone"
"I was pumping gas and his agent called"
"no market because of parity"
"over-ripened"

I’m by no means an Oiler fan, but this is a classic Bob Nicholson hire go for the biggest name, it was the same with Chiarelli he was the biggest name available.

I haven’t been a huge fan of Holland’s the last few years. Even when the Wings were making the playoffs still they weren’t cup contenders they were just scraping in. He really didn’t have much after he lost Lidstrom and there’s no Lidstrom on the horizon in Edmonton

Holland never replaced either of Rafalski or Lidstrom after they retired and kept going after forwards at trade deadlines when he really needed to get a defenseman, who knows but had he used some of that wasted trade capital he spent on a good defenseman maybe the Wings might of won another cup or two, he really wasted prime years of Datsyuk and Zetterberg.