What We Learned: What does a coaching change really mean for the Detroit Red Wings?
If you're a rebuilding team, the absolute last thing you want to happen is for another rebuilding team to blow past you.
But that's how it is with the Detroit Red Wings this year. They missed the playoffs by almost the narrowest possible margin — the regulation-win tiebreaker — and their general manager said last week that he thought they could compete for a Wild Card spot this season.
But the fact that Steve Yzerman made that admission while holding a press conference to discuss why he just fired his coach, you can see very easily that his assessment of the team was well off the mark.
Change absolutely had to be made, and so it was. The question now is whether firing Derek Lalonde and replacing him with Todd McLellan is enough, in itself, to right the ship. Lalonde didn't seem like he had any answers, but I don't know how many coaches on earth could make this particular roster a consistent playoff contender, let alone a team with aspirations of going beyond merely qualifying and getting waxed in the first round.
Meanwhile, the Ottawa Senators, who missed the playoffs by a mile last season, appear to have a pretty decent chance of qualifying for the postseason via the same Wild Card spot Yzerman was apparently aiming for. Not that they’re much more than that—a first-round exit would likely be their most probable outcome if they do get over the hump. However, this comes after years of these two teams jockeying for position in the standings, rarely threatening any of the division’s customary top-four teams (a tradition that has carried over to this year). Each of the last few off-seasons, Detroit and Ottawa have tried to make changes that would finally allow them to create some real separation and maybe even make the playoffs in a way that felt sustainable and repeatable. Who can forget the Summer(s) of Pierre? Sure, most of those additions didn’t move the needle, and some actively set the teams back, but given the playoff format and divisional logjam, it could be spun as worth the effort—because simply accepting their role as the underclass eventually becomes intolerable, not to mention bad for business.
But take a look at the standings now. Ottawa is currently in a comfortable playoff position, though still not among the top four in the Atlantic, and Detroit is one of the worst teams in the league.
It leads one to wonder: what suddenly went right for the Senators? And what went so wrong for the Red Wings that they regressed? Not to be reductive, but here’s a lesson for all such teams trying to break out of Year 4 or 5 of a rebuild: if another team has an elite goalie to offload, it’s time to empty the war chest.
Not that Steve Staios even had to do that much when Boston put a recent Vezina winner like Linus Ullmark on the trade block, but you see the point. In terms of underlying numbers and that sort of thing, the Senators aren’t doing much differently than they did in the previous few years. They’re a better defensive team at 5-on-5, their power-play shooting percentage is up, and their penalty kill is actually less effective at limiting opponents’ chances. But if you’re looking for the big change here, it’s that the team save percentage is right around the middle of the league, as opposed to the second-worst last year. More importantly, that number has been trending upward over the past few months as Ullmark has settled into his new team.
There are plenty of teams that ended up kicking themselves for acquiring what they thought was an elite goalie who turned out to be not worth the money or assets. And maybe you don’t want to peer too far into the future when it comes to Ullmark’s salary and term. Hell, you might not like what he delivers in the second half of this season, especially given that he’s already missing a lengthy road trip due to a recent injury. But right now, the Senators have a level of hope not seen in Ottawa for quite some time, fuelled by a kind of percentage-based individual performance they don’t have to work too hard to believe in.
Contrast that with how Detroit has tried to work through its GM’s eponymous plan. The big-money free-agent additions were all along the lines of 30ish-year-old No. 2 centres and No. 4 defencemen from middling teams that Yzerman was banking on to take a step forward, perhaps when given more opportunity alongside promising young players who, for the most part, have only lightly brushed up against the way some pundits projected their impact. All those veterans ended up devouring cap space in a way that forced Yzerman to scrounge around in the bargain bin for goaltending over the past few years.
Even with the understanding that goaltending is never really a sure thing — ask Chris Drury how things are going for his big-money netminder lately — the question is a simple one: Would you rather your GM give up a high pick and a cap dump to roll the dice with someone like Ullmark, or enter the season hoping one of Cam Talbot, Alex Lyon, Ville Husso, and Jack Campbell can carry you to the promised land (in this case, a Wild Card spot and likely first-round exit)?
It's hard to see that as a problem Lalonde wasn't helping with (not that he was helping with very much), or that McLellan is in a unique position to fix. That's true even if you believe, as you should, that McLellan is a high-end NHL coach.
Detroit's problems go beyond coaching or goaltending, as their team save percentage is only a little below mediocre and Talbot in particular has been great when he's been able to stay in the lineup. The bigger problem is that they couldn't score under Lalonde this year (near the bottom of the league in goals per game) and have a so-so team defense but this is due in large part to Yzerman spending second-line money on a host aging free agents instead of keeping his powder dry so he could push in more aggressively for someone who has potential to be a truly game-breaking talent at the most important position. This is semi-comparable to Detroit signing Patrick Kane, but if Kane had been several years younger and not coming off a bad hip issue. He sort of tried it when trading for Alex DeBrincat, because with hindsight we might be able to say that was Ottawa knowing when to cut bait with a guy who didn't want to re-sign there; DeBrincat is still a very good player, but those 40-goal seasons feel like they were a long time ago, don't they? At a certain point you would have said he has elite-player potential, but now he just looks like the kind of guy who would be a good complementary piece on a Cup contender. Which you can say for a lot of Detroit's biggest contributors. If you want to be harsh, you could say there are no true superstars on that roster. To be a little more gentler, you'd still have to say there's no one who has demonstrated they can consistently play at the superstar level.
To be fair, it could have just as easily not-worked for Staios and again, me writing this today is probably premature because there's still more than half a season to go. But we're talking about process, right? I know Detroit almost made the playoffs last year, but that was because they shot like 16 percent or something for a couple months, and you gotta ask yourself what's most likely to happen for the next 45 or so games: that happening again under a very good coach like McLellan or Ullmark being a top-six-to-eight goalie on earth.
History, like the fact that his .918 career save percentage is the second-highest among active goalies with at least five NHL appearances, tells us there's just more reason to think a player like Ullmark can have that level huge positive impact this season in a way that Kane or DeBrincat or Mortiz Seider or Dylan Larkin, let alone Andrew Copp or Ben Chiarot, couldn't. It's because of the nature of their positions and their track records and where they are in their careers.
At the same time, it must be said that if you’re like Yzerman and thought the Red Wings could be playoff-competitive this year, that was realistically always a pipe dream. For a team in their position—where the ceiling is exceedingly low, even if you like several individual players on the roster and see a strong future with their younger players—being one of the worst teams in the league is, in many ways, a positive. Theoretically, McLellan can give the kids more ice time because the results don’t matter now. That’s perhaps easier to do because few of the overpaid veterans who didn’t work out are signed beyond the next year or two. So keep the picks, obviously, and maybe they can even win the lottery this time. Hell, make some trades for more picks and/or prospects who are closer to contributing. This seems straightforward.
But you’ve got to ask yourself what the McLellan hire, specifically, says about the organisation’s near-term goals. Yzerman arguably isn’t taking the lesson his roster ought to be teaching him—that it’s maybe time to change course or switch approaches. If he’s dead set on being competitive while Larkin, in particular, is still something resembling a needle-mover, Yzerman has to go out and acquire the talent that allows him to do that ASAP. McLellan is a great coach, but he is not a miracle worker. It would take another insane shooting-percentage push just to get into the playoff conversation now.
No one would mistake Ottawa for a Cup contender now or perhaps even in the future. But being in the business of acquiring star players in or around their prime as a means of "taking a step," however you interpret that, should always be more appealing than trying to find middle-six and bottom-four players to make you harder to play against—and, when that doesn’t work, hoping a new coach can fix your unfixable problems.
We’re about to see what Yzerplan B looks like. Maybe he’s learned a lesson.
What We Learned
Anaheim Ducks: Time really flies, hey?
Boston Bruins: Losing to Columbus? That's bad. Beating Columbus? That's good.
Buffalo Sabres: Is THAT the lesson we're learning from the Sabres? Come on.
Calgary Flames: I guess this is better than the alternative but at the same time, you still probably don't wanna look at the on-ice value relative to the AAV.
Carolina Hurricanes: This accomplishment feels insane but then you remember about shootout wins and it's like "oh right okay never mind."
Chicago: Not the kind of story I expected to see in GQ, but okay.
Colorado Avalanche: Man I just don't know about this. What's the rush? What are the odds this ends up being even a "good" contract? I think it can be a reasonable contract, but they're buying awful high on a vanishingly small sample.
Columbus Blue Jackets: The puck's jumping into the net on the man advantage these days. Better than the alternative, for sure.
Dallas Stars: Why did they think holding a practice during the holiday break was a good idea? Dumb move! Enjoy the fine!
Detroit Red Wings: McLellan really just needs to juice the pre-shot movement again.
Edmonton Oilers: Getting a little ahead of ourselves, I think.
Florida Panthers: Certainly not the return you're looking for.
Los Angeles Kings: Two regulation losses on home ice this year. That's just about all you can ask for.
Minnesota Wild: I guess that's one way to look at it.
Montreal Canadiens: I am still willing to deny it.
Nashville Predators: Probably the thing about all the points he has in the AHL and they need literally anyone who can put the puck in the net.
New Jersey Devils: Don't know if it's good or bad for the governor of a state to say mean stuff about you. Jury's out.
New York Islanders: If nothing else, every point you take from a division rival moves them one step away from a playoff appearance. Also you get closer, but let's be real here, it's the Islanders.
New York Rangers: Tough quote to give out hours before you get absolutely smoked in Tampa.
Ottawa Senators: You don't wanna know the answer to this one but it's pretty close to "he, personally, didn't."
Philadelphia Flyers: …okay?
Pittsburgh Penguins: That's right.
San Jose Sharks: This is just how it's gonna go sometimes. The cost of doing this particular brand of business.
Seattle Kraken: Fun win here.
St. Louis Blues: Always nice when this kind of thing works out so well.
Tampa Bay Lightning: So hey the Lightning haven't lost two in a row in regulation since early November. They're 13-5-2 in the last 20, outscoring opponents 84-49. Look out.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Tough to see.
Utah [fill in the blank later]: If this is so, then they should have tried to do what Vegas did in its first season — shoot 10 percent and get .930 goaltending from their starter.
Vancouver Canucks: Man, I really wasn't kidding when I said these guys were must-watch. They've been a disaster since a certain someone came back, huh? Three wins in eight games. Tough.
Vegas Golden Knights: Speaking of hot teams like Tampa, Vegas has a 13-2-1 record in the last 16. And you know they're gonna be aggressive.
Washington Capitals: "Ovechkin scores in return from injury" is exactly what I like to see. I won't be looking any further into what kind of goal it was. None of my business. I know he scored at 5-on-5 on Sunday though. Dominating in back-to-backs.
Winnipeg Jets: They're still like a .700 team right now. It's kind of amazing.
Play of the Weekend
This is the goal that allowed UNLV to beat the reigning NCAA national champions in a shootout on the road. Tristan Rand was the hero here. Unreal.
https://x.com/BR_OpenIce/status/1873213088465600543
Gold Star Award
How about Jakub Dobeš? Makes his NHL debut on the road against the defending Stanley Cup champs and pitches a 34-save shutout. Doesn't really get better than that.
Minus of the Weekend
Adam Henrique was minus-4 against the Kings in a 4-3 OT loss with no shots on goal in under 13 minutes of ice time. You can't be doing that out there!
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week
User "NinjaTurtle" wants to tie a record:
Erik Gustafsson for Jordan Oesterle
No good strategic reasons for this depth defenseman swap, just noticed that Gustafsson has suited up for 5 of the Original Six teams and I want him to complete the set.
He’d be the second NHL player after Victor Ivan Lynn to accomplish this feat.
