The Detroit Red Wings have missed the playoffs nine years in a row and all six years of the Steve Yzerman era. They are not really getting any closer to ending that drought, either.
At some point that is going to have to change, and Red Wings fans — as well as the Red Wings organization — should no longer be satisfied to just sit and watch losing season after losing season while they keep waiting for prospects to develop.
Is the Red Wings farm system strong? It is.
Do they have a good core of talent at the NHL level they should be able to build around? They absolutely do.
But at some point you have to do something to meaningfully complement those young players and that core and make the team itself better. Every successful rebuild has had to be supported by strong free agent signings and good trades. It’s not all about prospect development. You might need the farm system to produce the top four or five players on the roster, but no farm system is going to produce enough to build an entire roster from top-to-bottom.
The Red Wings issue in the Yzerman era is they have whiffed on a lot of their free agency signings and trades, and have not been able to meaningfully address their flaws.
In every year of the Yzerman era — including this past season — they have been a sub-par 5-on-5 team in terms of goals and defensive play, they have not been able to find consistent goaltending, and there have been some dreadful NHL-scouting decisions.
Captain Dylan Larkin spoke out after the season about how disappointed the locker room was that more wasn’t done to help the team at the trade deadline. That was really the first time you heard somebody within the organization show some frustration about the methodical pace of this rebuild. Enough time has passed that the Red Wings can’t keep pointing at the mess Ken Holland left behind as an excuse for why the team is not competing.
It is time to get better.
