DETROIT \u2014 As Red Wings training camp begins this week in Traverse City, Mich., an undercurrent of tension is stirring in Detroit.<\/p>\n
The optimism of a new season remains, but for a team that has missed the playoffs in nine straight seasons, patience and youth are not the easy sells they once were.<\/p>\n
General manager Steve Yzerman inherited a tough situation when he arrived in April 2019. The franchise was paying the bill for a streak of 25 consecutive playoff seasons from 1991 to 2016, and the previous regime\u2019s major draft mistakes in the final years before Yzerman arrived left Detroit without many young difference-makers.<\/p>\n
The result has been painful, going from a legendary playoff streak that tied the third-longest mark in NHL history to what is now a nine-year postseason drought \u2014 tied for the fourth-longest absence on record.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a stinging recoil, especially in a league where half of the 32 teams make the playoffs each year.<\/p>\n
Detroit has succeeded in the most crucial part of its rebuild: hitting on its early draft picks. Yzerman\u2019s first four top picks are already in key roles in the top half of the lineup, and a fifth could join that group this season. But even after nailing those first-round picks and adding a pair of high-flying offensive pieces in Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane, the Red Wings still haven\u2019t broken through six years in.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve been close \u2014 missing the playoffs by a tiebreaker two years ago \u2014 but close only counts for so much. And while it\u2019s too reactionary to say the rebuild has failed, it\u2019s fair to say the process has dragged.<\/p>\n
The Red Wings\u2019 issues are certainly rooted in broader themes, such as a depleted prospect pool and the absence of an elite goaltender, but the factors driving their drought can also be traced to a few specific moments.<\/p>\n
These pivotal situations aren\u2019t the root cause of the team\u2019s problems, but they are missed opportunities that could have helped Detroit get out of its current slump sooner, and didn\u2019t \u2014 whether by circumstance, poor decision-making or a combination of both.<\/p>\n
The Vr\u00e1na saga<\/p>\n
This one feels like a lifetime ago. The Red Wings pulled off a blockbuster at the 2021 trade deadline, sending Anthony Mantha to the Capitals for a talented young winger in Jakub Vr\u00e1na, plus Richard P\u00e1nik, a 2021 first-round pick and a 2022 second-round pick.<\/p>\n
At the time, the deal was all about upside<\/a>. Mantha was perhaps a more proven commodity and had rare physical tools, but Vr\u00e1na was still just 25 and already had multiple 20-plus goal seasons to go with very strong rate stats. Throw in the picks, and there was a lot of optimism<\/a> about how the Red Wings made out.<\/p>\n That optimism was amplified when Vr\u00e1na finished the season with eight goals and 11 points in 11 games. It looked, for a moment, like Detroit had found a top-line scorer, albeit with defensive warts. Yzerman signed him to a three-year contract with a $5.25 million average annual value.<\/p>\n As it turned out, though, that brief stretch was the peak of Vr\u00e1na\u2019s time in Detroit.<\/p>\n The speedy sniper missed the first four months of the next season due to shoulder surgery, then entered the NHL\/NHLPA player assistance program<\/a> in the first week of the 2023-24 season. The Red Wings waived him upon his return and eventually traded him<\/a> to the St. Louis Blues, ending his time in Detroit with all that potential unrealized. Today, Vr\u00e1na is back in Europe.<\/p>\n This one going sideways isn\u2019t on the Red Wings\u2019 front office, especially considering how the winger performed before and after his time in Detroit. It\u2019s worth noting Mantha has not been a true top-six player since being traded, either. But there\u2019s still a feeling of \u201cwhat might have been\u201d around Vr\u00e1na, even if his defensive issues meant he was unlikely to get the kind of usage needed to become a truly dominant player.<\/p>\n When you look at the glaring hole at left wing in the Red Wings\u2019 top six, it\u2019s easy to forget both he and Mantha once looked like long-term answers, only to vanish from the picture entirely.<\/p>\n Pro scouting departures and fallout<\/p>\n The Yzerman front office has been in place for six years, but it underwent a fairly significant makeover right around the midway point. Mark Howe, who had been the team\u2019s director of pro scouting since 2005 (and a scout since 1995) retired in 2021. Then, during the 2021-22 season, the Red Wings lost another huge voice in that area when assistant general manager Pat Verbeek left to become Anaheim Ducks general manager.<\/p>\n That\u2019s two prominent executives to lose from a key department in a span of months.<\/p>\n The very next offseason, in 2022, saw Detroit get a bit more aggressive in trying to climb the standings. After moving on from head coach Jeff Blashill and bringing in Derek Lalonde, the Red Wings also made their first real push in free agency that year, signing veterans David Perron, Andrew Copp, Ben Chiarot, Olli M\u00e4\u00e4tt\u00e4 and Dominik Kubalik and trading for goaltender Ville Husso.<\/p>\n That free-agent class has aged a bit better than it once appeared it would, but the player acquisitions since then have been a mixed bag.<\/p>\n Despite two big wins in trading for DeBrincat in 2023 and signing Kane four months later, the pro scouting department has taken a lot of valid criticism for the 2023 and 2024 offseasons in particular.<\/p>\n Detroit spent a combined $12.49 million per year on Justin Holl, Jeff Petry, Vladimir Tarasenko and Klim Kostin (a trade acquisition) in those summers, which left the Red Wings squeezed against the salary cap. That led to some difficult departures in 2024, including a key leader in Perron and a significant puck mover in Shayne Gostisbehere (himself a 2023 signing), as well as Jake Walman via trade.<\/p>\n Yzerman defended his pro scouting group \u2014 which never technically hired a director to replace Howe \u2014 at the end of last season, saying: \u201cI think very highly of these young men (on the scouting staff). \u2026 They\u2019re starting to learn the league more, understand what we\u2019re trying to do, understand the value of the dollar amount. So I think as a pro scouting staff, we\u2019re becoming a better team. We just simply have to walk away from some of these contracts.\u201d<\/p>\n From outside the opaque\u00a0fortress that is the Red Wings\u2019 front office, it\u2019s impossible to judge the group\u2019s thought process. We also can\u2019t know if keeping Howe (or replacing him) would have changed any of the team\u2019s decisions.<\/p>\n We do, however, have the results. And while there have been some successes, the Red Wings\u2019 decisions on July 1 simply haven\u2019t given them enough help for the money they\u2019ve spent \u2014 and in some cases have hindered them.<\/p>\n Gut-punch losses vs. Ottawa<\/p>\n Who could forget this one? In perhaps the closest thing the Red Wings have seen to a playoff series in the last nine years, Detroit traveled to Ottawa shortly before the 2023 trade deadline while jockeying against the Senators in the wild-card race. The stakes were huge, and the results were disastrous.<\/p>\n Detroit unraveled in those two games<\/a>, first being pushed around by the Senators, then getting flat-out beat. They lost the two games by a combined score of 12-3.<\/p>\n Even before those games, it was possible (and perhaps likely) that the Red Wings were going to trade Tyler Bertuzzi, a fan-favorite winger and pending free agent. But after the Ottawa games, Detroit not only dealt Bertuzzi, they also shockingly shipped young defenseman Filip Hronek to Vancouver<\/a> for 2023 first- and second-round picks.<\/p>\n The Red Wings used the first-round pick to select young defenseman Axel Sandin-Pellikka, who is now one of the team\u2019s top prospects. How he develops will ultimately determine the Hronek deal\u2019s success.<\/p>\n Regardless, the move signaled that Detroit still felt it was far enough away from contention to trade a 25-year-old defenseman for draft picks.<\/p>\n It\u2019s probably a bit too bold to chalk up the trade entirely to the results in Ottawa. With Hronek a year from restricted free agency, the Red Wings may not have wanted to pay contracts north of $7 million to both Hronek and Moritz Seider on their defense\u2019s right side, especially in what was effectively still a flat-cap environment.<\/p>\n However, it would hardly be shocking if the faceplant in Ottawa at least helped convince Yzerman of how far off his team looked, and to pull the trigger on the deal.<\/p>\n Two years later, the team\u2019s biggest need is for a player just like Hronek: a top-four right-shot defenseman who can move pucks but still defend.<\/p>\n The Walman trade<\/p>\n At one time, Walman was a breakout success story for the Red Wings.<\/p>\n The smooth-skating left-shot defenseman, acquired in the 2022 Nick Leddy trade<\/a>, climbed to a top-pair role for Detroit in the 2022-23 season. Detroit was happy enough with Walman to give him a three-year contract just before the 2023 trade deadline.<\/p>\n Something changed over the course of the following season.<\/p>\n Walman still often played a major role, but his underlying defensive numbers dropped significantly \u2014 perhaps due to intense matchup difficulty playing alongside Seider. Late in the year, as Detroit chased a playoff spot, Walman was consistently out of the lineup, but his availability was frustratingly hard to pin down, with Lalonde saying Walman was \u201cnot completely himself.\u201d Walman later told The Athletic<\/a> he was \u201cpretty badly injured\u201d and trying to play through it, but he ultimately dressed for only two of the team\u2019s final 14 games.<\/p>\n That missed time coincided with the arrival of Simon Edvinsson on the left side. With a suddenly crowded blue line that also included Chiarot and M\u00e4\u00e4tt\u00e4, Yzerman was asked that summer how Walman fit into his plans.<\/p>\n \u201cDepending on what we do or don\u2019t do this summer, he\u2019ll be back in competition for ice time, like they all are,\u201d Yzerman said at the time<\/a>. Less than a week later, the Red Wings traded Walman to the San Jose Sharks<\/a> for nothing \u2014 and actually included a second-round pick in the deal to do so.<\/p>\n