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The Athletic’s fan poll ranks the Red Wings’ front office 23rd-best

Dom Luszczyszyn offers The Athletic’s annual rankings of the NHL’s front offices per fan responses this morning, and the Red Wings have dropped from 21st overall to 23rd overall in the rankings:

23. Detroit Red Wings

2024 ranking: 21

“I am having trouble seeing the vision. For teams to get better you can’t just hit on your first round picks. You need some solid acquisitions from FA, trades, waiver pickups. Other than drafting, I don’t see the Wings doing well in any of those areas (DeBrincat trade aside) and I can’t help but feel we are going to be stuck in the 9-15 range for the upcoming years.”

“I see the vision, and I kinda get it, but it’s just not working. Still dealing with stopgaps like the Chiarot deal while we wait for prospects to improve. And if they don’t improve enough, then it’s more stopgaps and see if they get better next year. Meanwhile Larkin only gets older.”

Confidence in the Yzerplan continues to dwindle with each passing year as the Red Wings once again did not have the results to show for it. While there’s still some patience within the fan base after some large strides from the young core last season, it is beginning to wear thin. This season will be a massive one for understanding where this team’s ultimate ceiling lies.

To Steve Yzerman’s credit, the deals he signed for Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider last year have aged phenomenally. The two have grown into cornerstone pieces and are priced at a bargain rate, creating some confidence for the future.

The question is whether they will line up with Dylan Larkin’s timeline as he approaches his 30s. As much as fans believe in the team’s drafting and (slow) developing, some tangible results need to start appearing soon, especially as some stopgap free agents start getting pushed out. In that regard, there’s still not a lot of confidence in Detroit’s ability to navigate that field given recent failures in the area.

The one major slight that really puts a significant damper on things was the Jake Walman trade. That the Red Wings needed to attach a second-round pick to offload his money last summer was baffling at the time and looks even worse now. He was an immediate difference-maker for the Sharks, netted a first at the deadline and looked fantastic for the Oilers. That’s a lot of needless value lost that limits confidence in future trades.

Continued (paywall); the fact that the Red Wings have yet to address their summertime needs, goaltending excluded, doesn’t help the Wings, either.

I still believe in Yzerman and the management team’s plan, but it’s definitely too slow right now.

Monarrez: Red Wings’ retirement of #91 buries the hatchet

The Free Press’s Carlos Monarrez suggests that the Red Wings took time choosing whether to retire Sergei Fedorov’s #91 because of the $28 million offer sheet he signed with Carolina in 1998, as well as the bitter divorce between Fedorov and the team when he left for Anaheim in the summer of 2003:

I never got to know Mike Ilitch, but anyone who knew him would tell you that his two overriding characteristics as a team owner were his willingness to spend to get a winner and the importance of loyalty.

So it must have hurt Mike Ilitch when Fedorov, fresh off leading the Red Wings to their first Stanley Cup in 1997, was a lengthy contract holdout to start the next season. In February 1998, he signed a draconian contract offer sheet with the Hurricanes, who were owned then by Ilitch’s Detroit business rival Peter Karmanos.

It’s hard to explain how bitter the rivalry was between Ilitch and Karmanos in the 90’s. They were all but mortal enemies, battling on the hockey scene with the Little Caesars amateur team battling the mighty Compuware franchise, and Ilitch and Karmanos trading barbs in the media…

The offer sheet was designed to force Ilitch’s hand and penalize the Wings’ playoff success financially, which it did by forcing Ilitch to pay Fedorov a whopping $28 million for 43 games. Of course, to Red Wings fans, that must have felt like a bargain after Fedorov helped the Wings win their second straight Cup and led the playoffs with 10 goals.

I can only imagine Mike Ilitch must have felt about Fedorov’s contractual power play with Karmanos the way Michael Corleone felt about Tessio betraying him by joining Barzini and Tattaglia in “The Godfather.”

After Mike Ilitch matched the offer sheet he couldn’t refuse, Fedorov burned him one more time and perhaps more hurtfully when he spurned a five-year, $50 million offer made personally by Ilitch to join the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in 2003-04. After 13 years in Detroit, Fedorov was gone.

And don’t forget it was Mike Ilitch who approved all the work the Wings put into helping Fedorov defect in July 1990.

Again, it’s hard to say what happened in 2003, because Fedorov and his agent, Pat Brisson, insisted that the Red Wings pulled that $50 million offer off the table, forcing him to take the Ducks’ 6-year pact…

Monarrez also notes the following about Chris Ilitch’s Red Wings…

Fedorov was a marvel and watching him was often worth the price of admission alone. And if you want to attend the ceremony in January, you’ll have to pony up because the ticket is part of a five-game package. And it’s only fitting that it comes against the Hurricanes.

DeBrincat De Underdog

As noted yesterday, Dylan Larkin and Patrick Kane were among the 44 players invited to Team USA’s Olympic Orientation Camp on August 26th and 27th at USA Hockey Arena, but Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen notes that Alex DeBrincat’s 39-goal 2024-2025 season wasn’t enough to earn an invite.

DeBrincat is entering his ninth NHL campaign, averaging 31.6 goals per season, and it still feels like the 5-foot-8 forward has to prove himself. During his draft year, he was a first-round talent who slipped to Chicago in the second round because scouts believed him to be too small. Team USA cut DeBrincat in his final season of eligibility for the World Junior Championships, even though at the time he showed 132 goals in 156 games over three seasons with the Erie Otters.

With the hockey world doubting him, he made the Blackhawks without playing a single game in the American Hockey League. He scored 28 goals in his rookie NHL season and still could not finish better than 10th in the Calder Trophy voting.

DeBrincat has never received the appreciation his performance level warrants.

The Michigan native scored 27 or more goals seven times in his eight years in the show. GM Steve Yzerman’s best trade as a Red Wings general manager was acquiring DeBrincat from the Ottawa Senators. He gave up Dominik Kubalik, Donovan Sebrango, a first-round pick and a fourth to land a pure goal scorer who has scored 27 goals twice, and 39 goals once since coming to Detroit.

DeBrincat’s 39 goals ranked fourth among Americans, trailing only Tage Thompson (42), and Jake Guentzel and Kyle Connor who both netted 41 goals.

There is good news, however, in the fact that DeBrincat can still play his way onto the team:

Attending the camp doesn’t mean a player will play at the Olympics. Almost half of the invitees will not be named to the final roster for the 2026 Olympics in Italy (Feb. 5-22).

Waiting for Buchelnikov

I try not to put too much stock in preseason performances, but Red Wings prospect Dmitri Buchelnikov scored quite the goal for CSKA Moscow in a preseason game yesterday, per Red Wings Prospects on Twitter…

And yes, Sergei Fedorov’s still involved with CSKA, so he’s been eying the 21-year-old, who’s still listed at 5’10” and 170 pounds…

But Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff notes that Buchelnikov’s tantalizing talents are stuck in Moscow for at least one more European season:

Continue reading Waiting for Buchelnikov

The next numbers to rise to the rafters

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff wonders aloud which number the Red Wings might retire next, and he offers a very good representative list with Pavel Datsyuk’s #13, Henrik Zetterberg’s #40, Chris Osgood’s #30, and the concept of officially retiring Larry Aurie’s #6, which has not been in circulation for some time.

Who’s Larry Aurie? Duff explains:

Is It Time To Make Aurie (No. 6) Official?

Only the most ardent of Red Wings fans know the story of Larry Aurie. Joining the team in 1927, Aurie played 11 seasons with the team, winning two Stanley Cups. He was on his way to an NHL scoring title in 1936-37 when a late-season leg fracture derailed his chance. He still wound up with an NHL-leading 23 goals.

Red Wings coach-GM Jack Adams held the 5-foot-6 winger in the highest regard. “Pound for pound, he has more courage than any player hockey has ever known,” Adams told the Associated Press in 1937. When Aurie played his final game for the Wings, Adams deemed that no other player would ever wear his No. 6 jersey.

“It wouldn’t seem right for anyone else to wear it,” Adams said.

Since that day, Cummy Burton, Aurie’s nephew, is the only Detroit player to don No. 6, at the request of his uncle. However, the digit was never officially retired.

“The papers were never filed with the league,” former Red Wings director of media relations Bill Jamieson once explained. In the 1990s, the Red Wings considered returning No. 6 to circulation, but thought better of it.

“We decided those were Jack’s wishes and decided not to do so,” Jamieson said.

Continued; I’d still love to see the Red Wings establish a Hall of Fame or “Ring of Honor” so that the Grind Line, Tomas Holmstrom, Vladimir Konstantinov and others could be honored despite not quite making it up to the rafters.

The Red Wings could of course hold “theme nights” to honor the players involved, and that would yield a fair amount of ticket sale $, too, so it’s a win-win proposition in my book.

Video link: NHL Network’s Mike Kelly, Bruce Boudreau talk about the John Gibson trade

I can’t embed the video as NHL.com’s ditched its embed code, but the NHL Network’s Mike Kelly and Bruce Boudreau discusses the Red Wings’ addition of goaltender John Gibson from two perspectives, with Kelly and Boudreau endorsing Gibson’s attempts to stabilize the Ducks as translating into a potentially dominant goaltender in-waiting for Detroit.

They also talk about Edmonton’s Isaac Howard and Seattle’s Mason Marchment.