This is an article I hoped I would never have to write. As a die-hard supporter of the Detroit Red Wings and a believer in the vision that Steve Yzerman brought to the franchise when he was hired as General Manager in 2019, it pains me to say it: it’s time for the Red Wings to fire Steve Yzerman.
When Yzerman took the reins, the hope and excitement in Hockeytown were palpable. Yzerman, one of the greatest players in Red Wings history and a two-time Stanley Cup champion, was seen as the perfect architect to rebuild the Red Wings into perennial contenders. Fans, analysts, and former players alike had no doubt that Yzerman’s return would signal a bright future for the team. But now, as we in Year 6 of the so-called “Yzerplan,” it’s clear that this rebuilding process has not gone as expected.
The Red Wings, under Yzerman’s leadership, have made incremental steps forward, but those steps have been painfully small. While the team has shown some flashes of promise, it’s been nowhere near the expected trajectory. After five full seasons of rebuilding, the Red Wings are still in a position where making the playoffs feels like a distant dream, let alone competing for a Stanley Cup. For a franchise that has set the bar so high for decades, this is simply unacceptable.
When Yzerman took over, there was a clear understanding that the rebuild would take time. He inherited a team mired in mediocrity, and patience was expected from the fanbase. But what we’ve seen so far is not just a slow rebuild—it’s a stagnant one. Players like Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider have shown promise, but overall, the team’s development has been inconsistent. For a GM with the pedigree of Yzerman, it’s fair to expect more than small flashes of individual brilliance. The larger picture should be a coherent, competitive team that’s at least on the verge of returning to playoff contention.
The troubling part of this is that Yzerman’s failures go beyond the players on the ice. His moves off the ice have also raised serious concerns. The acquisition of players like Ben Chiarot, the failure to address the team’s long-standing lack of scoring depth, and a series of questionable draft decisions have failed to move the needle significantly. His trades, while bold, haven’t paid off in the way fans had hoped. Yzerman, as great as he was as a player, hasn’t yet proven he can work the same magic as GM of the Red Wings.
And let’s be honest: a few years ago, the Red Wings were playing for a future where they could contend for a Stanley Cup. Now, the goalposts have shifted. At this point, we’d all be happy if the Red Wings could just make it back into the playoffs. But it’s become increasingly clear that the team’s future isn’t just about making the playoffs—it’s about building a roster that can go deep into the postseason. And right now, Yzerman’s plan doesn’t seem to be getting us any closer to that.
For all the goodwill Yzerman has built with the fans, the reality is that the rebuild is moving too slowly, and time is running out. The Red Wings need to find a way to speed up this process, or they risk losing yet another generation of fans. The franchise needs leadership that can turn this team into a true contender, not just a team that hopes for a wild card spot every year.
The longer the Red Wings stay mired in mediocrity, the harder it will be to attract top talent or to maintain fan interest in a city that’s used to winning. It's time for a fresh perspective, and unfortunately, it may be time for Steve Yzerman to step aside. This is not a decision made lightly, but one made out of the love for this storied franchise and the desire to see it back at the top of the NHL standings.
Hockeytown deserves better than this, and the future of the Red Wings depends on making bold decisions now. It’s time for a change, and the time to act is now.
Do you even know hockey? How to manage a team? I’d love to see you try, bet you can’t even manage a fantasy team
Anhow
Great reply , this article is awful . For someone who has grown up around the game and coached it for a long time I can tell you that there is enough talent on the team to win .
The issue is a lack of players will to be better and it starts with the coach then the captain Larkin . Yes he has the most goals on the team but he doesn’t play like he did in the past .
Yzerman had to over pay to get mid level vets to come to Detroit to stop the bleeding from hollands failures . He had to do this to build the pipeline and give it time . Yzerman said it would take 10 yrs to build . The first and 2nd round picks have been solid and those players will make a the wings very solid in yrs to come . Just look at the griffins this yr.
Yzerman has managed the cap extremely well and if you look at next yrs cap space and who hits the market I truly believe he makes a big move .
Horrible article and very short sighted .
Are you insane? We had Holland for a decade of bad contracts and delayed rebuild that Yzerman had to deal with the first 3 years, You know the guy you say isn’t cutting it and the small incremental steps oh painful ones at that? Remember Seider? Everyone probably including you booed the pick and boom Calder winner , what about Lucas Raymond? Marco Kasper? The fact that the Taresenko and Kane types wanna play in a Red Wings Jersey again, you know the guy that they all say are the reason they signed, Debrincat. I’m telling you now as a fan of 50 years, you do not know shit about hockey and what it takes to build a perennial NHL Stanley Cup contender. Give your head a shake and get rid of the emotional baggage so you can think effectively and see clearly. If anyone needs to go it would be Lalonde as ye directs the players, Yzerman put together a damn good team but he can’t manage, coach play and score all the points. You are looking at the wrong personnel to fire if anyone. Yzerman has drafted flawlessly and signed the best he could to give the youngsters time to fill their roles and without betting the farm. I hope you never try having this discussion with Real Wings fans over drinks your hospital bill would bankrupt you lol
Written by a casual. Stay away from sports.
Only waited 40+ years to win our first since ’55. Had a 20+ year playoff run that was a record in itself. But yah, burn it all down cuz 10 years is going to turn off another “generation” of LGRW fans, does original six ring a bell? Stick to tik Tok, Facebook, and Ramen noodles for your instant gratification.
Cold day in Hell. Fire your stupid ass first.
AGREED!!!!
Given the Wings draft positions, the need to rebuild the minor league teams, and throwing a few questionable FA signings into the mix, one has to conclude that more time is to be given to Stevie. I’d only give him two more drafts and that 26-27 season before firing. Either they make the playoffs and are competitive or he’s out the door.
…I stopped reading when you said he was a 2 time Stanley cup champion…check your facts before calling yourself a die hard red wings fan
Agreed, Sean. I remember a time when people were saying the Red Wings needed to “Trade” Yzerman, then they went one of the their most respectable playoff runs in 45 years. Now people are calling for him to be fired. SMH. Some of them (or maybe just W.G. Brady) need to show a little more patience. It seemed to payoff, the last time. :-)
ABSOLUTELY CORRECT
I never even got that far. It takes time to rebuild and #19 proved he can win at this level with Tampa Bay.
Ya this guy is an idiot. He’s full of shit.
I concur 100%
Yzerman should stay…BUT, he needs to add much better scouting staff including firing of his old buddies, Malby and Draper. A franchise hires are constantly reviewable and should be held accountable. If Yzerman feels Lalonde is the issue, then, fire him NOW, hopefully lighting a fire under the team’s asses and hire Quennville.
I love this thought. We have talent, I think the coach is over his head. We need a dick as coach. Babcock like without the personal BS
lol
I agree completely with your article. Let’s include Lalonde in the purge! He is the worst coach the Wings have had in years. He has zero energy and I never see him communicating with the players on the bench. I am 67 years old and a lifetime Wings fan. I never imagined this team would be this bad for this long!
Where were you from 72-87?? Lol
My primary (only?) complaint with Yzerman at this point is he has been too patient with the youngsters/high draft picks. Especially Cossa, and last season with Edvinsson, who could/should have tipped the balance for a team that missed out on the playoffs due to a tiebreaker. The Atlantic Division is looking down this year (and next?) with some perennial powers falling off, so the opportunity is there. If Quenneville is willing/available, I’d start there, move Heaven & Earth to get a legit 2nd pairing anchor to supplement Seider & Edvinsson (as Trouba was presumably meant to be this past offseason), and figure out the goalie position now, letting Cossa take some spot injury starts (instead of Husso) if/when Lyon and/or Talbot go down. Talbot looks like he’s set up as a mentor type for Cossa; what’s the problem finding out if he’d gonna be up for it now? The 3rd year in GR is showing he’s mastered that level. Urgency is here, do it now!
Before He came back to Detroit, do you know where he was? Yeah, from 2010-2018 he was in Tampa Bay, Rebuilding them. I’d say he that worked out pretty well down there.People need to have a little faith and patience.
C.R. I completely agree. Here is what I replied to someone else, above…I remember a time when people were saying the Red Wings needed to “Trade” Yzerman, then they went one of the their most respectable playoff runs in 45 years. Now people are calling for him to be fired. SMH. Some of them (or maybe just W.G. Brady) need to show a little more patience. It seemed to payoff, the last time. :-)
Yeah except Tampa Bay made the Stanley Cup finals in Yzerman’s 5th year.
And they already had Stamkos and Headman.
Yzerman did not aquire them.
I do feel Yzerman needs a match lit under his butt. Fans are losing patience and they look horrible!
But that argument is exactly why people should have more patience. He didn’t have a stamkos or a Hedman when he came to Detroit. He had Larkin. Thats it. You cant expect him to build an SC finals team in 5 years through the draft and Dylan Larkin, thats ludicrous. Even the most IQ challenged fan would be able to see he’d need more time at Detroit than he had at Tampa. He was starting waaaaay further back here. Lets also not forget that the draft lottery has not been kind to Detroit since Yzerman took over, so no boost there either. You just cant judge Tampa and Detroit on the same timelines. You said it yourself, he already had Stammer and Hedman at Tampa, he had the cornerstones of a team already from day 1 there. Needs more time.
All my glory memories of the Wings was with Yzerman as the C. I cant help but be more patient with him. We all remember the position our former GM left us in trying to keep a stupid playoff record in tack. Hindsight, it was yrs of stupidity. He gutted our pipeline and our draft picks. It’s not like Yzerman was given an expansion team where he gets to steal players to build his own. From scratch I say he is doing OK. Coaching is probably more of an issue
But who do you think hires the coaches? Who does that responsibility fall on?
John Tortorella.
Offense scoring is down. Fire the coach. Bring in a proven winner with fire in his belly. As others have stated, needs to be tougher. This coach seems to nice, and has hit a wall on NHL player development. He isn’t inspiring the team to score. Debrincat, Kane, Larkin, Lucas, Tarasenko. If after brining in a new proven coach, you don’t see a new uptick, and things look more dire. Then I would consider firing Steve Y. Steve needs to get some diamonds in the rough like the old days. Problem is some of the contributors in thoose behind the scenes drafts are on other teams i.e. Jim Nill at the Dallas Stars. More competition. Steve needs some big splash trades this year that will inject live into this terrible performance of late. Get R Done Steve Y. Train wreck watching wings now. Boring..
Torts is the absolute wrong person. Might as well bring back Babcock then.
You do not understand how badly we were at every level when Holland left. This is a long term rebuild because of what Yzerman inherited which was just about nothing.
Yes of course I do realize where we started from. I also recall being at avalanche beat down in Detroit. We are on our 2nd un proven coach in this rebuild. Previous unproven coaches in the organization didn’t get it done. How about Dave Lewis. Rarely does and assistant convert into winning coach like Dan Campbell. Dan has Grit and inspiration. Derek lalonde is winey and makes my ears hurt like nails on a chalkboard. He seems like a nice guy. But this year was supposed to be a building block year. Team is not scoring. How about last year when Larkin was injured, What happened to the rest of the team? There scoring died. This year the team is there and where is Larkin, Debrincat, Kain and Tarasenko scoring? Everyone loves Moritz seider. But why can’t he keep the puck in at the blue line on special teams, or when the team goes deep in the opponents End? Most the time the play is broken up because seider can’t keep the puck in at the blue line. What all these proven players just stopped scoring? Come on, this is on the coach at minimum. Seider should be improving at the blue line on offense and he isn’t. Doing the same dumb stuff he did last year. Broken up plays. Then they go in and score on Detroit. Lalonde I am from New york too, but you have to go. You don’t hand the key’s to your Ferrari to your 16 year old son. Yzerman, go get a proven winning pedigree likeable stern coach like The lions found with Dan Campbell. But I want a Stanley cup winner. No Babcock’s either.
Be great if a new proven coach came in and things turned around like the Detroit Tigers and made playoffs. Current situation is terrible!
You honestly believe it should have only taken five years to contend again? You clearly do not understand how badly Ken Holland screwed over the organization to keep “the streak” alive. Our kitchen cabinets weren’t just bare, we had to build the cabinets and put them up before we could anything. It took a long while to do horrible contracts ( hill and handed out no trade clauses like they were m&m’s), rebuild the farm system from the ground up, and more.
You simply want short term succcess. Me, I’ll take long term like we had in the 90s and 00’s. If we did it your way, we’d have a few seasons of success and then rebuilding again.
I’m just looking for any success, Jeff. There is none of it and we’re actually worse than we were last year. That’s why I finally started to question Yzerman.
My comments exactly mirrored yours last year. But the moves this off-season left us definitively worse-off than last season. And it’s not due to bad luck or anything; it was clear before we played a shift that this season was not going to be a good one. You want to blame the coaches? Fine, but that’s on Yzerman too. I’m not fully off the boat l like the author, yet, but he needs to shake things up fast.
Extremely bad take, they pay you for this content?
Nonsense. Yzerman inherited a mess, long term contracts that killed the cap and a cupboard bare of talent. It has not been as smooth or fast as most unofficial us would like, but he has cleaned up and put the team in a position to succeed. The players and coaching staff need to follow through. There is plenty of tablet coming up, they are on the rise.
You have to admit though, he’s had a bad offseason and not just this year. Some of his moves this year were baffling. He’s loaded Detroits cap space out with some horrible players the last couple years. Copp, Compher, Holl, Tarasenko, Chiarot, Gustaffson, Petry those are not good deals.
Yzerman definitely needs to take responsibility for those because while he did clean up a lot of Hollands mess, he’s created some mess of his own and you know it.
There is no cohesion, no on ice system. Looks like they’re running around chasing their tails. To me that has to do with coaching. They have no confidence in their system. Watch them, they’re all down nothing to play for. Because there’s no real leadership on the ice. Not talking about Larkin Larkin is great. Talking about the coaching system, and inspiring the team. Coaching sucks
Yzerman was a great player. He appears to be a humble guy.
I question his skills as GM.
Yes, he was successful in T B. Keep in mind when he got to T B they already had Stamkos and Headman.
Ilitch family needs to give S Yzerman an ultimatum, playoffs or your gone.
Keep in mind 16 of 32 teams in the NHL make the playoffs. No more excuses!
Yzerman won 3 cups as a player, not 2. What kind of “Die Hard Supporter” doesn’t know that? Move on from this article & website is my advice.
I was thinking the same thing! Along with 3 Stanley Cups as a player and 1 as Red Wings Assistant GM under Holland make 4. Longest captain for one team in NHL history. Built Tampa into a perrinial power house. He had to shed some of the worst contracts when he arrived back to Detroit. Yzerman is doing just fine. His job is plenty secure with the Ilitch Family. This reporter can’t even tell you Yzermans career accomplishments let alone write an article about him!
Multiple grammatical errors in a poorly written article from an entitled, uneducated and ignorant point of view. Could you imagine harnessing such a critical perspective when you can’t even do your own job as a journalist.
You know nothing of what you write… Bank of dumbshit
I concur 100%
He’s waiting for the right coach, give it time you don’t build the dynasty we had overnight.
This article is literally blasphemy. In Yzerman we trust, he’s earned it.
You are an idiot.
This is an insanely bad take. Rebuilds aren’t always linear and shouting “He needs to improve the scoring depth!!!” is a lot easier than actually acquiring talent, or moving up the standings when 4 teams in the division have been mortal locks for the playoffs. Anyone with two functional brain cells could see this team was probably going to have a tough time this year, because the players who were eventually going to make a difference aren’t ready yet, and no one has figured out how to bend time to speed that process up. Stuff like this makes me want to pass on reading articles from this website. Just a terrible, lazy take.
I disagree with article!
You clearly illustrated you don’t know hockey. Kill yourself and save the world from your bs
Need a Proven Coach, No more un proven coaches. Rarely works like Dan Campbell and the lions. But look at the difference between him and Lalonde. Big difference in attitude, approach, integrity, and presence. Lalonde has been promoted to his position of failure. He has no fire in his belly. He Calls out Larkin for offense, well why is the rest of the team terrible on offense and scoring. Why is Mo Seider always watching the puck cross the blue line when were deep in opponents zone and the play is broken up. I don’t get it. Mo did the same stuff last year, barely can keep the play alive in opponents end. Then we get scored on breakaway when we are on the power play. Lalonde sucks. Needs to go back to assistant or minor leagues. We need a proven leader, winner with a proven system and makes the team better then they are. Restore the locker room and the ice and go on a offensive goal scoring spree. Yzerman either needs to bring in talent in the minors pipeline or go on the open market. This hocket team is very boring to watch. I think it’s nap time now. Wake me up when we have a new coach and a team worth watching.
Coach Lalonde says wings aren’t playing ” Good Enough Hockey” Lalonde isn’t coaching good enough hockey at the NHL level.
He was a great player we all can agree to that!
As for General Manager he has not done anything in 5+ years to get us in the playoffs so YES its time for him to GO and as quick as possible! Let’s get someone that can do the job and get us back to the team we used to be!
FIRE 🔥 HIM!
I’ve been saying this for two years!
Great player, but horrible GM for Detroit. The expansion team are better or more competitive than us.
So if SY should go, who should come in? Do you think Ken Holland did a better job then Steve Yzerman? Does Ken Holland even make sense? What About Jim Nill? Could the Red Wings lure Jim Nill away from the Dallas Stars? That could be interesting if he is doing well at that position? Illitches won’t fire Yzerman this year I don’t think. Maybe next year.
20 PROBLEMS WITH THE RED WINGS…
1. ZERO net front presence
2. Why isnt Rasmussen doing his best Thomas Holmstrom impersonation?
3. ZERO cohesiveness. Missed passes, quite often look lost.
4. ZERO offense/scoring from defense
5. Inexplainable turnovers in own zone, a dozen or more every game!
6. ZERO from Tarasenko (he looks lost!)
7. ZERO from Veleno
8. ZERO from Berggren
9. ZERO from Fischer
10. ZERO from Rasmussen
11. ZERO from Kasper
12. ZERO from Compher
13. Copp-Useless- couldnt score if net was twice the size!
14. RAYMOND CANT SCORE-1 goal? Shorthanded!!! Putrid!
15. Petry is USELESS
16. Chairot is USELESS
17. DEFENSE IS INCREDIBLY SOFT-ABSOLUTELY NO ONE makes the oppositions forwards pay a price for sitting in front of our goalie! No one!
18. Mo and Ed are good, the rest of defense blows donkey balls. Still no offense/goals from either!!!
19. Holl? OMG! Gonna puke
20. Outside of Larkin, DeBrincat and Kane, no skill players or not enough balls out players to make up for low skill players.
How many times per game does Mo struggle to keep puck in offensive zone?
Why isn’t cat, larks, Raymond, Kane scoring more? I think the coaching system/plays must be terrible or the coach doesn’t know how to coach at NHL level.
If Steve Y doesn’t fire Lalonde, and replace him with a proven winner soon. SY should be fired. If SY doesn’t make some trades to fast forward this rebuild then he should be fired. So far this rebuild isn’t looking so hot in 2024.
Just thought I mentioned that Yzerman is a 3-Time Stanley Cup champion.. So how big of a fan are you really?
Plus 1 cup as Assistant GM under Holland in 2008!
Yes – Swap this team with the Grand Rapids Griffins then let it ride-
I think Steve’s best GM days are well behind him -!!!!
Plus get Mr. Hot & Ready Jr to dish out some cash for good players?