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It’s now been 10 years since the Detroit Red Wings last played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, a far cry from the days when they were one of the NHL’s model franchises. During their run of 25 straight postseason appearances, they reached six Stanley Cup Finals and won four championships.
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Things have gone downhill since Detroit was last viewed as a legitimate Stanley Cup contender around 2012. Although the Red Wings made the playoffs from 2013 through 2016, they managed to win just one series during that stretch.
Now, the franchise finds itself in even more uncertainty. The Red Wings are without a general manager following Steve Yzerman’s departure last month, and they could soon lose captain Dylan Larkin as well after he requested a trade shortly after the end of the season.
While Yzerman made his share of mistakes during his time as Detroit’s general manager, there’s no denying that the club’s fortunes could have been different had it not been for multiple notable Draft blunders before his return in 2019.
After missing the postseason for the first time in 25 years in 2017, the Red Wings entered that year’s Draft with the ninth overall pick, which was used on forward Michael Rasmussen.
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While hindsight is 20/20, that selection proved to be another notch in a series of complete misses by former GM Ken Holland and Amateur Scouting Director Tyler Wright, and continues to haunt the Red Wings nearly a decade later, considering what the players they passed on have accomplished.
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At 6-foot-6 and 220 pounds, Michael Rasmussen has the physical profile of a prototypical power forward, but he has rarely played that way. Although he scored a combined 63 goals in 97 games over his final two seasons with the WHL’s Tri-City Americans, that offensive production has never translated to the NHL.
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His best goal-scoring season with the Red Wings came in 2021-22, when he recorded 15 goals in 80 games. He followed that with a career-high 33 points (13 goals, 20 assists) in 2023-24, but his production has declined since, totaling just 21 and 14 points over the past two respective seasons.
Making that harder to swallow is the fact that players like Owen Tippett, Martin Necas, Nick Suzuki, Robert Thomas, Jason Robertson, and Josh Norris were all selected after Rasmussen. All of them have made significant contributions since entering the NHL, leaps and bounds ahead of what Rasmussen has provided for Detroit.
Red Wings Utilizing Search Firm To Identify Steve Yzerman’s Successor
Red Wings Utilizing Search Firm To Identify Steve Yzerman’s Successor According to longtime beat writer Helene St. James of The Detroit Free Press, the Detroit Red Wings are utilizing a search firm as they look for a replacement for GM Steve Yzerman.
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The Red Wings also missed a major opportunity in the 2018 NHL Draft, opting to select Filip Zadina over hometown product Quinn Hughes from the nearby University of Michigan. Zadina has become one of the most notable draft busts of the past decade, while Hughes has developed into one of the NHL’s premier players.
There were other notable misses in prior drafts. In 2015, the Red Wings selected Evgeny Svechnikov with the 19th overall pick over names like Brock Boeser, Timo Meier, and Travis Konecny. The following season, Detroit selected defenseman Dennis Cholowski over names such as Alex DeBrincat and Tage Thompson.
Those multiple misses set the Red Wings back years, and made the situation that Yzerman inherited all the more difficult.
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