Better luck next year: For the Detroit Red Wings, progress doesn't really seem like progress

This is quickly turning into an ugly situation.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Detroit Red Wings.

If you want to get technical about it, there was some progress for the Detroit Red Wings during the 2025-26 NHL season.

Their record improved by six points in the standings, and they remained in the Eastern Conference playoff race up until the final 10 days of the regular season.

It is not much, but it is something. I guess. Sort of.

It is also not anywhere near enough, and if you are a Red Wings fan, or the Red Wings themselves, and you are willing to hang your hat on that marginal improvement in the standings you are really taking your eyes off the prize and lowering your standards to an unacceptable level.

Let’s just look at some of the important facts here:

• The Red Wings now have the NHL’s longest active playoff drought at 10 consecutive seasons.

• Seven of those seasons have come under the watch of general manager Steve Yzerman.

• In each of the past three seasons they have completely collapsed in the last month of the season, including what was literally one of the worst late-season collapses in the post-Original Six era. And that is not an exaggeration, hyperbole or being a prisoner of the moment. This was a historic meltdown. On Jan. 25 the Red Wings had the second-best record in the Eastern Conference with 69 points in 53 games. In the 29 games that followed, they went 9-15-5 to become just the second team to miss the playoffs after having at least 69 points through 53 games.

• That collapse reached its ugly ending on Wednesday night in the regular season finale where they completely mailed in an effort against a Florida Panthers team that also had nothing to play for, and was also playing with what amounted to a mostly AHL lineup due to injuries. The Panthers won 8-1, handing the Red Wings their worst loss of the season and a fitting end to a massive failure of a season.

Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan was livid after the game, praising the Panthers for their championship culture and professionalism, and then immediately dismissing a question about whatever progress the Red Wings might have made this season. He was obviously seething, not just with the effort in that particular game, but over everything from the last two months of the season.

It is all brutal stuff.

Red Wings fans and Red Wings ownership have continued to preach patience with Yzerman because of the mess he was taking over. The salary cap situation was awful. The roster was bad. The farm system was non-existent. Of course it was going to take some time. I also suspect a large part of that patience is the fact he is Steve Yzerman, Red Wings legend, and nobody wants to have to call out their hero or admit he has done a bad job.

Taking some time to rebuild this was a reasonable ask.

This is no longer taking time.

This is failing.

This is now three consecutive years where the Red Wings have settled into an 86-92 point range that has them in the middle-of-the-pack of the conference and league standings. Are they competitive and “in it?”

Sure, if being “in it” is hanging around in the playoff race for four months before urinating down their legs in March and April.

They took the step from being a bad, rebuilding team to a somewhat competitive team. They are just not a particularly good team. They have plateaued with no obvious ability or path to take the more difficult step from competitive to good.

There is really no other way to sugarcoat this other than to say losing has become the culture here, because it’s all anybody associated with the organization right now has done recently and come to expect.

The general manager has not won since he was in Tampa Bay nearly a decade ago, and in seven years has only taken the Red Wings from bad to painfully mediocre. He is also on his third different head coach during that time with no playoff appearances from any of them. If you keep changing the coach and the results keep staying the same, you might have other problems.

Speaking of coaching, the current head coach has made the playoffs three times in his past 12 seasons behind the bench across four different franchises. He has advanced beyond the first round in just one of those seasons. And it’s not like he was working with hopeless, talentless rosters. He missed the playoffs his last year in San Jose with a Sharks team that went to the Stanley Cup final the following season. He made the playoffs once in four years with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

The captain and longest-tenured player, Dylan Larkin, has been a part of one playoff team in his career, and that was more than a decade ago when he was a 19-year-old rookie.

All of the people in the positions of power and leadership are now just mostly associated with losing. And a lot of it.

Sure, talent is the most important thing and should ultimately win out. And the Red Wings, despite a talented core at the top of the roster, simply do not have enough talent or good players. That is the biggest problem. But losing also has a tendency to breed losers and … well … more losing. And it’s hard to look at where this organization is right now and avoid the stink of losing that is oozing from every corner of it.

Let’s talk more about all of that, as well as what went right and what went wrong this season, as well as what is next.

What went right this season