NHL Trade Deadline Primer: It is time for Steve Yzerman to get aggressive for Red Wings

The Detroit Red Wings should finally be a playoff team again. They need some help. It is time for Steve Yzerman to get them some help.

The NHL Trade Deadline (March 6) is approaching, and until it arrives we are going to take a look at some of the significant players and teams that could be making moves. We continue today with the Detroit Red Wings, a playoff team that still has some big holes and needs some help.

Patience.

That has been the name of the game for the Steve Yzerman-era with the Detroit Red Wings.

He has preached patience. Red Wings fans, perhaps hesitant to be overly critical of a franchise icon for what he did on the ice, have preached it even more emphatically.

The goal, everybody has said, is not just to make the playoffs, but to build a consistently competitive team that can win a championship. That sort of thing takes time. And also, hey, did you even see the mess Ken Holland left behind? That was also going to take a lot of time to fix.

There is truth and sound reasoning to a lot of that. But it is also more than fair to point out that this has been a very methodical rebuild, and that for a few years progress really seemed to reach a plateau and get stagnant.

I am not sure there is much of an argument for Yzerman and the Red Wings to maintain their patient approach.

Not this season. Not with this core group and where it is in its development. Not with this team.

For one, that approach seemed to ruffle the feathers of the locker room at last year’s trade deadline. Team captain Dylan Larkin, who has been through the losing here longer than anybody — because he has literally been here through ALL of it — was extremely critical of last year’s approach, talking after the season about how the inactivity was a real downer for the locker room and that they expected help.

And that was a team that was not really in the thick of the playoff race.

The main takeaway is that there was pretty clearly a desire from the players to get some immediate help. Immediate help is not really something the current roster has received from outside the organization the past two-plus years.

In early July, 2023, Yzerman made one of his biggest additions since taking the Red Wings job when he traded for forward Alex DeBrincat. It was an objectively great move, not only because it did not require him to give up much in terms of meaningful assets, but also because DeBrincat was in the prime of his career with a track record of being a 40-goal scorer. It was a huge get.

That addition played a big role in the Red Wings going from 80 points to 91 points, and playing their way into the fringes of playoff contention.

It was the closest they have been to a playoff spot in nearly a decade.

They ultimately fell short.

Then over the next two years, including this past offseason, the number of meaningful additions from outside the organization have slowed back to a glacial pace. Just for a quick look at what it’s been like, here is the list of outside additions made by the Red Wings and Yzerman since the DeBrincat trade in early July of 2023.

A lot of these guys never made much of an impact for the Red Wings, and many of them are no longer on the team.

Gibson and Talbot have helped solidify the goaltending spot this season and at least given them league average play. Kane is a liability away from the puck during 5-on-5 play, but is still a great power play contributor and playmaker with the puck. van Riemsdyk has been a solid depth addition.

But in two-and-a-half years that is not a ton of help for a team that has needed more help.

Despite that, and due in large part to the internal development of players like Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider, Simon Edvinsson, as well as veteran players like Larkin and DeBrincat, they are not only in the playoff race, they ARE a playoff team.

At least they should be. They are certainly well-positioned to make the playoffs at this point.

It is also a playoff team that still has some significant flaws beyond its top players.

The Red Wings are loaded with salary cap space.

They have their entire allotment of future first-round draft picks at their disposal.

They still have a prospect pool they can deal from.

Their core players (Raymond, DeBrincat, Seider, Larkin) are just entering their prime years, or in Larkin’s case, are at the tail end of their prime years. At some point you have to shit or get off the pot with this group and give them a chance to seriously compete for something.

They are now at that time.

This is the time when that core group should be competing and winning.

Let’s talk a little more about what they need to get there, and who they could potentially try to get over the next few weeks.