Five Things Every Franchise Should Learn From What's Happening in Detroit

If you haven't been following it, the Red Wings are having one of the worst offseasons a franchise can have.

Dylan Larkin, their captain, requested a trade on June 4. He gave Yzerman a list of three teams he'd accept, Minnesota, Vegas and Florida, and he has refused to expand it since. On July 15, Detroit removed Steve Yzerman as general manager. He's still there as a senior advisor to ownership, and reports say he won't be involved in hockey decisions going forward. Ilitch's statement said flatly that they are not where they and their fans expect to be.

Meanwhile Patrick Kane left in free agency and went back to Chicago.

That's a captain who wants out, a Hall of Fame GM pushed aside, and a veteran leaving, all in about six weeks. Ten straight years without the playoffs, the longest active drought in the league.

I'm not writing this to dunk on Detroit. I'm writing it because eight years ago that was us, and because a bunch of what's happening there is stuff that could happen to any team including this one.

Here's what I take from it.

One. Reputation doesn't buy you time forever.

Yzerman is Detroit. He captained the team, won three Cups there, and came back in 2019 as the guy who was supposed to fix it. Nobody in hockey has more credibility with that fan base. And after seven years without a playoff appearance under his watch, it still ended. Being a legend gets you a longer leash than anyone else would get. It doesn't get you an infinite one.

Two. The rebuild has to actually end.

The thing that struck me reading through all of this was Larkin's playoff résumé. He's played five playoff games in his entire career, all of them in his rookie year, 2016. He's about to turn 30. He's a consistent 30-goal scorer who has become one of the better two-way centers in the league, and he has essentially never played a meaningful game.

Every rebuild asks players to be patient. Fine. But there's a point where patience stops being a virtue and starts being a decade of a guy's prime. Larkin hit that point and then some.

Three. Your best players are watching how you handle the deadline.

After the 2024-25 season, Larkin publicly said the team didn't gain any momentum from the trade deadline. Their big move that year was picking up Petr Mrazek and Craig Smith.

That's a captain telling ownership, in public, that he doesn't believe they're trying. And the reporting says the frosty relationship with Yzerman was one of the main reasons for the trade request. Players know the difference between a team that's building and a team that's stalling, and they keep score.

Four. Leverage is not the same thing as a solution.

Yzerman's position was defensible on paper. Larkin has five years left on his deal, the three teams he'd accept haven't offered enough, and the GM's job is to get proper value. He said publicly he could make no guarantees.

And he was right, and it still blew up, because you can win the standoff and lose the room. Two months later Larkin still hasn't budged, Detroit has nothing, and the GM is gone. Being technically correct about an asset's value doesn't help you if the outcome is a poisoned locker room and a fan base watching all of it happen in the newspaper.

Five. Fix things while they're still small.

Nothing in that list happened suddenly. The drought built for ten years. The Larkin tension was reported after the 2024-25 season, a full year before he asked out. There were signals everywhere.

By the time you're firing a franchise icon and reportedly using that firing to convince your captain to stay, you're not managing a problem anymore. You're doing damage control.

And here's the part I keep remembering as a Canes fan…

We were exactly one franchise decision away from being Detroit. Nine years out of the playoffs. Twelve thousand people in the building. The difference is that Carolina found the right guy behind the bench, built a culture with actual staying power, and got its stars to buy in before any of them ran out of patience.

Aho is signed through 2032. Slavin through 2032. Jarvis through 2032. Blake and Stankoven into the mid-thirties. That's not luck. That's what it looks like when players want to be somewhere.

Detroit had every advantage. Original Six, one of the best front-office reputations in sports, real money, a fan base that would show up for anything. It still went sideways, because none of that stuff wins games and none of it makes a 30-year-old captain feel like the wait was worth it.

Eight straight playoff appearances and a Cup, and I still don't take a single year of this for granted. Detroit is why.

Go Canes.