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The Steve Yzerman Era in Detroit is over. And it didn’t go the way anyone wanted.

A hiring that was set up to be a fairytale homecoming has ended in a flameout.

There’s no doubt Yzerman inherited a tall task back in 2019. But to go seven years without making the playoffs would have surprised any skeptic back then — if such skeptics even existed.

The question now is, how did this happen? As the Red Wings turn the page and begin the search for the next general manager, it’s worth examining where it all went wrong for Yzerman in Detroit.

Not picking a lane

From Day 1 on the job, Yzerman preached patience. Even more than that: he was steadfast, throughout his entire tenure, in not offering a timeline.

Maybe that was part of the problem.

Of course, back in 2019, it was hard to say exactly how long a process Yzerman was in for. It was always going to be a huge turnaround job, and it was fair to give him some time to get the lay of the land. But even by the end of the 2021-22 season, when he fired head coach Jeff Blashill, Yzerman was intentionally vague about where exactly the Red Wings were in their rebuilding process.

“I think we’re at the end of Year 3,” he said at the time. “And the beginning of Year 4.”

It was a good line, especially if you viewed Yzerman’s secrecy as a feature and not a bug. But in hindsight, it’s fair to wonder: was there really a grand plan there to conceal? Or was it simply patience for the sake of patience?

Another Yzerman quote from that same year-end news conference in 2022: “The danger becomes you start to get a little impatient, desperate, I’m not sure what the right word is, and then you do something stupid. … Any time I’ve tried to force something — force a trade, force a signing — I’ve kind of regretted it for different reasons. I think you just have to remain patient. Quite frankly, I think it’ll be easier for me to be patient than it will for yourself.”

There’s certainly truth in that sentiment. But the timing of it is interesting, because that 2022 offseason has become a flashpoint in autopsies of Yzerman’s tenure, with some actually viewing it as an example of the general manager getting impatient and pulling out of the rebuild too soon.

That summer, the Red Wings made their first major foray into free agency under Yzerman, signing Andrew Copp, Ben Chiarot, David Perron and Dominik Kubalik to multiyear deals and Olli Määttä to a one-year deal.

The Red Wings did marginally improve that season — going from 74 points in 2021-22 to 80 points in 2022-23 — and picked ninth that year, just outside the range to land wingers Matvei Michkov and Ryan Leonard (who went seventh and eighth, respectively). And those players might have made a real difference. Both are already legit NHL contributors, while Detroit is still waiting for its No. 9 pick, Nate Danielson, to become a full-time NHLer.

In reality, though, the true stars of that draft were Connor Bedard, Leo Carlsson, Adam Fantilli and Will Smith, all of whom went in the top four. And the teams that landed those players all finished the 2022-23 season with 60 or fewer points. Getting into that range would have actually required a sell-off by the Red Wings in the 2022 offseason to get 14 points worse than they had been in 2021-22.

You can debate whether that would have been a worthy pursuit for the Red Wings, coming off Moritz Seider’s Calder Trophy win and Lucas Raymond’s similarly stellar rookie season. Hindsight may even favor that view.

But the real sin was that Yzerman was all over the map in the years that followed. After adding those veterans (some on fairly long contracts) in the 2022 offseason, he traded Tyler Bertuzzi and Filip Hronek months later at the 2023 trade deadline. Then he signed J.T. Compher and Justin Holl, and traded for Alex DeBrincat and Jeff Petry in the summer of 2023 — and signed Patrick Kane early in the 2023-24 season.

That season got off to an exciting start, fueled by DeBrincat (and then Kane), and offered hope that the tide was turning. But then the 2024 trade deadline was quiet, and the ensuing offseason was mystifying. The Red Wings let Perron (an aging player but important leader) and Shayne Gostisbehere (a key piece of the power play) walk in free agency and replaced them with Vladimir Tarasenko and Erik Gustafsson — for a net savings of less than $500,000 on what Gostisbehere and Perron received elsewhere.

Even beyond some of the contracts themselves, it was hard to discern a real direction from the moves. So while it’s fair to say the Red Wings may not have bottomed out long enough, it’s also true that other than DeBrincat and Kane, the Red Wings never really made enough big moves to try to truly compete, either.

Instead, they straddled the fence, waiting for internal improvement that wasn’t quick enough to materialize.

Even when signings worked out, they were often followed by subtractions elsewhere. The incremental trend line was decent — with Detroit only ever dropping in the standings once in Yzerman’s seven years — but it was just that: incremental.

And in today’s NHL, that simply wasn’t enough. Yzerman never seemed to pick a lane or a contention window, and it cost him.

Not enough impact from the draft (especially after Round 1)

One of the exciting things about Yzerman’s arrival was how successful his Tampa Bay teams had been in the draft, especially after the first round.

In fact, the Lightning’s first-round picks under Yzerman were actually pretty underwhelming. But outside of Round 1, they had shined, picking up stars and role players alike.

The Lightning found a franchise player in Nikita Kucherov in the late second round in 2011, and plucked Ondrej Palat with a seventh that same year. They traded up one spot to pick Brayden Point in the third round in 2014, then snagged Anthony Cirelli in the same round a year later.

That’s two-thirds of the top-six forward group from their 2021 Stanley Cup team, all picked outside the first round. They also drafted players like Radko Gudas and Ross Colton, who went on to strong careers elsewhere.

Perhaps overlooked at the time, though — in the glow of Yzerman’s return — is that a general manager’s influence is strongest earlier in the draft. And while the head of hockey operations is, of course, responsible for setting a draft philosophy, they’re rarely the one scouting those late-round gems.

In Detroit — at least for the drafts we have enough data to assess — the drafting under Yzerman was good, but not great.

In Seider and Raymond, the Red Wings hit two early home runs high in the draft. Seider, Yzerman’s first pick in Detroit, was viewed as a shocking selection at No. 6, but has become a star defenseman and would likely go second in a re-draft of that class. Raymond is nearly a point-per-game player and Detroit’s most skilled player.

Simon Edvinsson, the Red Wings’ 2021 first-round pick, looks like a hit too, as a major-minute top-pair defenseman. Their 2022 top pick, Marco Kasper, struggled through a sophomore slump last season but should still be a hard-to-play-against forward who takes on an important role going forward.

The first-round picks since then (Danielson, Axel Sandin-Pellikka, Michael Brandsegg-Nygård, Carter Bear and J.P. Hurlbert) may become important contributors as well; it’s still early for most of them. But they weren’t able to make major NHL impacts while Yzerman was at the helm.

More importantly, while Yzerman’s Lightning teams made their living outside the first round of the draft, the Red Wings struggled to find major contributors in rounds 2-7 — or at least, ones who progressed quickly enough.

Albert Johansson has become a regular after being a 2019 second-round pick, and 2023 seventh-rounder Emmitt Finnie looks like one as well. But other than those two and Elmer Söderblom (whom the Red Wings traded last deadline), no other Red Wings pick outside of round 1 under Yzerman has played more than 50 NHL games.

There are promising players still in the pipeline, such as Hobey Baker winner Max Plante (2024 second round), rangy right-shot defenseman Anton Johansson (2022 fourth round) and goaltender Trey Augustine (2023 second round). But if those players do ultimately “pop,” it will be with a different general manager in charge.

How much of this trend was about scouting and how much was development is hard to say. And keep in mind that we could look back on the Red Wings’ drafting in this period differently in five years. That’s the nature of prospect timelines and development. If Plante, Johansson, Augustine, those remaining first-round picks and perhaps some others really pan out, it could make a big difference for how Yzerman’s seven years are viewed.

But it didn’t happen while he was still running the show.

The other factors

While the two above issues are perhaps the most isolatable aspects to assess (and critique) about Yzerman’s tenure, there are many other harder-to-pin-down factors as well.

There is the reality of how bare a cupboard he inherited in 2019, with few real top prospects in the system and even fewer major trade assets. There’s the fact that the Red Wings never got much lottery luck — never picking higher than fourth, and certainly not getting the kind of breaks teams like San Jose have gotten in moving up dramatically in the order.

There are also player-side factors largely out of Yzerman’s control, like the Red Wings’ lack of mental toughness late in seasons. In each of the last three years, and arguably the last four, Detroit found itself in a position to make a run at the playoffs in late February. Each time, they collapsed. That speaks to a locker room issue that Yzerman, from up top, would be hard-pressed to solve.

Yes, he picked the players — and by the end, the entire roster was either acquired or extended by him — but it’s fair to say those players underachieved their own ability on multiple occasions, especially late in seasons. Those players, and particularly the team’s leaders, have to own that.

There’s also the question that has become especially conspicuous this offseason, with Dylan Larkin’s trade request. Yzerman was known as a demanding, intimidating general manager who could grind players in negotiations. NHL players are now making more money and wielding more power over their own futures. Was Yzerman’s style of running a team still viable? At a minimum, it’s a much harder approach to take without on-ice results to fall back on.

Larkin and Yzerman each have their share of blame for that situation, with few hard facts to go off beyond snapshots and innuendo. But maintaining a relationship with top players increasingly matters as the league changes.

It bears repeating that hindsight may turn out to be kinder to Yzerman’s tenure than the current state of the team would suggest. He actually leaves the organization fairly well positioned for a quicker retool, with good young players to build around, some appealing tradeable players and a rather clean cap sheet.

But by the end, his ability to sell all of that, and his time to create a winner out of it, had run out — just like the fans’, and possibly his own, patience.