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Don’t just add this one to the ‘Why the Yzerplan Failed’ article pile…It’s worth reading.

It’s getting a little tiring to read “Why the Yzerplan Failed” articles after the last couple of days’ worth of…Well, “Why the Yzerplan Failed” articles, but Daily Faceoff’s Mike Gould wrote a thoughtful, well-thought-out and easily readable discussion thereof, and it’s worth your time:

Red Wings fans have waited a long time — first with remarkable patience and restraint, but now with understandable restlessness — for the early promise of Yzerman’s tenure to be fulfilled in any meaningful way. But after years of bad bets in unrestricted free agency, ill-conceived trade acquisitions and puzzling drafting, it became clear that the situation in Detroit just wasn’t getting any better — no matter how many fans continued to hold out hope that Yzerman would eventually come out on top.

After all, Yzerman cultivated a reputation during his time as GM of the Tampa Bay Lightning as an executive with an unerring long-term vision for his team. With the Bolts, he made plenty of decisions that looked questionable at the time, like when he held onto Jonathan Drouin for more than a year after he requested a trade — only to end up flipping him for Mikhail Sergachev, who played an integral role in Tampa Bay’s 2020 and 2021 Stanley Cup championships.

Yzerman began his Red Wings managerial tenure in similar fashion, shocking most analysts by taking Moritz Seider with the No. 6 overall pick in the 2019 NHL Draft. That decision proved to be an excellent one, as Seider promptly developed into Detroit’s top defenseman — only reinforcing the notion that when Yzerman went against the grain, he always had a good reason.

Continue reading Don’t just add this one to the ‘Why the Yzerplan Failed’ article pile…It’s worth reading.

Some highlights from the Red Wings’ 2026-2027 schedule

The Detroit Red Wings released their 2026-2027 regular season schedule today at 1 PM EDT, and now the Wings’ beat writers are weighing in regarding the highlights thereof.

Here’s MLive’s Ansar Khan’s assessment…

Here are some key dates:

Oct. 2 vs. N.Y. Rangers (6:30 p.m.): It’s the season-opener; will Dylan Larkin still be a Red Wing and in the lineup after requesting a trade in the offseason?

Dec. 22 vs. Toronto (7:30 p.m.): The first of two home games vs. Toronto could be the first chance for Detroit fans to see 2026 No. 1 pick Gavin McKenna.

Dec. 31 vs. Carolina (2 p.m.): The traditional New Year’s Eve game will be a matinee contest for a change and the first of two LCA appearances by the reigning Stanley Cup champions who also visit on April 2.

Jan. 2 vs. Edmonton (1 p.m.): It’s the lone LCA appearance by three-time league MVP Connor McDavid and first-year Oilers coach Mike Babcock, the former Wings head coach who’s back behind an NHL bench for the first time since 2019.

Jan. 7 vs. Utah (7 p.m.): Could former Red Wings’ top goaltending prospect Sebastian Cossa be in net for the Mammoth?

Continue reading Some highlights from the Red Wings’ 2026-2027 schedule

Here’s the Red Wings’ 2026-2027 regular season schedule

Updated at 1:06 PM: The NHL released its 2026-2027 regular season schedule today. Here is the Red Wings’ portion thereof:

Update: The Red Wings posted a clip of Ken Daniels announcing the schedule…

And here is the Red Wings’ press release:

RED WINGS RELEASE 2026-27 REGULAR-SEASON SCHEDULE

Opening Night will feature Original Six Matchup with New York Rangers at Little Caesars Arena on Friday, October 2

Red Wings will host Centennial Celebration Game on Wednesday, November 18, marking 100th anniversary of Detroit’s first NHL game vs. Boston Bruins

NHL expands regular season to 84 games for 2026-27 campaign

DETROIT – The Detroit Red Wings today released their schedule for the 2026-27 regular season and the team’s 101st overall in the National Hockey League. The Red Wings will open the season on home ice at Little Caesars Arena with an Original Six matchup against the New York Rangers on Friday, Oct. 2 at 6:30 p.m.

Continue reading Here’s the Red Wings’ 2026-2027 regular season schedule

Signing Simon Edvinsson is the one offseason move over which the Wings have full control

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan discusses the “to-do list” of the Red Wings’ next general manager this afternoon, and as I’m not certain whether the Wings will have much of a say in Dylan Larkin or Patrick Kane’s respective playing destinations, I’d suggest that Kulfan’s third item is likely the most important task over which the Wings have full control:

What will Simon Edvinsson’s new contract look like?

The restricted free-agent defenseman is due a new contract, and judging by some of the deals around the NHL, it’s likely to be a doozy. Likely more than Yzerman had wanted it to be.

Moritz Seider is the Wings’ highest-paid defenseman, at an $8.5 million annual average value, and Edvinsson likely could eclipse that. A thing to watch, also, is the possibility of another team offering Edvinsson an offer sheet, with a particularly high salary, and the Wings being forced to match.

Yzerman continues to run the day-to-day operations, for now, but with the Wings’ front office in a state of flux, it wouldn’t be shocking to see another team possibly try to take advantage.

Continued at length (paywall); at this point, trying to keep the line on Edvinsson at around $8.5 million per season will be hard enough to keep the next GM occupied until the start of this upcoming campaign.

If the ‘Yzerplan’ had one fatal flaw, it was in mismanaging the Wings’ blueline

The Score’s Josh Wegman examines 3 reasons why Steve Yzerman’s master plan for renovating the Detroit Red Wings did not work out, and if I had to circle one and only one reason why things didn’t work out, I’d agree with Wegman’s assessment that the Wings management team mismanaged its blueline:

Detroit’s biggest weakness over the last several years has been the blue line. Seider and Edvinsson formed an excellent top pairing this past season, but the rest of the defense struggled to pull its weight, which was a major culprit in Detroit crumbling down the stretch and missing the playoffs for the 10th straight season.

In an alternate universe, defense could’ve been one of the team’s strengths.

Filip Hronek and Jake Walman are two players Yzerman should regret trading. Hronek has developed into a legitimate top-pairing defenseman. He was an ascending 25-year-old when the Red Wings shipped him to the Vancouver Canucks in 2023, even though he was young enough to fit in Detroit’s contention window. The return of first- and second-round picks wasn’t terrible, but Detroit would surely rather have Hronek anchoring the second pair behind Seider right now.

The Red Wings were unable to retain the services of Shayne Gostisbehere, too, and that really set them back…

The Walman trade was arguably Yzerman’s most puzzling move. Although Walman came into his own with the Red Wings and had good chemistry with Seider on the top pair, the Red Wings traded him – along with a second-round pick – to San Jose for future considerations during the 2024 offseason. Less than a year later, the Sharks flipped Walman to the Edmonton Oilers for a first-rounder. Last year, the Oilers deemed Walman worthy of a seven-year, $49-million extension.

If Yzerman had kept Walman and Hronek, the Red Wings wouldn’t have had to trot out Ben Chiarot in a top-four role he clearly can’t handle for the last several seasons. (To make matters worse, Yzerman gave the 35-year-old a three-year extension with a $3.85-million AAV this past season.) And the Red Wings also wouldn’t have had to give up a package including a first-round pick for 34-year-old Justin Faulk at the 2026 deadline.

Continued; Chiarot’s gotten better over time, but the Faulk trade was an over-payment…And we’ll just have to see whether he’s able to play well over the course of the next two seasons to justify his cost.

Tweet of note: Perhaps the feeling was mutual?

Those who seem to be “in the know” regarding Steve Yzerman’s demotion from general manager to advisor to CEO and governor Chris Ilitch have suggested the same thing over the course of different columns, articles and radio “hits.”

They all argue that the peculiar timing of Yzerman’s exit suggests that the GM is the one who decided to walk away from his position, whether it was due to frustration, exasperation regarding the Dylan Larkin situation, or simply wanting “out” of the GM’s role.

The Detroit News’s Bob Wojnowski adds a cogent point here:

It’s very well possible that Yzerman simply didn’t want to retool the rebuild, and chose to let more capable hands deal with the frustration of taking yet another step back in order to take steps forward.

It’s likely that stubbornness sank the ‘Yzerplan’

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.

HSJ surmises that the Red Wings and Dylan Larkin can revise their break-up

The Free Press’s Helene St. James wonders aloud whether the Red Wings and Dylan Larkin can head-off their break-up:

Now [Yzerman’s] no longer running the team, and CEO Christopher Ilitch would be well served by reaching out to Larkin to see if he’ll rethink his request. For Larkin, too, this is a way to not be seen as the villain of his hometown NHL team, of abandoning the team that drafted him in 2014 and named him captain in 2021. He’s from here. His family is here. He’s built a life here.

For the Wings, it might also mean Patrick Kane returns. He and Larkin are very tight (and share an agent). Kane has talked at length about how much he has enjoyed his time in Detroit and playing for the Wings and how much his young son loves the team (specifically, getting “knucks” from players as they come off the ice from warmups). Kane reportedly is considering the Chicago Blackhawks (where he forged his future Hockey Hall of Fame career − but they’re far from looking like a playoff team these days). There’s also the Buffalo Sabres, his hometown team.

With Larkin and Kane back, the Wings look much more stable. Yes, the next general manager will need to find ways to add more quality players, but that’s been an issue for years.

Can a reconciliation work? Of course it can. Ilitch and Larkin hold a joint press conference, say they’ve decided to move forward, shake hands and pose for pictures. Or do what Columbus Blue Jackets star Zach Werenski and GM Don Waddell did when a rift erupted there: put out joint statements explaining they’d made up.

Continued (paywall); I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe that it’s gonna happen.

Three questions amidst the Wings’ tumultuous offseason

In his latest “Red Light Newsletter,” The Athletic’s Sean McIndoe weighs in on the Red Wings’ tumultuous offseason:

We had a bit of a bomb dropped on us yesterday, in what’s normally the slow-news dead zone of mid-July: Steve Yzerman is out in Detroit.

Well, not “out,” at least not all the way. Instead, Yzerman has been kicked upstairs, where he’ll be an advisor to owner Chris Ilitch. That’s not quite the same as being sent to the unemployment line, but make no mistake — this is the Red Wings firing Yzerman as GM, in spirit if not in so many words.

Max Bultman goes deeper on what it all means, but in the immediate aftermath, three questions loom:

What now for the Red Wings?

Continue reading Three questions amidst the Wings’ tumultuous offseason