Another season (practically) in the books.
Derek Lalonde (James Guillory-Imagn Images)
Another season of missing the playoffs.
The Detroit Red Wings find themselves on the outside looking in for another year. But, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Steve Yzerman “tried” to improve the team over the course of the year. However, his failure in three areas proved to be the downfall of the team this season.
Yzerman showed faith in his group by not doing too much to disrupt the chemistry of the Red Wings at the trade deadline. The problem with that, is maybe the team could have used more of a disruption?
Smith and Mrazek were fumbles for different reasons. For Smith, he had a revolving door of linemates throughout his tenure with the Red Wings. He spent most of his time on a line with Tyler Motte and Austin Watson. In 18 games, he recorded two assists while averaging 10:27 a night.
Mrazek performed well for the team, posting a 2.49 goals against average and a .902 save percentage. The biggest problem there was he only played in five games because of injuries.
Because no one saw that coming (sarcasm).
Tarasenko could have been a great addition to the Red Wings, if they had signed him five years ago.
It was clear that this was a mismatch between team and player from the start. Tarasenko finished the year with an 8.3 shooting percentage, the second lowest of his career. To make matters worse, he shot the puck 1.7 times per game, the lowest of his career.
Tarasenko ended the year with 32 points. The only times he has recorded less than 40 points in a season were when he did not play the majority of games.
He recorded 19 points in his rookie season (38 games played), 10 in 2019-20 (10 games), and 14 points in 2020-21 (24 games).
On the flip side, the best move that Yzerman made this year was hiring Todd McLellan to coach the team. The only way he could have improved in this area was if he had pulled the trigger on Derek Lalonde earlier.
With Lalonde at the helm, the Red Wings had 30 points to go along with a record of 13-17-4 in 34 games. That was good enough for the 27th record in the NHL.
With McLellan, they had 55 points in 47 games, with the 14th-best record of 26-18-3. For perspective, the 13 teams with a better record than the Red Wings from Christmas to the end of the season made the playoffs.
