When the Red Wings announced that they’d re-signed AHL/ECHL goaltender Carter Gylander on Tuesday night, the impatient fan base largely erupted as if the apocalypse was nigh.
Because it wasn’t Simon Edvinsson, the Red Wings’ only other restricted free agent, who’d been inked to a new deal, the news was a clear indication that Steve Yzerman won’t be let near anything or anyone important, fans suggested.
More of the same, they said, more of the same after another day of no data, no news as to whether a team hurtling through the 2026 offseason might have any impetus whatsoever to pick up its process in terms of hiring the next GM, the next president of hockey operations–however the Wings choose to stack their hockey operations pyramid–there’s no doubt that, even in late July, fans can hear the drumming heartbeat of training camp a month and-a-half away, the start of the 2026-2027 season in late September, and the natives are more than restless as the team appears to listlessly drift along a current drifting faster and faster toward a season of unknowns.
I would argue the opposite: to me, the fact that the Wings are slowly but surely getting business done on the hockey operations side, as slowly and laboriously as things might appear, is a much better sign than nothing at all.
Where was I concerned about the status of the listing S.S. Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday?
I couldn’t believe that the team’s promotional schedule for the 2026-2027 regular season leaked instead of being “blasted” simultaneously over social media channels, and that it leaked through a season ticket holder-only email snagged by WXYZ and the Detroit Free Press.
Yes, signing Carter Gylander, and, eventually, Simon Edvinsson, those are more important things than releasing the annual schedule of bobbleheads, giveaways and “theme nights.” We want to see “our team” get its shit together in terms of the off-ice business, contractually speaking, and then worry about the little stuff…
But in a regular season which may or may not yield a playoff push under coach Todd McLellan, presuming that the next GM/president of hockey operations/head honcho/etc. chooses to keep the Wings’ coaching staff intact, you want the little details to matter, too.
And little details like what’s going to get people coming through the door if the on-ice product is lacking are incredibly important. If you can’t get the information straight surrounding your Nicklas Lidstrom bobbleheads, your “Thanksgiving Game” salt-and-pepper shakers and your “build your own fit” apparel giveaways–again, the little stuff, comparatively speaking–that’s when I worry.
And it’s through the giveaway release, or the complete and utter lack thereof, that I got “itchy” on Tuesday afternoon, wondering aloud where the franchise’s priorities might lie while Aunt Annie and I readjust to being at home after a week spent in the hospital.*
When there’s no data–and right now, we simply have no data as to how or whether the organization is reorganizing its front office–you want to see the team get the little details right, give people reasons to come to the rink, both on the ice and on the concourse, and you want the franchise to run correctly, like a tight ship.
Instead, the Wings’ ship listed in all the wrong places on Tuesday. The simple shit that should have plastered the internet came out all wonky, and the easy little signing to provide depth for the Grand Rapids Griffins and Toledo Walleye took all the headlines, because this organization doesn’t quite seem to know how to not skate over its own loose laces this summer.
An ascendant organization, one climbing out of a supposed decade of mediocrity, shouldn’t have to rely on fans putting the pieces together to say, “Hey, single-game tickets go on sale next Tuesday, August 4th, but if you’re on the Super Special Email List, you’ll get access to single-game tix a day early!”
That’s borderline dumb. You make sure that those kind of put-’em-in-the-stands details get taken care of in more than an email that arrives in inboxes at 10:30 in the morning. You blast that shit on Facebook, “X” (gah), Instagram, TikTok, on the radio, on TV, you have the commercial “hit” ready to go, you have the link and the Ticketmaster pre-sale URLs set up and out the door at 9:59.
It’s called effing marketing, and you don’t leave marketing what might very well be an inferior product to the rest of the Atlantic Division to a single email.
And that is where I get jittery about the direction of hockey ops, because hockey operations includes marketing the team as best as possible, including doing the very basic and sometimes overlooked job of making sure that people know when they can spend their hard-earned money to get into the rink.
That’s where the Wings have fallen on their asses most regularly this offseason, and, absent any other data as to what levers Steve Yzerman is still allowed to touch as a now-interim GM, absent any other data as to who’s really in charge while Chris Ilitch spends his summer preoccupied with a very mediocre Tigers team that could still make the MLB playoff cut…
That’s where I worry. Hockey ops appears to be functioning just fine this morning. Marketing is operating with its hockey gloves tied behind its back, and if the arms and legs don’t know where the other limbs are moving right now, then the whole operation can fall apart like a house of cards.
Here’s hoping that all the hiccups and the utter lack of news of late are not as disturbing as the signs we’re all making up to indicate where the franchise “is at right now” are nothing more than ripples in a late-July breeze.
