Two years ago, Detroit Red Wings fans’ faith in their front office was nearly unassailable.
Even on the heels of a sixth consecutive season outside the playoffs, with a bottom-eight record in the NHL, Detroit ranked third on The Athletic’s annual survey of front-office confidence — behind only the two most recent Stanley Cup champions. That ranking said everything about fans’ faith in general manager Steve Yzerman to get the Red Wings back to their former glory.
But just two years later, it appears that faith has been shaken. In the 2024 front-office confidence ranking, published last week by Dom Luszczyszyn, the Red Wings have fallen all the way down to 21st after already dropping to 12th in 2023.
The nine-spot drop in 2024 was the sixth-largest of any team (behind only the Penguins, Kings, Sabres, Kraken and Wild) and came with some striking peripherals. Luszczyszyn reported 45 percent of the fan base felt less confident in the team over the last year. Even more jarring, after the team didn’t grade below an A-minus in any of the six surveyed categories — roster building, cap management, drafting and developing, trading, free agency and vision — two years ago, Detroit now has only one grade above a B-minus.
That’s quite the drop, especially considering the team has improved in the standings in each of the last two years and has improved in every season since Yzerman’s first year in 2019-20.
So, what’s behind the drop in confidence? Let’s take a category-by-category examination, comparing the fan grades from 2023 to 2024 and the best explanations for why they’ve changed.
Roster Building
2023 fan grade: B
2024 fan grade: C+
This is the category most directly correlated with the strength of the current NHL team, so it’s notable to see the drop here. On one hand, Detroit gained 11 standings points last season and came within a tiebreaker of making the playoffs, largely because of a clearly improved roster. On the other hand, the roster has already changed somewhat significantly from that group, with contributors such as David Perron, Robby Fabbri, Daniel Sprong, Shayne Gostisbehere, Jake Walman and James Reimer all departing this summer, replaced in free agency by Vladimir Tarasenko, Tyler Motte, Erik Gustafsson and Cam Talbot.
Outside of Tarasenko, those additions aren’t especially splashy, and odds are, after finishing ninth in NHL scoring last season, the Red Wings will see a bit less offense in 2024-25. They’ll bank on improved defense and goaltending — and perhaps more natural role fits — to make up for that, along with internal growth from players such as top defense prospect Simon Edvinsson. But as I’ve written, I’m not optimistic that they’ve improved the roster, and that could add up to a slight step back this season.
The difference in grades could have less to do with this summer’s roster changes specifically and more with a growing sense that the Red Wings lack star power, even after adding Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane last season. That’s a valid concern, albeit one that’s less practically solvable in the short term. But in either case, the data is pretty clear: Fans are less enthused about Yzerman’s roster building than they were one year ago.
One more potentially relevant factor in assessing this category: the team’s use of young players. Not having a path to early playing time for Edvinsson was one of my biggest criticisms of the 2023 offseason, and while there is still a chance for this year’s top young contenders, Carter Mazur and Marco Kasper, to make the lineup, it’s nonetheless noticeable how much slower Detroit brings along young players than some of its peers, namely Buffalo, Anaheim and New Jersey.
Cap management
2023 rating: B+
2024 rating: C+
This was one of the biggest single-category drops, which was interesting after a summer in which Detroit didn’t make major cap commitments. All of their 2024 free-agent contracts were one- or two-year deals.
The logical conclusion, then, is that the drop can most likely be attributed to seeing how already-signed contracts are playing out. Justin Holl, who signed last summer on a three-year deal worth $3.4 million annually, was scratched in more than half the team’s games last season. The team had to attach a second-round pick to trade Walman, who signed an identical contract to Holl’s at the 2023 trade deadline, and had to give away their sixth-leading goal scorer, Fabbri, essentially for free to shed his $4 million cap hit. They did the same with Klim Kostin’s $2 million hit at the trade deadline, too, even after swallowing a buyout for Kailer Yamamoto to acquire Kostin just months prior.
There’s something to be said for correcting your mistakes, even at a cost, but those were still self-inflicted wounds from Detroit’s front office. And they’re not the full extent of the dicey cap decisions. While Andrew Copp and Ben Chiarot play significant roles for the team — and, in my view, are not as overpaid as some fans seem to believe — both of their deals ($5.625 million cap hit for Copp, $4.75 for Chiarot) are outsized compared to their production. And both carry multiple more years of term.
Major contracts still loom for Yzerman this summer, too, and while the team still has enough cap space to sign both Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider, their contract processes are the latest instance of one lingering question about Yzerman’s negotiation approach: Is he costing himself by holding out so long?
Certainly, there’s a value in holding ground to try to grind down the final number. But the flip side is that waiting allows time for new contract comparables to come into play. We saw this play out in the Dylan Larkin negotiations, as both Mathew Barzal and Bo Horvat signed long-term extensions that set parameters for Larkin’s contract. And while the $8.7 million AAV Larkin signed for already looks team-friendly a year later, it’s hard not to wonder if market movement cost Yzerman. Horvat, in particular, getting $8.5 million seemed to set a floor that Larkin’s resume virtually necessitated he surpass.
And a similar situation may now be unfolding with Seider, who has a clearly superior resume at this stage to Minnesota’s Brock Faber, who just signed an eight-year extension for $8.5 million. Yzerman still has the option to sign Seider to a bridge deal, and thus avoid Faber as a comparable, but bridging comes with its own risks long-term, too.
There’s certainly value in not rushing negotiations and in gathering all the information you can. But players get new information during that time, too, usually in the form of new contracts to which they can compare their own numbers. And in a market that’s been inflating over the past couple of seasons, it’s plenty fair to ask if waiting on some of these significant deals has come back to bite the Red Wings.
Draft and develop
2023 rating: A-
2024 rating: B+
There wasn’t much change in this category, which isn’t surprising: Even while there is some consternation over whether the Red Wings take big enough “home run swings” early in the draft, their track record in the first rounds has been good under Yzerman. Seider and Raymond are young cornerstones. Edvinsson looks like he will live up to his draft position as a top-four, and possibly top-pair, defenseman. Nate Danielson looks like a potential top-six center. And while Kasper is probably more of a middle-six projection, it’s hard to find more than one or two players picked after him in his class who would go ahead of him in a re-draft.
The Red Wings have yet to turn out an NHL regular beyond the first round, but that could change as soon as this year in the form of Mazur or Albert Johansson. 2023 second-round pick Trey Augustine looks like a legit NHL goalie prospect, and 2024 second-round pick Max Plante shows promise, too, though it will take time to see what their eventual impact becomes.
While Detroit could definitely still use more star power, I haven’t seen the Red Wings pass up any clear-cut stars on draft day so far. Taken all together, something in the B-plus-to-A-minus range feels right.
Trading
2023 rating: A-
2024 rating: C+
This was the biggest drop of any category, and it’s notable because Yzerman’s trade history has long been a strong selling point.
There have really only been four trades since the 2023 confidence survey, but all of them share a theme: cap dumps. Detroit has shed Kostin, Fabbri, Walman, and gave up intriguing RHD prospect Andrew Gibson to facilitate the latter (getting back the second-rounder they traded with Walman, and forward prospect Jesse Kiiskinen). The Walman deal in particular was extremely unpopular with fans. That all dovetails with the cap management grade, and it’s hard not to wonder if that category got sort of double-counted here, creeping into the broader trade assessments.
Other deals that fans have seen play out over the last year include acquiring Jeff Petry at a reduced cap hit, trading for DeBrincat last summer, and dealing away defenseman Filip Hronek at the 2023 trade deadline. The Petry deal has not aged into a popular one, as Petry’s age has at times been noticeable, but the DeBrincat trade looks like a clear win one year later. Even as DeBrincat fell short of the 30-goal mark in his first season as a Red Wing, his 67 points ranked third on the team, his $7.875 cap hit is reasonable for that production, and his impact far surpasses the pieces Detroit gave up: Dominik Kubalik, Donovan Sebrango and the 25th pick.
The interesting one is Hronek, who had a big season in Vancouver and cashed in for a long-term deal with a $7.25 million AAV. The Red Wings certainly have a hole on the right side of the second pair after trading Hronek, but they did use the pick acquired for Hronek to draft another RHD prospect in Axel Sandin-Pellikka. Time will tell if he can reach Hronek’s level, but in the meantime, the Red Wings probably couldn’t afford Hronek’s new contract anyway.
Yzerman’s dealings in Tampa Bay helped the team acquire Mikhail Sergachev, Erik Cernak, Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller, among others. And as the Red Wings look to take the next steps, he may need more trades of that ilk to propel Detroit forward.
Free agency
2023 rating: B-
2024 rating: C
This was the lowest grade of any category from the fans — and from the public, which gave the front office a D-plus here. It’s not too hard to figure out why, as evidenced by the cap management section.
The Holl deal is in a league of its own, as a moderate-sized contract for a player not even in the lineup most nights, and the concerns around Copp and Chiarot persist despite Chiarot playing consistent top-four minutes and Copp playing a core matchup role. But perhaps a bigger issue is that Detroit has few clear wins to point to in free agency outside of one-year deals — on which its track record has been pretty strong (including Gostisbehere, Kane, Christian Fischer and Sprong last summer). In fairness, Detroit hasn’t given out a deal longer than five years to a UFA, but those medium-length, three-to-five-year deals still linger.
The one contract of that length that probably gets underrated is Compher, who signed for five years at $5.1 million last summer. Compher was coming off a career-high 52 points the year prior with the Avalanche, and many questioned whether he would be able to sustain that production in Detroit. But he largely did, scoring 48 points with a career-high 19 goals. His tough-to-sustain 17.6 percent shooting percentage still keeps those questions alive, but when you consider that Chandler Stephenson signed for seven years at $6.25 million, Compher at four more years for $5.1 million looks pretty solid.
Building through free agency can be a dicey bet for any team, as players have the most leverage and are typically toward the back half of their primes. But the Red Wings haven’t had enough free agency wins — especially outside of one-year deals — and that makes this an area of real concern.
Vision
2023 rating: B
2024 rating: B-
There was not much of a change here, possibly because vision is the most nebulous category for fans to assess. That’s especially true considering the rarity of Yzerman’s media availabilities, and his preference for not revealing much about his plans.
But when he does speak about the team, he has mostly maintained the same core tenets of his vision: building toward sustained winning, as opposed to a quick push to relevance, and emphasizing being hard to play against and team defense. All of that is hard to argue. It’s safe to assume he shares fans’ want for more star power, too, but the realities of acquiring that kind of player are another matter. In the meantime, he’s working with what he has, and it doesn’t seem fans have dinged his overall vision too much accordingly.
Total
2023 rating: B+
2024 rating: B-
It’s worth noting that the worst grade Red Wings fans gave Yzerman in any category here is a C. That still suggests they feel at least average about Detroit’s front office.
But for a rebuilding team, so much of fan confidence is based on faith. And while the fan base is not yet jumping ship, it’s hard to deny the loss of some faith in these grades. In some cases — mainly cap management and free agency — there’s a pretty clear rationale for that diminished trust. In others, such as trading, it feels more based on emotion surrounding a couple of recent moves, or perhaps the lack of a desired move that hasn’t happened. And in some categories, there hasn’t been much movement at all.
After losing ground in this survey for the second year in a row, though, faith in Yzerman and the Red Wings front office is clearly trending down — even while their standings position has trended up.
It’s enough to make you wonder what these grades could look like next year if the standings trend takes a step back for the first time.
(Photo of Steve Yzerman: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
