Examining the Yzerplan - Part 1: What's happened and who is the core?

The first of a two-part series analyzing the state of the Detroit Red Wings

Four years ago, Steve Yzerman returned to Detroit to take over the GM job of the Red Wings, after an esteemed tenure with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Hockeytown rejoiced over the return of a franchise icon and promised brighter days ahead for the team, which had missed the playoffs for its third consecutive season. Fast forward to the present, four seasons and five NHL Drafts later, and the Red Wings have missed the playoffs each year under Yzerman’s tenure, leading to some grumbling in the fanbase and many furious takes among the online hockey writers.

The discourse hinges around the so-called “Yzerplan”, whether it’s working and whether it’s clear which direction the team is going. The debate sparked my writing interest as a Red Wings fan, since I had already been planning my own piece on the state of the Red Wings rebuild. As a result, now I get the chance to drop a piece of interest and one that is topical. In a two-part series we’ll be looking at where the Red Wings stand as a franchise, how they’ve been steered by Steve Yzerman to this point, and where they might be heading.

In this first piece we’ll cover where the franchise was left to Yzerman when he inherited it from Ken Holland and the moves he’s made to this point as GM. After that, we’ll comprehensively examine the core of the team and the prospect pool, before breaking down a few thoughts on the team-building strategy to this point. That last part will set things up for Part 2 of the series, which discusses the proper way to build a team, whether Detroit can succeeded with the mold they’ve chosen, and whether patience with the Yzerplan™ should be running thin.

Before and during the tenure of Steve Yzerman

Steve Yzerman took over the Detroit Red Wings in the summer of 2019, when they were well into a rebuild. After crashing and burning in 2017, snapping the vaunted playoff streak, the team had begun a full scale rebuild the following season. Ken Holland had conducted two true “rebuild” drafts and handed the keys over Yzerman for the third one. The first thing that has to be stated about Yzerman’s tenure, and this one is pretty crucial, is he was left with very very little. Holland’s tenure included a few solid selections from 2012-14, including Dylan Larkin, Tyler Bertuzzi, Anthony Mantha, and Andreas Athanasiou, which produced a crop of 20-30 goal scorers who were in their early 20s when Yzerman took over, but the 2015-18 drafts that directly led up to Yzerman’s tenure were disastrous.

The Wings had few picks of consequence to work with in 2015, still chasing playoff success, but whiffed on the ones they did have. Evgeny Svechnikov, their first rounder, never panned out (partially due to injuries, but the result is the same). No one else in that draft played more than three games in the NHL. 2016 saw the team take seven picks, whiffing on first rounder Dennis Cholowski, while producing Filip Hronek and Givani Smith in the second round (no one else played an NHL game). Smith became an AHL/NHL tweener, but Hronek has turned into an NHL defenseman who can play in a top four. While Hronek was a nice snipe, gacking on back-to-back firsts is rough.

Then there was the 2017 Draft, an utter debacle from the Holland tenure. 9th overall pick Michael Rasmussen has finally started to show life in the NHL (more on him later), but at this point in time, you would have rather taken either Gabriel Vilardi or Martin Nečas, center prospects who were directly compared to Rasmussen and taken a few slots later. Getting a middling player out of Rasmussen in the top ten is subpar, but not getting a single NHL player out of the next ten picks they held in that draft is unforgivable. Yes, they were not premium selections, but with that many darts, at least one or two should hit the dart board. To make matters worse, most of the players were never even offered minor league contracts, busting pretty much the moment they were drafted. The Red Wings hyper-prioritized tall players and got almost nothing of value out of eleven selections.

[NHL.com]

2018 was a different sort of draft, the team holding four picks in the top 36 and eight in the top 100. Only one was high, 6th overall, but the Red Wings seemed to hit the jackpot on draft night, as consensus 3rd-best prospect F Filip Zadina tumbled down the board to Detroit at #6. Then, at pick 30, a consensus lottery pick in C Joe Veleno tumbled and the Red Wings scooped him up. In the early second they snagged D Jared McIsaac and winger Jonatan Berggren and were hailed as draft night winners.

So what happened? Something went wrong with the development of Zadina, who has 28 goals in 190 NHL games, a far cry from the possible 40-goal scorer he was hailed as. Veleno looks like his ceiling in the NHL may be as a fourth liner. McIsaac has been unable to stay healthy and is stuck in Grand Rapids, while Berggren may well be the best of the group, an intriguing middle six wing option who played his rookie year this past season. The rest of the picks in this draft have accomplished nothing as pro players, only Alec Regula seeing the NHL and that was on a tanking Chicago Blackhawks team, years after Detroit shipped him out.

In totality, the late Holland era that preceded Yzerman’s tenure saw the team make five first round selections, five second round selections, eight third round selections, and 34 picks in total and out of it produce maybe one middle six winger, one third line-ish center, one fourth line-ish center, and one top four-ish defender. No one that is yet a bona fide NHL stud and very little in the way of depth, a total inability to find anything of value outside of the second round. Not good enough.

Yzerman was starting over. He never said it publicly, but his actions as GM have all but screamed “my predecessor was a dumbass”. Yzerman’s first draft as GM saw him make one of the most surprising picks in recent NHL memory, taking D Moritz Seider 6th overall, but one that has paid off handsomely, as Seider won the Calder Trophy for Rookie of the Year last season. He made eleven selections in that draft, though only a few terribly high. Seider was the big one and they hit on that one (TBD on someone like an Albert Johansson, who I like).

Yzerman’s first regular season as GM saw the team have one of those “everything goes wrong” years and if there’s any upside to it, it’s that Detroit’s historically bad season ended prematurely- due to COVID-19. They only played 71 games that year and that was mercifully enough. 39 points was league-worst in the NHL and set the Red Wings up well for the NHL Entry Draft… except that they fell from 1st to 4th in the Draft Lottery, a moment that enraged the fanbase. Yzerman selected F Lucas Raymond from Sweden 4th overall and made 12 picks in total in that draft, employing a strategy of hoarding selections because the more cracks at it, the better.

Since that first season, the Red Wings have stitched together three seasons that have all been bad, but not godawful. They finished with the 5th-worst record in 2021, the 8th-worst record in 2022, and the 9th-worst in 2023. From one perspective, it’s improvement! But the team still isn’t terribly close to the postseason, missing by 12 points this season, and their underlying metrics were poor (7th worst xGF% at 5v5, 10th-worst in all situations). Yzerman, to his credit, knows this and has acknowledged it, refusing to do what so many GMs do and convince themselves their team is better than they are. Even when the Red Wings were hanging around the playoff bubble thanks to some good old-fashioned PDO sorcery mid-season, Yzerman was willing to pull the plug at the deadline, getting great value for Tyler Bertuzzi and Filip Hronek in the process.

After last week’s draft, which saw the team make eleven more selections, including two first rounders and three second rounders, Yzerman gave the quote that riled up some fans: “with the picks we have, with the moves we made at the deadline, we’re still in a rebuilding phase”. Is he right to be saying that?

[NHL.com]

Where the Red Wings stand

As an NHL analyst, the first thing I ask when I look at a team is “what is the core?" Who are they building around? The biggest decision Yzerman made as Red Wings GM was deciding upon being hired if the existing group of early 20s forwards I noted (Larkin, Bertuzzi, Mantha, Athanasiou) was a core worth building around. He, correctly, said it was not. Larkin is by far the best player of the four but is not a game-changing talent and he alone can’t win you anything. Athanasiou and Mantha are eminently frustrating talents whose production comes and goes, not real pieces to build around. Bertuzzi is a highly useful complementary player around star talents, but he is not a star himself. And if you want to toss Filip Hronek in this group, he’s a fine player but will never be challenging for a Norris Trophy, most likely.

Yzerman deemed that this was not a core to build around and with Holland having whiffed on the entirety of the 2015-18 period, Stevie Y recognized there was no immediate help in the pipeline to bolster that group. The reality is, he’d be starting from scratch and drafting that core. In which case, the core of this current Red Wings team are the following names: Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond, Simon Edvinsson, Sebastian Cossa, Marco Kasper, Nate Danielson, and Axel Sandin-Pelikka, their first rounders during Yzerman’s tenure. If you want to toss in a couple more prospects who I really like, you can include William Wallinder, Carter Mazur, plus Jonatan Berggren.

Of that core, only Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond are full-time NHLers and they still have only logged ~160 career games. They both just turned 22 and 21, respectively, and are still on entry-level contracts. At this time, I am very high on Seider, who has shown the ability to be a very high level, minutes munching, all situations defenseman. He was weighed down this season playing with Ben Chiarot (Yzerman’s single worst decision as GM), but excelled again with Jake Walman at his side, as he did as a rookie. Seider’s size, skating ability, and physicality is everything NHL teams look for in a modern defenseman. I have a good bit of belief he will be playing on a top pair in the NHL for a long time.

As for Raymond, he had a very strong rookie season in my view, especially for a slimmer/smaller winger. The league made adjustments to him and he had the ole sophomore slump this past season (which included an injury), but I expect big things from him in year #3. I don’t know exactly how good Raymond will end up being, but as a general rule, I presume that guys who score 23 goals and 57 points with above-average underlying numbers as an age 19 rookie will end up being quite good. He needs to continue to get stronger, but the performance he showed in 2021-22 is enough for me to believe Raymond will be a legit top six NHL forward for many years. Timo Meier and William Nylander did not score 30+ goals until they were 22 and 23, respectively, and this offseason both will be signing for $8 M+ per season as elite forwards. Raymond, like I said in the previous paragraph, just turned 21. I don’t know if Raymond will end up being that good, but it takes time.

The rest of the core is in the minor or junior leagues, as Yzerman moves very cautiously with the development of his prospects (the Holland-era Red Wings were the masters of over-ripening prospects). Simon Edvinsson should be ready for the NHL full-time this upcoming season after getting a small taste in March/April. The towering Swedish defenseman is one of the NHL’s top prospects, having cobbled together an elite season for a U19 defenseman in Sweden in 2021-22 before performing very well in Grand Rapids this past season. He is tracking towards being a very good NHL defender and we should get our first full-time look at him in 2023-24.

Sebastian Cossa, the much debated goalie prospect, finished the season in the ECHL with the Toledo Walleye. He’s been adjusting to a larger workload away from the shelter of the dominant Edmonton Oil Kings, but closed the year much stronger. I’d expect he starts in Toledo and if he continues that level of play, will then move up to Grand Rapids. Goalies take longer than any other position to develop and Cossa doesn’t turn 21 until November. We shall see.

[Red Wings screencap]

2022’s first rounder Marco Kasper may be a Red Wing this fall, though I could also see him getting time in Grand Rapids. Kasper’s 5v5 play improved dramatically in the SHL this past season and analytically graded out as one of the most valuable players in that league. Making his living in the slot, Kasper is a smooth skater, smart, detail-oriented, greasy, and works incredibly hard. I’m not sure where his offensive upside tops out, but I like the potential for Kasper to play as a middle six center in the NHL who logs time in all situations.

The players picked this week, Nate Danielson and Axel Sandin-Pelikka, are the newest additions to this core. Danielson was a divisive prospect in the pre-draft process and one that I admittedly was not high on in first review, but there are plenty of reasons to like him. He’s got size at close to 6’2” and is a good skater. Danielson plays a tough, two-way game that was more effective against Connor Bedard than anyone else in the WHL according to Bedard himself. Internet Scouts decried his offensive upside but to Danielson’s credit, 78 points in 58 games in the WHL on a poor offensive team (Brandon had two players over 50 points) is not poor. You wonder what he could do on a stronger offensive squad. My gut thinks he’s a middle six C with the likeliest outcome being an Anton Lundell-type, but Dylan Cozens offensive upside could be in there that would have Danielson at the top of a lineup.

Sandin-Pelikka is a bit of a change from what the Red Wings covet at defense, a smaller, puck-moving, offense-first defenseman. If the skating improves and he learns how to handle forecheck pressure, the shiftiness and power play ability could translate to a dynamite, John Klingberg-at-his-peak sort of player. If if doesn’t, I still see a Rasmus Sandin sort of mold. Nothing wrong with that, especially if it’s on a team that already has a fully operational Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson.

You can add to the core other prospects who I don’t think are necessarily foundational but I do like. Based on what I’ve seen and read, I would guess that William Wallinder, Albert Johansson, Carter Mazur, and Jonatan Beggren are future NHL players of some kind.

• Wallinder made a big jump in Sweden and is coming over to GR this fall, with a future top four role in the NHL possible.

• Johansson has been marinating in GR and is worthy of a crack at the NHL this season in your author’s opinion. I’m not sure he ever reaches top four potential, but a third pair guy seems like a reasonable outcome.

• Mazur was one of the NCAA’s best forwards this past season for Denver, then came to GR for six games and showed out with 3-3-6. A 200 foot, hard/heavy winger who can do a little of everything, I love Mazur’s game and think he’s a legit top nine winger in the league.

• Berggren played his rookie year in the NHL this past season after getting passing grades in Grand Rapids. He scored 15-13-28 in 67 games with solid underlying metrics. Only turning 23 this summer, I see a middle six wing role in the NHL as quite possible.

Beyond those players, the Red Wings have a deep pool of wild-card prospects who may or may not be something. I don’t consider them part of the “core”, but there are plenty of intriguing names. Among the ones I’m tracking the most are Elmer Soderblom, Dmitri Buchelnikov, Cross Hanas, Shai Buium, Amadeus Lombardi, Donovan Sebrango, Trey Augustine, Noah Dower-Nilsson, and Andrew Gibson.

Of course, I know most of you are screaming at me “WHAT ABOUT DYLAN LARKIN???” Yes, he’s obviously a core piece too. The long-term contract that keeps him in Detroit is evidence of that. Is he a superstar? No. Is he a very good player at a premium position that most teams would love to have? Also yes. He’s the one “veteran” piece of the core and is around for the long haul.

Two players caught between the old Larkin and the Yzerman wave of prospects are Michael Rasmussen and Joe Veleno. I mentioned these players in the Holland era recap as bad picks which, considering the draft slots, they were. But that doesn’t mean that some can’t be useful players. The much-maligned Rasmussen is actually the one who seems the most enticing to me. Big centers sometimes take a long time to develop, longer than your average forward, and at 6’6”, Rasmussen certainly qualifies. He was on pace for a 42 point season before his injury, his underlying metrics were surprisingly solid, and the team’s late-season nose-dive coincided with his injury. Consider me intrigued. I don’t think he’s going to end up being a stud, but there may well be a quality 3rd line-ish center here after all. Veleno may be able to hang in the NHL as a 4th center, in my view. If he works hard at his defensive game, the skating ability could turn him into a solid player in that role.

Nate Danielson [Getty Images]

How the Red Wings are building

So now that I have my thoughts about every player of note in the organization out in writing, let’s try and pull it together and talk about turning those players into a contending team and the strategy Yzerman is pursuing. As it stands right now, the Red Wings have a very strong U23 defensive group between the NHL roster and the prospect pool, one that I’d go so far as to say is probably the best in the league. You have a player one year removed from being a Calder winner already in the NHL, one of the very best defensemen prospects not in the NHL ready to join the bigs, and a collection of defensive prospects I like quite a bit in Wallinder, Johansson, Sandin-Pelikka + a vat of defensive lottery tickets further down the prospect list. Perhaps only New Jersey’s tandem of Simon Nemec and Luke Hughes, Buffalo’s Dahlin/Power tandem, or Columbus’ David Jiricek and Denton Mateychuk have arguments here and even still, I like Detroit’s U23 defensive depth a lot more which tips the scales for me.

I also think the team has assembled a pretty solid group of center prospects. Larkin is a long term piece towards the top of the lineup. I’m not sure if he’s really a “#1 center” but he’s certainly a very good player. Let’s call him a 1.5 center. Like I said, Rasmussen might end up turning out as a decent 3C, maybe Veleno can be a 4C, and then you have two first round prospects in Kasper and Danielson who were marketed on draft night as potential #2 centers in their future. Kasper is listed at 6’1”, Danielson perhaps closer to 6’2”, both with decent size and wearing the vaunted “difficult to play against” label, the potential to be 200-foot presences who play in all situations. They are also both strong skaters, which is a theme for (obviously) Larkin, as well as Veleno. Two-way, detail-oriented, hard-working, smooth skating centers with decent size populate this organization’s system.

They also have an attractive goalie pipeline now with Cossa and Trey Augustine. Nothing special and Cossa hasn’t yet risen to the level of being an elite goalie prospect (he needs to succeed in the AHL to earn that label), but those are two very solid tickets to hold at this point in a build. We shall see if they result in anything of note, as goalies are notoriously fickle, but it’s a respectable goalie pipeline after adding Augustine at this most recent draft.

What is lacking from the pipeline, and the biggest area to discuss, are high skill, high offensive IQ sorts of players. I’m not even saying they have to be wingers, just forwards in the system who profile as big time offensive talents. To this point in the rebuild, through seven first round picks, they’ve taken one forward who was seen as being a top end offensive player (Raymond). Now look, maybe Danielson’s got a much better offensive game than public scouts believe (I think this is much more likely than it is for Kasper) and if it’s the case that he’s got a Dylan Cozens-style ceiling, that’ll be awesome. Sign me up! But until we see it, we have to hew a bit more to the median expectation which doesn’t necessarily project that.

Axel Sandin-Pelikka [Getty Images]

In selecting both Kasper and Danielson, and Sandin-Pelikka over several forwards in that slot, the Red Wings have consistently passed up opportunities to take high skill, offensive forwards in favor of more two-way forwards and defensemen. This has continued into the second and third rounds, with the decision to not draft any forwards in the early second of this year’s draft standing out in a stark way.

The sheer amount of resources devoted towards defense through five drafts by Yzerman is staggering: they’ve used three firsts (two top ten), six seconds, and two thirds, eleven picks in the top three rounds. In total, they’ve spent 20 picks, nearly three normal drafts’ worth, on defenseman. When I said the Red Wings have the best U23 pipeline of D in the league, a frank response would have been “given the resources devoted, they should be the best”.

Their decision to carpet-bomb the hell out of the defensive position and stick with safer, projectable and toolsy forwards over raw “upside” has led to some notable divergences with the community of Internet Scouts, who tend to place extreme value on players with high-end puck skill and creativity. The Red Wings seem interested in finding players who can contend for the Selke and Norris Trophies, whereas Internet Scouts want to find the next Art Ross Trophy winners. It’s also a divergence from one team in Detroit’s division, the Buffalo Sabres, who chase the sorts of players Internet Scouts love (see: taking Zach Benson this year) and in the process have built up a fiery offense but have room to grow on defense. The Red Wings seem to be tracking towards the reverse.

Does that tactical decision mean anything big? Will it condemn the Red Wings to a lower ceiling and a team that lacks the parts to win the Stanley Cup? Come back for Part 2 of this series, as I’ll take a look at the ingredients to win a Stanley Cup and the many templates that can be used, before getting into whether patience with the Yzerplan should be running thing.