From The Silky Mitten State: Are the Red Wings still trending upward, and does that trend include a championship somewhere on the horizon?
On last week's episode of The Silky Mitten State, my co-host Connor Earegood and I tried to have a macro conversation about the Red Wings' direction of travel under Steve Yzerman's stewardship. Detroit has improved in the standings each year under Yzerman (in part because of the threadbare roster AND prospect pool he inherited, thus establishing the lowliest of floors), but the 2024-25 season looks to be the firmest test yet of that trend.
In comparing the coming roster (with the caveat that further maneuvering could still come before opening night) to the outgoing one, Connor and I struggled to see major improvement. Cam Talbot looks like a low risk, high-upside option in net, but the defense corps (which already looked uneven in quality) looks to have taken a step back, while the forward group added some quality veterans in Vladimir Tarasenko and Tyler Motte, while losing significant production in David Perron, Daniel Sprong, and Robby Fabbri. Perhaps the new group is equal to the level of the previous one, but that team fell short even of the postseason, while a number of teams around the Eastern Conference playoff bubble (the Capitals, the Devils, the Islanders, and the Senators) made impactful improvements.
It is worth pointing out that one clear path to drastic and rapid improvement is if one or more of the youngsters vying for a role on this team (Simon Edvinsson, Jonatan Berggren, Carter Mazur, or Marco Kasper) can become a consistently high-impact NHL player this season, that would go a long way to pushing Detroit above expectations. Perhaps it's not so far fetched. Both Berggren and Edvinsson (in their own ways) have shown the ability to do so in spurts for the Red Wings, though of course consistency is always the biggest challenge for a young player.
However, Yzerman himself has pointed out that the objective is not simply cracking the playoffs once but rather building a team that can make the postseason year over year. From there, of course, a question begs: how does that consistent playoff team then push on to becoming a championship team, beyond simply maximizing the number of kicks at the can?
It's this question that I think casts the most significant shadow over the Red Wings' future. The challenge is not just the queue for the playoffs right now; in the more distant timeline of the pursuit of a championship, present rebuilders like the Canadiens, Sharks, or Blackhawks will join in the chase. Those teams, through tanking and lottery luck, all have number one overall draft picks in their arsenals. It's not that Detroit's core-in-construction can't match those other, but the many contenders for the crown raise questions about a group that has seemingly attempted to accelerate out of the rebuild but not yet made the playoffs.
