There was quite some time during the 2025-26 season when the Detroit Red Wings looked like they were finally going to end their nine-year Stanley Cup playoff drought.

They went 31-16-4 through Jan. 21, and as they headed to the Olympic break, they were among the front-runners to win the highly competitive Atlantic Division. 

But from that point on, the Wings went 10-15-6, falling out of the playoff picture completely.

Adding insult to injury, the Red Wings’ captain, Dylan Larkin, requested a trade at season’s end. That was the low point in Detroit’s terrible off-season. This is why the Wings are dead-last – 32nd overall – when it comes to TheHockeyNews.com’s brand-new off-season rankings. 

Moving in reverse, we’re ranking every team’s off-season, focusing on arrivals, departures (including coaching and management members), free-agent and trade moves. 

The Red Wings didn’t get better this off-season. To the contrary – they now seem like the only team in the Atlantic that will not be competing for a playoff spot in 2026-27.

Let’s examine all the reasons the Wings had the worst off-season of any team:

Viktor Arvidsson (RW), Keegan Kolesar (RW) Daniil Tarasov (G), New GM (incoming)

Before the Wings announced he was leaving as GM, Yzerman made a handful of off-season moves, only one of which we see as adding talent to the roster.

That one move is picking up Arvidsson, who posted 25 goals and 54 points in 69 games with the Boston Bruins last season. Arvidsson signed for two years at $5 million per season, and he’ll help a Wings offense that finished 22nd in the NHL at 2.91 goals-for per game. But he can’t help the Wings to the degree they need. 

Otherwise, there are not many names of note. Arvidsson can replace some offence lost with the departures of veteran wingers Patrick Kane and James van Riemsdyk, but Detroit’s defense corps didn’t get any help from Yzerman. Acquiring a 27-year-old journeyman goalie in former Florida Panthers and Columbus Blue Jackets goalie Daniil Tarasov doesn’t move the needle in a positive direction, either.

Meanwhile, former Vegas Golden Knights winger Kolesar slightly helps Detroit’s forwards, but if he’s your second or third most-notable addition, that’s a major indictment of your off-season. So is the fact two of your top-10 scorers this past year – Kane, and van Riemsdyk – have left and not been adequately replaced.

Yzerman’s moves – or lack thereof – are baffling at best and abysmal at worst. Veteran goalie Cam Talbot was replaced by Tarasov, who posted a .895 save percentage last year – the second time in the past two seasons Tarasov’s save percentage was below the .900 mark.  

John Gibson will get the bulk of the workload next season, but their goaltending might’ve become worse – and that’s saying something, given that Detroit was 19th in the league last season with a 3.10 goals-against average.

It’s just about bad news all around in terms of off-season additions.

Steve Yzerman (GM), Cam Talbot (G), Patrick Kane (RW), James van Riemsdyk (LW), David Perron (LW)

Yzerman is an all-time great player, and he’s earned his status as a Wings icon. But it’s a measure of the goodwill Yzerman has lost that there was no outrage online when the Wings announced they were parting ways with him. 

It’s not just Larkin’s trade request that cemented Detroit as having the worst off-season. It’s the fact they chose to wait until the free-agency frenzy and the draft were long over to announce Yzerman’s departure.

And here we are, just a few weeks away from NHL training camp starting, and the Red Wings don’t have a permanent replacement for Yzerman. 

The best option – or at least, this writer’s preferred option – would be for the new Red Wings GM to come in, tear it down almost completely, and focus on acquiring generational talent to serve as their new foundation. Yzerman was unwilling to do that, and if his replacement follows Yzerman’s lead, the Wings could be destined to be a ‘Mushy Middle’ team, forever out of a playoff spot, forever far from a generational talent joining the team in the draft.

Yzerman as GM is Detroit’s biggest departure, but his exit was his own doing. Yzerman could’ve been bolder. Instead, he clung to his core, rewarded them when it wasn’t warranted, and ended up paying the price for it.

It’s stunning how Yzerman was unwilling to acquire pieces that could get his team into the playoffs. It wasn’t as if the Red Wings were up against the salary cap ceiling. It wasn’t like Detroit ownership had him operating on a low budget. But year after year under Yzerman, the Wings did not improve. 

We’re not here to pile on Yzerman and the Wings. For a very long time, Detroit was the league’s gold-standard organization. But game by game, year by year, the Red Wings have become radioactive. To have a hometown hero in Larkin demanding his way out of town shows that the Wings have completely cratered as an organization. No matter what happens with Larkin, the Red Wings are now at least a few years away from being a few years away.

Red Wings fans had great Detroit teams to cheer on for multiple generations of the team. But Yzerman’s almost-complete paralysis when it comes to making big moves is the reason the Wings are where they are today.

Even now, the Wings have $19.5 million in salary cap space, and no high-impact player wants to take it from them. While it may have hurt them to give Kane the $8 million per-season contract he got from the Chicago Blackhawks, the Red Wings had the cap space to beat virtually any offer, and once again, they came up short. There’s a pattern here, and not a good one.

You can see why Wings fans might feel despondent right now. There once was a day players fell over each other trying to play as a Red Wing, but that day feels like forever ago. Nothing that’s happened this summer suggests there’s light at the end of Detroit’s tunnel.

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