Sportsnet’s Sonny Sachdeva examines the “Highs and Lows” of Steve Yzerman’s tenure as the Detroit Red Wings’ general manager, and this “low” is perhaps the most damning aspect of Yzerman’s 7 years with the team:
Too used to the status quo: In truth, despite the handful of misguided signings and trades Yzerman authored, the pivotal flaw of his tenure leading the Red Wings’ front office might’ve been the moves he didn’t make. More than anything else, it was Detroit’s inability to build a competitive team around its young stars over the past seven seasons that led to Yzerman’s exit this week.
If there’s anything that will define the Yzerplan, it’s the club getting stuck in the mud, getting stagnant, falling short in finding a path back to relevancy. Rather than aggressively building around what they had, too often, Yzerman’s Red Wings simply stood pat and got passed by.
Club captain Dylan Larkin — whose request for a trade away from his boyhood club last month likely factored into the organization’s decision to change direction — essentially said as much at the end of the 2024-25 season, when he called out his front office for not adding down the stretch.
“It was hard that we didn’t do anything,” Larkin said at the time. “We didn’t gain any momentum from the trade deadline, and guys were kind of down about it. It’d be nice to add something and bring a little bit of a spark on the ice, and maybe a morale boost as well.”
Answered Yzerman: “I’m counting on our best players, our leaders, to give us a bit of a morale boost. That’s what they’re paid for, and that’s the expectation from them.”
There’s no question that something more was needed. Year after year, the Red Wings faded late in the season, when a playoff berth was on the line — over the past four campaigns combined, the club put together a 17-35-5 record in March, winning just 30 per cent of those late-season tilts, and ultimately finishing on the outside looking in.
Making matters worse, the division around them has continued to evolve and improve. While Yzerman’s Red Wings were seemingly unwilling or unable to take the type of franchise-altering swings we consistently see from the league’s elite, the clubs around them have added, built, and found progress. A new voice will get the opportunity to lead Detroit down a similar path.
Continued; arguably, as I suggested earlier this morning, the fact that Yzerman kept his counsel so very close to the vest–and his circle of advisors so very small–yielded an echo chamber which afforded Yzerman the stubbornness with which he chose to stick with the initial plan instead of revising and editing his benchmarks and goals as necessary.
I really do believe that he backed himself into a corner, and refused to ask for help when he was unable to move the franchise forward any further than the playoff periphery, and that’s what damned him to failure.
