Author: George Malik

The Athletic’s Max Bultman posted a second column regarding the Red Wings’ firing of Derek Lalonde and hiring of Todd McLellan, suggesting that the coaching change cannot be the lone move that the franchise makes:

While swapping Lalonde for McLellan may well give Detroit a spark, as it often does with coaching changes, Yzerman will simultaneously have to look long and hard at his roster and perhaps make a change or two there once the NHL’s trade freeze lifts on Friday.

As close as the Red Wings got to the playoffs last season, that result now looks more like a mirage year than a building-block season. And while Detroit’s farm system still has a few important pieces working their way up the pipeline, glaring long-term questions remain.

The biggest are at forward. Detroit has long been building around top-line center Dylan Larkin, but increasingly, the crawling pace of the rebuild looks like it will mean Larkin, 28, will be into his 30s by the time the team is in serious contention. That’s not the end of the world — Yzerman didn’t win his first Stanley Cup until he was 32, and Larkin should still be a highly effective player for many more years — but it does mean the team will need a robust core of younger players around him.

Detroit has one such young star, Lucas Raymond, tracking toward a potential 80-point season this year at age 22, and another good scoring winger in Alex DeBrincat. From there, though, so much remains to be seen. Recent first-round picks Marco Kasper and Nate Danielson look like playoff-style two-way centermen who will really help the Red Wings, but both have some questions around what their ultimate NHL scoring productivity will be. The team’s 2024 first-round pick, Michael Brandsegg-Nygård, has a big-time shot in a heavy body, but he’s only 19 and has gotten off to a slower-than-hoped offensive start in the SHL.

All of Kasper, Danielson and Brandsegg-Nygård look like they will become good NHL players. But to get to where the Red Wings want to go, they’ll need more star power alongside Raymond and Larkin up front. They surely will have to continue to look for that through the draft, but as they’ve seen, that process will not be quick.

So while Detroit is making changes, is there a young forward it can trade for whose contributions can come sooner? Trevor Zegras in Anaheim or Dylan Cozens in Buffalo would fit the bill as young players who have already proven they can hit 60-point offense in the NHL, but have seen their production dip of late.

Continued (paywall)

Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli offers a quick take on the Red Wings’ firing of Derek Lalonde and hiring of Todd McLellan as the new head coach:

Sports Illustrated’s Jacob Punturi believes that the Red Wings’ hiring of Todd McLellan won’t make an ounce of difference because the Red Wings’ roster is too flawed to salvage:

The current attempt to build the right core is another one of those missteps. They have good players. Captain Dylan Larkin will be a member of the United States roster for the 4 Nations Face-Off and is a talented point producer. Lucas Raymond continues to improve and become the team’s best offensive player. Alex DeBrincat has speed and scoring capabilities. Top defensemen Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson give them quality minutes every night.

Beyond them, though, the roster is so far from a playoff one, let alone a championship one. They lack depth across every position and they’ve consistently failed with their analysis of goaltenders. For several seasons now, the organization has been banking on their overflow of young prospects breaking through to the NHL, but it’s still a waiting game.

That won’t help McLellan take this middling team to the postseason. He has some weapons to work with and his arrival is sure to reinvigorate the Red Wings players. It ultimately won’t matter though. It won’t change the outcome this year or next year or even the year after until their NHL lineup improves drastically.

Continued; it’s not that simple. And the Red Wings’ roster is not spectacular, but it’s not quite as lost and gone forever as Punturi suggests…

MLive’s Ansar Khan offers a few thoughts regarding the Red Wings’ hiring of Todd McLellan as the team’s new head coach:

Lalonde’s message clearly had gotten stale in his third season. The team’s performance in the past two games — ugly losses to Montreal (5-1) and St. Louis (4-0), when the team was booed off the ice again – indicated a significant change was needed. The head coach usually is the one who pays the price.

The Kings fired McLellan on Feb. 2 of this year despite a 23-15-10 record. He was a Red Wings assistant coach from 2005-06 to 2007-08, from Yzerman’s last season as a player through his first two years in the front office under former GM Ken Holland.

Teams often experience an immediate bump with a midseason coaching change. A new voice brings new energy and players are eager to impress the new boss. So, expect the Red Wings, who play their next three at home starting with Friday’s game against Toronto (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network), to show some spark.

The playoffs, something this franchise hasn’t experienced since 2016, remain a longshot, however. The Red Wings are eight points out of the final wild card spot and having to leapfrog six other clubs makes it even more difficult. They would need to post a .635 points percentage in the final 48 games to match last season’s 91 points – and even that might not be enough to qualify.

Continued (paywall)

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff discusses the Red Wings’ hiring of Todd McLellan as their head coach from a unique perspective:

I’ve been lucky enough to know Todd McLellan for more than 40 years. Back when we first met in 1984, he was a 17-year-old center with the WHL Saskatoon Blades and I was a rookie beat writer on my first daily newspaper job.

What was true about him back then remains true today. McLellan is someone who approaches life with a positive outlook. He sees possibilities and is open to new ways of looking at things, alternative methods to problem solving. He’ll greet every day with a smile on his face and an excitement to stare down the challenges that lay ahead for him.

This is what he’ll be bringing to the Detroit Red Wings.

In other words, his day-to-day approach figures to be significantly different to that of Derek Lalonde’s paint by numbers formula. And that might be just what the doctor ordered for a confused Red Wings club that doesn’t seem to know what their identity as a team is supposed to be.

Another factor to like about McLellan – he’s won at every of his NHL stops and has done so while running his own show and not only as a staff member who is part of another coach’s success story.

Continued

Per The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun:

McLellan was still getting paid $5.5M by the Kings this season on the last year of that contract. The Kings and Red Wings were negotiating this morning on how that would get taken care of as part of McLellan signing a new deal with Detroit. https://t.co/h7FiN8eVed

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) December 26, 2024

EliteProspects’ Sean Shapiro suggests that the Red Wings’ hiring of Todd McLellan as the team’s head coach may not be able to truly solve the team’s underlying problems:

While the Red Wings didn’t announce how long [McLellan’s] multi-year deal was, it’s probably something that came up for McLellan in his contract negotiation — he’s gonna need more than one and half seasons to figure this out, and has to hope his GM has learned from past mistakes.

In the short term, McLellan has to find a way for the team’s foundation not to wobble when one important player is unavailable. In the long-term, he has to completely re-code the Red Wings culture to one that picks itself up, which I’m not sure is possible under the current regime.

Think about it this way. When it comes to Yzerman and the Red Wings, everything is still associated with the No. 19 hanging in the rafters, not the body of work he’s done as an executive in Detroit.

Whether you liked Jake Walman or not, and I personally did, one of the main reasons his puzzling trade to the San Jose Sharks was defended by some was because Yzerman made it and there must be a greater plan in place.

By the middle of the 2024-25 season the Red Wings defense is struggling to move the puck and Walman is 12th in the league in points by defenders. Shayne Gostisbehere was also allowed to walk in favor of Erik Gustafsson, Gostisbehere (now in Carolina) is one of the few defenders producing at even a higher level offensively than Walman.

Continued (paywall)

Per DetroitRedWings.com’s Daniella Bruce:

Pressers will be tomorrow morning prior to morning skate. #LGRW https://t.co/Bb2BbrLlrB

— Daniella Bruce (@daniellabruce_) December 26, 2024

I had talked about the possibility of Derek Lalonde losing his job with my The Flying Octopus compatriots, and when I did, I suggested that firing coach Lalonde would probably be fired as the beginning of a series of moves to be made by GM Steve Yzerman and the Wings’ management team.

I do believe that the hiring of Todd McLellan and assistant coach Trent Yawney will help an underachieving Red Wings team, but I also believe that the team needs to make a few personnel changes to assuage the losses of David Perron and Shayne Gostisbehere, who were never meaningfully replaced.

Given that the offseason feels like the time that teams truly address their roster issues, I’m not certain whether the management team will be able to accomplish their goals, but the team needs a net-front forward with size and an offensive defenseman at the very least, and there are players on the trade market who would fulfill those needs…

But GM SY is nothing if not methodical, and he tends to work simply. After firing the coaching staff, he’s going to assess the roster that he has as they play under coach McLellan, and then the team will try to make some calculated changes to the roster via trades, with the bigger swings to be taken at free agents during the offseason.

That’s how it’s going to work, for better or worse.

Here are some of the media reactions to the firing of coach Derek Lalonde and the hiring of Todd McLellan:

MLive’s Ansar Khan notes that McLellan, who’s coached the San Jose Sharks, Edmonton Oilers and Los Angeles Kings, has a winning record:

McLellan, 57, has 16 years of NHL head-coaching experience with San Jose, Edmonton and Los Angeles, posting a record of 598-412-134 in the regular season and 42-46 in the playoffs.

His 598 regular-season wins are 24th in NHL history and sixth-most among active coaches behind Paul Maurice (891), Lindy Ruff (876), Peter Laviolette (823), John Tortorella (757) and Peter DeBoer (632).

Teams coached by McLellan have reached the 50-win mark three times and the 100-point plateau six times. McLellan’s teams have also advanced to the Stanley Cup playoffs nine times. He is a two-time finalist for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s coach of the year (2009, 2017).

McLellan was an assistant coach with the Red Wings under Mike Babcock from 2005-06 to 2007-08, when he left to become San Jose’s head coach after winning a Stanley Cup.

The Red Wings hired Trent Yawney as an assistant coach, joining Alex Tanguay and Jay Varady on the staff. The club relieved associate coach Bob Boughner of his duties.

Here’s the AP’s summary:

The Detroit Red Wings fired coach Derek Lalonde on Thursday and named Todd McLellan as his replacement.

The move the day after Christmas was announced by general manager Steve Yzerman and comes with the Red Wings on a three-game skid and having lost nine of their past 12. They’ve lost 21 of their first 34 games this season and are above only the lowly Buffalo Sabres in the Eastern Conference.

Assistant Bob Boughner was also fired and Trent Yawney hired to work on McLellan’s staff. McLellan signed a multiyear contract to start his fourth NHL head coaching job after stints with San Jose, Edmonton and Los Angeles.

Lalonde was nearly midway through his third season with Detroit after winning the Stanley Cup twice as an assistant with Tampa Bay.

Here’s The Athletic’s Max Bultman: