Steve Yzerman’s Bid To Rebuild Winning Culture In Hockeytown.
For the Detroit Red Wings, hope for the future has been hard to come by in recent years. Until not that long ago, the team was a dynasty, the Winged Wheel logo an undisputed symbol of high quality and winning hockey. The Wings made the NHL playoffs for twenty-five straight seasons between 1991 and 2016, winning three Stanley Cups in that span. During that time, their roster featured star players who would establish themselves as some of the greatest ever to play the game of hockey, from defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom, to center Pavel Datsyuk, and finally the longtime captain and face of the franchise, Steve Yzerman, who established the culture of the team as that of perpetual winning.
When Yzerman’s playing days came to an end in 2006, he joined the Red Wings’ front office- many saw him as being groomed to eventually take over for longtime general manager Ken Holland. Yzerman would ultimately take over for Holland, but not after a near decade-long hiatus where Yzerman left to become General Manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning, helping to build the core of a team that would become a perennial Stanley Cup contender and, finally, the Cup champions in 2020.
During that time, the winning ways finally ran out for Detroit, with the playoff streak finally coming to an end in 2016, their final two playoff defeats at the hands of Yzerman’s Lightning. Holland’s attempts to prolong the playoff streak had cost the team draft picks and young players, and it became apparent that, apart from promising young center Dylan Larkin, the team had little to look forward to in the way of emerging talent to bring them back to winning ways.
The Wings have missed the playoffs every year since the end of the streak, meanwhile Yzerman’s Lightning were the toast of the league (even though they had yet to claim the Cup). The greatest hope of Wings fans was that Yzerman would return, and sure enough, he did, replacing Holland as General in April 2019. In a way, “Stevie Y” was now the face of the Detroit franchise once again, this time from the front office.
Yzerman has set to work building what Red Wings fans hope will be the future core of their next great team- inevitably, much of this work will have to be done through the NHL Draft. In 2019, Yzerman took German defenseman Moritz Seider with the sixth overall pick- he was considered a reach at the time, although Yzerman disupted this notion. But Seider has developed very well since then, seemingly vindicating Yzerman’s choice. In 2020, the choice was much more in line with conventional wisdom- as Yzerman took Lucas Raymond, a phenomenally talented wing prospect who, together with Larkin, could be the engines of the next great Wings offense while Seider anchors the defense.
Any NHL fan should know, however, that getting high draft picks is only one part of the equation of building a winning team. The Edmonton Oilers won the first overall pick in the NHL draft lottery three times between 2010 and 2015, and have only a single playoff appearance since then to show for it (and a defeat in the COVID-19 necessitated play-in round in 2020). This is despite the fact that one of those picks became Connor McDavid, widely considered the best hockey player in the world today.
Even if teams acquire high draft picks, and those picks turn into stars, if the team does not establish a culture of winning and expecting quality from themselves as players, it will turn out to be for nought. Just ask the Buffalo Sabres- after blatantly tanking in 2015 to secure the second overall pick, they drafted future superstar Jack Eichel. Hoping to surround him with quality players, they brought in proven NHL veterans like Ryan O’Reilly, Robin Lehner and Evander Kane. But these players floundered in Buffalo, with O’Reilly calling the team out publicly for being “ok with losing.”
Buffalo has yet to make the postseason since 2011, while O’Reilly, now with the St. Louis Blues, helped his new team win the Stanley Cup as the winner of the Conn Smythe Award (the MVP of the NHL playoffs). Yzerman, as one of the league’s most acclaimed General Managers, clearly has as one of his main goals having hisRed Wings (who have now missed the playoffs for four straight seasons) avoid falling into that losing mentality.
This is evident in the type of player that Yzerman has acquired for the team so far during the free agent signing period of the offseason. Yzerman has brought in, on affordable deals, not only veteran players, but ones who come from a history of winning teams, such as winger Bobby Ryan, who signed in Detroit for a one year deal worth $1 millon.
In his first press conference as a Red Wing (conducted via Zoom of course), Ryan directly addressed the question of culture and how that played into his decision to sign with the team. Ryan cited Yzerman, his passion and attention to detail, specifically “ the fact that he had done his homework, and [found out] that I had been well liked by young guys… in the past”- in other words, that he valued Ryan’s ability to make a positive impression on an up and coming team. Another positive sign for Detroit is that Ryan said that he spoke with Dylan Larkin (believed by some to be the presumptive next Red Wings captain), asking him specifically if the players on the Wings had grown content with losing (as Ryan O’Reilly had once alleged with the Sabres), with Larkin reportedly insisting that that was not the case.
Ryan is just one of a few solid veteran players that Yzerman has already picked up, with others including center Vladislav Namestnikov from the Colorado Avalanche, defenseman Jon Merrill from the Vegas Golden Knights, and goaltender Thomas Greiss from the New York Islanders. Greiss, in particular, cited his trust in Yzerman as a reason for him choosing Detroit. In order to return to the top of the NHL, the Red Wings will need to continue to develop young players, acquire the right veterans, and restore the culture of winning they once had. However, if it is in fact true that organizational culture is built from the top down, so far the right man seems to be at the top in Hockeytown.
