Thursday, February 29, dawned as an optimistic leap-year day for the Red Wings and their hopeful fans. But as the night ended, their grip began to slip on the 2023-24 season and they gradually fell from hockey’s icy cliff.
Coming into that game, the Wings had enjoyed a six-game winning streak and seemed poised to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2016 and for the first time in the five-year reign of general manager Steve Yzerman.
But that also was the night they debuted their new uniform decoration, the circular logo of “Priority Waste Management,” a trash hauler based in Clinton Township in Macomb County, northeast of Detroit. They displayed it high on the sweater, near one shoulder.
It was the first time in the Wings’ 97-year history that their venerated home chasuble — bearing the white logo of the winged wheel — shared space with a piece of advertising on its blood-red background, the hallowed battle shirt once dipped in the sacrificial blood of Claude Lemieux.
And, instead of choosing some business generic to the Motor City — a car company, perhaps, or a gambling casino or maybe even a marijuana dealership — the Wings and owner Chris Ilitch chose a company that takes away garbage.
Such removal is an important function to civilization but somewhat unflattering as a sports team’s brand. Starting that very night, the Wings lost seven consecutive games. Yes, they got trashed. They fell from playoff ranking and never quite scrambled back up the slippery slope.
Despite winning their final three games in one of the season’s most exciting weeks, they missed the tournament and tied for 17th place overall in the 32-team National Hockey League.
It might be an overstatement to say the Wings jinxed their season with unfortunate commercial branding. And Detroit fans fear finding fault with Yzerman, a local legend from the “Hockeytown” era. Yzerman replaced Ken Holland, who has since done well in Edmonton.
And Yzerman’s boosters in the seats and in the media overlook how the Vegas Golden Knights grew from expansion team to Stanley Cup champions in fewer years than it has taken Yzerman’s restoration of the franchise he once captained to glory.
Yzerman rarely speaks to the news media and is, therefore, generally unaccountable to the fans. In that way, he resembles owner Ilitch. Yzerman deigned to hold his season-review news conference last week and spoke mostly with subtle spin and in banal generalities.
But, when asked about his team giving up too many goals, Yzerman said it was not just the fault of the goalies or the defensemen or the forwards. He said specifically that the blame goes up to the coaching staff. He didn’t specifically mention head coach Derek Lalonde.
But, then again, he didn’t have to. Yzerman began with his usual self-assurance.
“It is incumbent on our coaching staff to—” Yzerman said.
Then he paused, thought about his words, and moved his hands into a web of his fingers. In this brief moment, Yzerman was not his usual smooth-talking self.
“Uh,” Yzerman said, continuing about the coaching staff, “Ah, uh, to instill or improve — continue to work on — being more — or whether — it’s a better system — or getting better in the way they play.”
From a generally poised sports executive who usually speaks in whole thoughts, this Yzerman transcript demands a translation, based on the key words “our coaching staff.” It would say:
“My coach will soon start the third year of his three-year contract. Although our team improved, it is beyond time for us to make the playoffs. If next season starts poorly, I will pull the plug on him before Christmas and find a new coach. Because there is no way I will take the blame for this slow rebuild. And the Ilitches will tolerate it because I am the golden boy of this franchise.”
To Yzerman’s credit, he didn’t use as an excuse the injury that took captain Dylan Larkin out for almost three weeks as they went into their skid.
“Teams lose their top player all the time,” Yzerman said, “and find a way to win games.”
That is true. Sometimes they do it by keeping down the goals-against, especially when the general manager provides the coach with defensive-minded players willing to back-check, start scrums after whistles and intimidate opponents with heavy collisions.
Instead, Yzerman has given Lalonde a patchwork team of veterans that includes many one-way forwards who are not overly physical on offense or responsible defensively. One was Patrick Kane, a free-agent rental with exquisite offensive skills for shooting, passing and controlling the tempo.
He is dazzling to watch, but Kane is not the guy to defend Lucas Raymond, a blossoming attacker who nevertheless absorbs too much bully abuse after whistles from opponents who rub their gloves in his face or cross check him when he nears the enemy net.
Remember when Yzerman was Detroit’s star center? Joey Kocur, one of his bodyguards, once said his job was to “keep the flies off Stevie.” The NHL does not allow as much vigilante brawling as in the past, but every team still needs someone to back up the skilled guys.
Yzerman must find one or two like this. His heaviest hitter happens to be one of their best players: Mo Seider, the big defenseman from Germany, who someday may win a Norris trophy as the league’s best defenseman.
In his third season, Seider’s first NHL fight involved the comparably shaggy Filip Forsberg of Nashville. After knocking off each other’s helmets, they repeatedly punched each other in the hair.
Seider might be the ideal mentor to another tall, young, European defenseman, Simon Edvinsson of Sweden, who flashed great promise as a late-season callup. To fans of a certain vintage, both at best might someday play like Larry Robinson, the Montreal great, and that ain’t no faint praise.
Another small, skilled Wing is winger Alex DeBrincat, who has three seasons left on his deal signed last year as a free agent. A tricky shooter with many arrows in his quiver, he slumped terribly toward the end of the schedule.
On one play, DeBrincat stood uncovered, wide-open on offense at the edge of the left-wing circle, waiting for a perfect pass on the way. But he suddenly fell down to end the play. Despite his 27 goals, that crash landing seemed to sum up the end of his season.
And what about Larkin — age 28 this summer, and entering his 10th season — with only his freshman year in the playoffs?
With 33 goals, he had what was probably his best season. You hope his career hasn’t peaked yet without him having had the chance to lead a decent team to postseason success during his window of possibility. Most folks love stories headlined “Local Boy Makes Good.”
So do local journalists. Certainly, Larkin grew up steeped in Motor City sports lore. His team — for all its proud history — last won a round of playoffs in 2013. Last week, he must have sensed the metro hockey energy that buzzed through town like a mini version of Lions’ fever.
Despite all the recent failure from the players, the coaches, the general manager, and the owner, the Wings played inspirationally in the last week of the season, winning their final three against “Original Six” teams from Canada. The octopus cult bought into it.
Especially in the home victory over Montreal at the LCA, you could sense even through the television the giddy, tingly energy you can get from a tense and earnest hockey game even when it is between two mediocre teams.
You could see it in the fervent celebrations of joy from the players after goals scored and the explosions of emotion from the customers. Even if you forgot to turn on your radio or television last Monday night, you could hear the hockey sound all around you, a roar blowing through the streets like a big spring wind.
While the Wings beat the Habs downtown, all that energy stirred up this big, emotional breeze that blew out from the LCA and surged over to Grand River and McGraw on the West Side where the Wings used to play at Olympia Stadium in their earliest Stanley Cup eras.
Then the windy gusts got even louder — almost tornadic! — and turned toward the Riverfront, down by where Joe Louis Arena used to be, where the Wings played in their most recent reign of Stanley Cups.
Then this joyous noise bounced further off the tunnel to Canada, which amplified it and sent it roaring back uptown toward Ilitch Village, where the Red Wings play now in a barn that pushes both pizza and waste removal.
And on the sidewalk next to the still-newish arena, you could hear it loud and clear, something you used to hear a lot for many years at Olympia, and for a long time, too, at The Joe, but not so much in recent years at the LCA under what is known as “the Yzer-plan.”
“Let’s go Wings!” the sound on the wind seemed to roar and echo, bouncing uptown up Woodward Avenue, past Wayne State and the Fisher Building and Birmingham and maybe Mackinac, too. “Let’s go Wings!”
