I am curious about the scouting staff in TB - where they mostly in place before Yzerman took over? Are they mostly in place now?
I think at times, GMs take too much credit or get too much heat based on the organization in place. For instance, here in Calgary Darryl Sutter takes a lot of heat for his drafting (especially early on). When he took over as GM, he had 1 full time and 2 part time scouts in place (IIRC). Started building it out, and towards the end of his tenure, it started having better success than at the start of his tenure. I think he takes too much heat for sucking at drafting, when you take a step back at least and look at a more complete picture.
Maybe Yzerman just took too many accolades, when really they may have just had a fantastic staff in place already? I think it takes time to build a good staff up. It takes a few years at least between moves to figure out if your staff has got it right or not. It isn't as if you can make a move today and see the results right away - your drafting department is probably the most difficult and lengthy piece of your organization to build up properly. If it wasn't, every team would be batting way higher percentages.
Detroit hasn't been a really good drafting team for a long time - predating Yzerman's hiring for years. I think the lack of success is a combination of getting too much of the credit in Tampa, getting poor luck in the lotteries, and not having a good enough scouting department in place at the onset.
However, I think a lot of his moves have been poor. This is a fairly lousy team that he has built up with his signings and trades, even ignoring the drafting. He signed a lot of vets who are past their prime. I think he sold Hronek because he probably misjudged his talent level. He made a lot of 'win now' moves around that time.
Detroit has a handful of players that I think are good young players (headlined by Seider and Raymond). Otherwise, they are a 'meh' team with a bunch of aging vets and young but underwhelming youth/prime-aged players. If Conroy built a team like this, I would be wishing for his dismissal, quite honestly. The Red-Wings are not a team that looks like they are coming out of a rebuild. They look like an old team that is about ready to sell and enter a rebuild, with a couple of nice young pieces on the roster to help speed-up their rebuild. I would bet that they end up going after Gibson and add him to their roster.
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