Red Wings Offseason 2025

[gehringer_2]

10 hours ago, Jason_R said:

Larkin is not going anywhere, but I'm sure Stevie made it clear to him the expectations for continuing to wear the C. I wouldn't be surprised if Stevie asked Larkin if he was prepared to meet those expectations or if Seider should start wearing the C. 

TBH - completely apart from any drama with Larkin, listening to McLellan, I think he'd prefer not to have any designated 'leaders' in the clubhouse at all. Listening to him I get the idea that he thinks that whole 'captain' deal gives the rest of the players too much of a pass for stepping up when they should/could. I guess the league says you are supposed to have a guy on the ice designated to talk to officials, but a team can rotate giving out Cs or As for each game to that end. IIRC the Wings did for while before they tabbed Larkin.

Edited June 9 by gehringer_2

[lordstanley]

The Wings could use some outside leadership in the dressing room. Just like the Wings' seemed to get a bump from its winning culture in the glory years, maybe there is a bit of a loser or doomer mentality within the club when you haven't got out of the regular season in 9 years. Two straight March collapses in a row, or three if you count '23 when they got blown out by Ottawa a couple of times right before the trade deadline. No one knew how to stop the trainwreck. 

[slothfacekilla]

https://www.eliteprospects.com/news/shl/detroit-red-wings-prospect-axel-sandin-pellikka-wins-2025-elite-prospects-award-as-swedens-best-junior-player

 

[Jason_R]

1 hour ago, lordstanley said:

The Wings could use some outside leadership in the dressing room. Just like the Wings' seemed to get a bump from its winning culture in the glory years, maybe there is a bit of a loser or doomer mentality within the club when you haven't got out of the regular season in 9 years. Two straight March collapses in a row, or three if you count '23 when they got blown out by Ottawa a couple of times right before the trade deadline. No one knew how to stop the trainwreck. 

Yes. Feels like this was part of the appeal of people like Copp, Chiarot, Perron, but that “veteran leadership” never really materialized. 

[gehringer_2]

25 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

Yes. Feels like this was part of the appeal of people like Copp, Chiarot, Perron, but that “veteran leadership” never really materialized. 

Leadership will help if the talent is there - McLellan argued the talent was there - I'm not so sure. We've just got too many guys with what are basically low hockey skill levels. Sure - they won some games over a medium stretch when the new coach showed up but I really think that was a mirage. Rasmussen hadn't turned into a better skater etc. 

The other frustrating thing was how the guys that went to the world games all came back flat.

Edited June 9 by gehringer_2

[Shinzaki]

Re sign Kane...add a legit LW for the top line and a top 4 LHD and the outlook looks so much better.

Copp/Compher and Ras can play the third line..they were pretty effective in that role in 23/24 and you can put together a 4th line with Danielson as the C

[gehringer_2]

38 minutes ago, Shinzaki said:

Re sign Kane

not the popular opinion but I wouldn't. To me his scoring is like a band-aid. The team is too deficient to have the luxury of a guy like Kane who doesn't do enough of the things they need to do better.

[slothfacekilla]

Their power play probably gets worse but I'm fine not re-signing Kane as well

[Shinzaki]

If you don't resign Kane..then you have to get two top six wings from outside the org as I don't think any of the guys in the system are ready for that role

[gehringer_2]

22 minutes ago, Shinzaki said:

If you don't resign Kane..then you have to get two top six wings from outside the org as I don't think any of the guys in the system are ready for that role

Someone up thread (Buddha?) noted that the Wings are caught in the mediocre middle. I think that is exactly the case. If they have to get worse in order to build the payroll space to do something a year or two further fine, but if I'm the Wings I want to stop spending money on stop gap guys because all it does is cut off options to make the kind of moves they have to make to get over the hump.

[slothfacekilla]

For what it is worth, if you add in the bonuses he hit then what the Wings paid Kane for last season is less than $1 million below what CapWages is estimating Sam Bennett will get per year this offseason: $5.75 million for Kane and $6.637 per year for 6 years for Bennett and the cap do be going up.  I'm with G2 on wanting a more rounded player for that kind of cash but I also won't poo poo what Kane does bring if he does re-sign.

[buddha]

4 minutes ago, slothfacekilla said:

For what it is worth, if you add in the bonuses he hit then what the Wings paid Kane for last season is less than $1 million below what CapWages is estimating Sam Bennett will get per year this offseason: $5.75 million for Kane and $6.637 per year for 6 years for Bennett and the cap do be going up.  I'm with G2 on wanting a more rounded player for that kind of cash but I also won't poo poo what Kane does bring if he does re-sign.

bennett will get more than that on the open market.  unless he takes a discount to stay with florida.

[buddha]

3 hours ago, Shinzaki said:

Re sign Kane...add a legit LW for the top line and a top 4 LHD and the outlook looks so much better.

Copp/Compher and Ras can play the third line..they were pretty effective in that role in 23/24 and you can put together a 4th line with Danielson as the C

i dont see why anyone wants rasmussen around.  he's been awful since he got hurt.  he's the definition of a passenger on almost every night.  he should be a big, physical player forechecking the mess out of everyone and he just skatea around doing very little most of the time.

i'd be fine replacing him with mazur if that kid could ever stay healthy.  find someone to bet on rasmussen's size somewhere else.

[buddha]

part of signing patrick kane is that he was willing to sign here.

most of the guys who people throw around on here arent willing to come.  heck, the guys we got to come here we had to overpay.

again, up until this offseason, the yzerplan was working fine.  they got better every year.  this was the "gap" year that would be a step back for me.  ive always thought that.

HOWEVAH, this offseason was so dreadful that it really made me question the team's direction for the first time.  i thought this offseason was the one where they go get a star player or trade for one, and maybe they still will, but now EVERYONE has cap space and other teams have a ton more because they dont have copp/compher/chairot contracts weighing them down.

this is make or break offseason for me.  another year of mediocre mush and i'm going to be wondering what the end game is.

if they cant improve then i think that will prove that yzerman's plan - combined with dreadful lottery luck - didnt work.  the idea of a limited teardown and not a full scale demolition (which would have meant trading larkin and not signing compher/chairot/copp to overproced deals to add stability) failed.

but the rational side of me still thinks its just a bit early to go that far.

[slothfacekilla]

43 minutes ago, buddha said:

bennett will get more than that on the open market.  unless he takes a discount to stay with florida.

The more I look at his numbers, the more I feel like if someone does that they are going to regret it.  This season was the only time he's ever broken 50 points (51) and it was on a stacked team...

[Jason_R]

No offense to Steve Yzerman, but there is no "Yzerplan." There was getting rid of bad players and contracts, drafting better players (within the bounds of lottery luck), and filling in the roster gaps each season and across seasons with free agents. 

I know it is popular to say that his pro scouting staff has failed, but I think it is more accurate to say free agents are expensive and he has been reluctant to spend too much money on free agents when he knows he can't build the core of a competitive team on free agents.

The more alarming thing than his free agent acquisitions has been that outside of the top picks, only Johansson and Soderblom have made any contributions. Yes, very little talent from below Round 2 of the NHL Draft ever makes it to the NHL. But when the NHL roster has been so mediocre, and you had all those second-round picks (13 over five drafts), you would think more than one of them could crack the lineup. 

He has done well with his top picks -- and I think the rebuild ends when Danielson, ASP, and one of the goalies makes the roster.

[buddha]

kenny once said rebuilds take 10 years.

well, the rebuild started in 2019.

[gehringer_2]

30 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

I know it is popular to say that his pro scouting staff has failed, but I think it is more accurate to say free agents are expensive and he has been reluctant to spend too much money on free agents when he knows he can't build the core of a competitive team on free agents.

Maybe he just overestimated how far away they were. I think that was pretty easy. Going into the COVID year I thought they were a lot closer than they were too. If he had understood how far they had to go, maybe he doesn't spend at all on those mid-level FAs and he gets to this year or even last year with a war chest big enough to bring in a couple of difference makers to go with the kids. Now they are stuck - the only hope being that next year's rookie crop is enough to turn the tide because they don't have the money to seriously compete for more than one top level FA.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

7 hours ago, slothfacekilla said:

The more I look at his numbers, the more I feel like if someone does that they are going to regret it.  This season was the only time he's ever broken 50 points (51) and it was on a stacked team...

Is this a way of saying he's potentially Andrew Copp 2.0 or worse if he's contract costs significantly more than Copp?

[buddha]

signing gustafsson and tarasenko last year to replace perron and ghost is a failure.  there is no two ways about it.  you would have been better off signing no one or simply re-signing the guys you let go.  trading walman was a failure.

there was no "reluctance to spend money."  they spent the same amount or more on guys who were bad to replace guys who were useful.

i'm also in the "part of free agency is you have to overpay to get guys here and not everyone wants to come to detroit" camp.  i underatand its hard.  but they chose to sign those guys (and trade walman WITH A PICK) last year.  they are accountable for those bad decisions.

[gehringer_2]

3 hours ago, buddha said:

(and trade walman WITH A PICK)

Until we learn otherwise, the Walman thing can't help but put me in mind of the Pistons firing Rick Carlisle. IOW, Yzerman or maybe even Ilitch got PO'd over something that either didn't or shouldn't have had any bearing on hockey.

Of course the big difference being the Pistons lucked into a couple of years of Larry Brown instead of Gustafsson.

Edited Tuesday at 02:35 PM by gehringer_2

[lordstanley]

The two personal conflicts/standoffs I recall from Yzerman's days in Tampa were with Jonathan Drouin and Martin St. Louis. Drouin was traded to Montreal for Mikhail Sergachev who did put up several good years with Tampa. Drouin has had his moments with the Habs and more recently the Avs, but never really lived up to the potential he was thought to have had when drafted #3 overall in 2013. The latter was because 38-year old St. Louis felt snubbed when Yzerman didn't pick him for the '14 Olympic team and demanded a trade. He was traded to the Rangers for Ryan Callahan and a few picks, one of whom was Anthony Cirelli.

https://www.rawcharge.com/revisiting-the-martin-st-louis-trade-tree-tampa-bay-lightning/

 

 

[Jason_R]

13 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Maybe he just overestimated how far away they were. I think that was pretty easy. Going into the COVID year I thought they were a lot closer than they were too. If he had understood how far they had to go, maybe he doesn't spend at all on those mid-level FAs and he gets to this year or even last year with a war chest big enough to bring in a couple of difference makers to go with the kids. Now they are stuck - the only hope being that next year's rookie crop is enough to turn the tide because they don't have the money to seriously compete for more than one top level FA.

I think this assumes his options were to go all in on FA or tank. It seems to imply that he would have or should have traded Larkin. Maybe in retrospect he should have, and he did trade every other talented player from the roster he inherited. But you still need to put a roster on the ice. So who was he going to get to play 1C if he traded Larkin when Larkin was 24 — a 21-year old? Was he supposed to call up his good prospects before they were ready, then fill out the roster with FA who were cheap because nobody wanted them and with players who are no better than minor league fodder? 

he has turned over the roster completely since he arrived with the exception of Larkin. He has drafted several cornerstone players who are playing serious minutes. He traded for another cornerstone player in Debrincat. He has filled in some medium term roster gaps with free agents that he paid market rate for. Maybe he should have done a better job at the margins (what might have been with Walman and Gostisbehere) but look at the roster and prospects he inherited. Not good.

The Wings missing the playoffs the past two years is on the players, in my view, not on Yzerman. He was not out there giving up 25 goals a week during a playoff run. 

[gehringer_2]

32 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

The Wings missing the playoffs the past two years is on the players, in my view, not on Yzerman. He was not out there giving up 25 goals a week during a playoff run

When you aren't fast enough or strong enough to get the puck back when the other team sustains pressure, what do you do? The weird thing about the NHL is that a team has a skill level, then that skill level is either diminished or amplified in each game by the energy level they bring. But over the long run that energy level also has a sustainable maximum that your team can only play above for so long. McLellan came in and their energy level went up, but as the season came to a close and other teams started raising their level, the Wings couldn't meet it. McLellan talked a lot about game management and playing to win as opposed to playing to score, but if all that's going to happen if you make the safe clear is the other team is going to be right back in your zone with sustained pressure because you can't forecheck and they beat you to all the loose pucks and you aren't fast enough to tie them up before they got off a pass or skilled enough to anticipate a passing lane or get a take away at the boards, you are still going to give up late game winners. You see it when the Wings go into 'fall back' mode and you know the game is an inevitable loss. You will never be a winning team if you have to go into turtle mode for long minutes at the end of every game.

There is always a ton of discussion about how much all the things other than talent matter, because talking about talent all the time get boring,  but in the end, in athletic competition talent is still what drives the outcome most of the time.

Edited Tuesday at 05:02 PM by gehringer_2

[Mr.TaterSalad]

If it's on the players that we missed the playoffs isn't it also on the front office and GM who chose to bring those players into the organization and/or keep them around? Also, when we collapsed at the end of the season under Fester Adams, no one made Yzerman keep Lalonde around and bring him back to start this season. Again, I'm not calling for Yzerman's head or anything, just for him to share in the blame a bit for where this organization is at and the neutral gear we've seemingly been stuck in the last two years after experiencing some growth early on.