Amid a losing streak that has damaged the Red Wings' playoff prospects, Steve Yzerman's patient approach to this season brings as much promise for the future as pain in the present
Amid a losing streak that has damaged the Red Wings' playoff prospects, Steve Yzerman's patient approach to this season brings as much promise for the future as pain in the present
“Beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway.” — Hunter S. Thompson
No one loves its winners and hates its losers quite like Las Vegas. The spin of a wheel or the deal of a hand can make or break anybody, and when the hits start coming, it can feel like they’ll never stop. So it was fitting that a 5-3 loss to Vegas — its fifth straight loss after six straight wins — continued a span in which the Detroit Red Wings have rubbed elbows with both sides.
The lucky feeling, the enthusiasm the Red Wings held just a week ago has largely dissipated, being replaced by a preview of the heartbreak they’d feel if they fully missed the playoffs. For the first time in seven years, it seemed as though Detroit would end the NHL’s second-longest postseason drought. After a reserved trade deadline and the current slump, playoffs feel like a distant dream.
Even so, Detroit’s playoff patience is as wise as it is frustrating. Five years into a rebuild without a playoff appearance to show for his trouble, it’s understandable to be impatient with Steve Yzerman’s slow rebuild. But with it comes the promise of a better future when his draft picks ripen, one that looks to be more competitive than this season’s squad.
None of the features of this losing streak came out of nowhere. In fact, the Red Wings have faced their flaws all season. They’ve worked around imperfect goaltending, relying on Alex Lyon to punch above his weight class all season. They’ve battled the injury bug, especially in a forgettable December that once drove them out of the playoff picture. And without Dylan Larkin in the lineup, they’ve shown their lack of star power among an otherwise deep roster. Right now, though, all three are hitting at the same time in a way that’s hard to manage. If luck be a lady, Detroit's been sleeping on the couch.
Yzerman had a chance to fix that to some degree two days ago at the NHL trade deadline. A rental might have helped his team deal with Larkin's injury or upgrade from an average situation in net. Instead, Yzerman stood pat. While a seat at the playoff table meant he’s still chasing the Stanley Cup pot in the middle, the state of his roster doesn’t mean he wants to go all-in.
So instead of betting, he checked.
“We're still trying to build,” Yzerman said Friday in a post-deadline press conference. “We’re not one of those top teams that's willing to give up — or at least I'm not willing to give up — first round picks, some top prospects to get in on some of those rental players or high-price free agents at the deadline.”
Building doesn’t preclude competing, but in this case a deadline move didn’t make sense. His team is too deep to benefit from most deadline additions available, and the kind of star-level players that could improve it don’t come cheap. That forced Yzerman to stay reserved, even if it’s difficult to, so that he can preserve something special down the line.
Even so, against the backdrop of a season in which anything but playoffs seems like a failure, patience is a virtue increasingly harder to sanctify. From the very outset, this team was built with the intention of playing in April and May. That’s why Yzerman traded for Alex DeBrincat, signed Patrick Kane and prioritized veterans that kept ready prospects like Jonatan Berggren and Simon Edvinsson down in Grand Rapids. For the better part of this season, that all worked, and overall it still has — the Red Wings are battling for a playoff bid deeper into the season than ever before in this drought.
But this five-game losing streak threatens to undue that progress. And five years into the rebuild, that's a hard pill to swallow. Detroit might not have pocket aces, but it’s sitting at the playoff table with a shot to do something. In an NHL with increasing parity, that’s really all they need to justify going for it.
That’s something that Vegas, of all places, understands. After winning the Stanley Cup last season, it followed its yearly tradition of trading off its futures for immediate help. Tomas Hertl, Anthony Mantha and Noah Hanifin all became Golden Knights and beefed up an already successful roster. Detroit got an up close and personal look at the effects in Saturday's loss.
But Detroit isn’t Vegas, even if the latter’s confidence inspires envy. The difference is that Vegas has the depth and experience to make some noise in the playoffs, as does Colorado, Florida and Carolina who also bought at the deadline. Detroit doesn’t have the resume to back up such a claim.
As much as the any-given-Sunday nature of playoff hockey means the Red Wings have a chance to win a playoff series, luck runs out when given the opportunity. And if luck is all they’re leaning on — the advantages of a deep team aside — they don’t seem primed to make noise in the playoffs. That doesn’t mean Yzerman doesn’t want to make it in, but it also doesn’t mean he wants to mortgage anything to get there.
Floating in playoff purgatory might sting for a fan base deadset on the playoffs, but this past week is a reminder to check enthusiasm for reality. Yzerman’s best bet is the future where the prospects he’s drafted are on the team — when Edvinsson, Axel Sandin Pellikka, Sebastian Cossa and Marco Kasper, among others, all wear the Winged Wheel. It’s going to take some time.
“I'm going to be very conservative, but I think we have a good group of young prospects. We still have … eight draft picks this year, eight draft picks next year and all of ours moving forward,” Yzerman said. “We're building a nucleus of young prospects that are going to be a part of this team. We're slowly seeing some of those kids in (Grand Rapids), not only develop from junior and college and Europe into good American League players, they're just slowly moving up the pipeline.”
In the meantime, this current Detroit team has to lean on what got it here. That roster can lose five straight, just as much as it can win six. It can drop a 4-0 disaster class against Arizona, and it can beat Colorado at home. Hockey is a game of luck, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s a gambler. Sometimes, holding firm is a wise bet.
Whether or not the current state of the franchise is becoming of Yzerman's fifth year at the helm is an entirely different argument, but all the Red Wings can do is keep competing. There are still 18 games left for Yzerman’s playoff patience to prove wise or woeful, and Detroit will need a whole lot to go their way to steer toward the former. However much this season was supposed to be the year the Red Wings broke through, it’s nonetheless another step in the team’s development.
So while the enthusiasm of a playoff race makes it seem like Detroit's postseason hopes are do or die, this year isn’t the be-all end-all to Yzerman’s plan. Don't let the pain of patience distract from that.
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