What I think, and what I know, about the Red Wings as offseason nears

New York Times

15-04-2025

The Detroit Red Wings' final home game of the season ended with a 6-4 win over the Dallas Stars Monday night, sending off their fans with at least a decent taste in their mouth after what's been a trying season.
There are two more games left on the schedule, as Detroit heads to New Jersey and Toronto to close out the season, but already, the offseason storylines are coming into view.
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Here's what I think and what I know about the Red Wings as the season winds down — and the summer intrigue picks up.
With another assist Monday, Marco Kasper is up to 35 points this season — with 28 of those points (including 16 goals) coming in his last 40 games, since Jan. 10. That's a nice rookie season, and an excellent close to it, with a second-half scoring rate that translates to a 57-point pace. And just as important, he's made that surge while driving play to the tune of a 55 percent expected goals share in that span entering Monday, with some of the toughest minutes on the team. He's thrived between Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane.
That's the profile of a legit second-line center.
Consider, for example, the players in that role for two of the best teams in the league: Atlantic Division foes Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers.
The Panthers' 2C is Sam Bennett, who is in the middle of a career-best scoring season with 51 points, and has spent the last four seasons between a 53-58 percent expected goals share. The Lightning have Anthony Cirelli, an elite defensive center who is wrapping up his first-ever season with more than 50 points (currently 58) and driving play at an elite 61 percent expected goals share, but has historically lived between 51-56 percent. Cirelli's usage is slightly tougher than what Kasper has seen over the last three months, but the Red Wings rookie saw some legitimately tough competition in putting up those numbers.
Kasper still has a lot to prove to show he can truly keep up that production and play-driving combination over a full season. He's not there yet. But he's showing potential over a half season now, and that's highly encouraging.
One reason Kasper's breakthrough has been so important for the Red Wings is they weren't getting much offense outside their big four: Kane, DeBrincat, Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond.
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Raymond leads the team with 78 points, and Larkin and DeBrincat are tied for second with 68 each. Kane, who missed 10 games to injury, is at 58.
After that? Defenseman Moritz Seider has 43, and Kasper's 35 points make him the next-highest-scoring forward. That's a huge drop-off.
Now, no team is going to be made up of all 20-goal scorers or forwards regularly topping 40 points. And some of Detroit's top forwards need to score more than they did this season too. But the Red Wings need to be able to count on more offense from their bottom six next season, especially without superstars at the top of the lineup to lean on. The Dallas team they beat Monday — which should compete for the Cup — has a leading scorer with only 81 points, but they have seven forwards (and a defenseman) with more than 15 goals. Detroit has five.
There's already considerable money tied up in that bottom six going into next season, but the results this season weren't enough. That means the Red Wings need to either find a way to get more out of the group they have, or find a way to shake it up.
With two games left, the Red Wings are likely to finish with not just the league's worst penalty kill this season, but potentially one of the five worst since the league began keeping track in 1977-78. By now, you're likely aware of this.
Could an average penalty kill have gotten them into the playoffs? It's possible. League average this season looks like it will finish at about 78 percent, compared to the Red Wings currently sitting at 70 percent. That's about 14 fewer goals allowed over the season.
That difference potentially getting Detroit into the postseason depends on which games you subtract those goals from. But there were certainly some games where the penalty kill was especially costly.
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On Nov. 8 against the Maple Leafs, Toronto beat Detroit 3-1 on two power-play goals (on only two tries) and an empty-netter. Less than three weeks after that, on Nov. 29, the Red Wings gave up three power-play goals on four chances to the Devils in a 5-4 regulation loss. And two days later, Vancouver scored two power-play goals in less than a minute en route to a 5-4 win in overtime.
And then there's March 10 against Ottawa, when the Senators won 2-1 in regulation while scoring both of their goals on the power play — though Ottawa goaltender Linus Ullmark and his 48 saves were more the story of that game.
That's seven potential standings points swinging the other way in games largely decided by the penalty kill. Detroit is currently six points back of the wild card.
Reading all that, perhaps there's an impulse to pin the whole season on the PK. That would be far too convenient.
As bad as Detroit's penalty kill is — and it's been bad — they also entered Monday's games as a bottom-10 team in five-on-five expected goals for and against per 60 minutes, and 31st in actual five-on-five goals per 60 as well. They are a deeply flawed team, in ways that far exceed the average of 3:34 per game in which they were shorthanded.
So while Todd McLellan, Trent Yawney and company will certainly have to spend time this offseason working on ways to fix that unit, it's really just the tip of the iceberg for a team whose only real positive differentiator was its power play.
Speaking of that power play, it was indeed the best thing the Red Wings have had going for them this season. With two games left, it's converting at a 27.3 percent rate, good for fourth in the NHL. That's a real weapon, and much in the same way the penalty kill cost Detroit games this season, the power play certainly won them some.
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And Kane, operating from the right flank, was a big reason why. He has 12 power-play goals this season, and that's his secondary asset to the unit — the complement to vision and playmaking from the flank.
That alone is reason enough to bring him back — you don't want to jeopardize your one major strength as a team — and his chemistry with Kasper and DeBrincat late in the year looked effective at five-on-five too. And, to top it off, his feel for the big moment is something the Red Wings need more of, not less.
Kane has seemed to like it in Detroit the last two years, and the Red Wings would be wise to make sure they keep him.
It's been an issue for a couple years now, and it's something that keeping Kane doesn't help with. He finds pucks around the goal mouth reasonably often, but he's not going to be digging many pucks out in the corners or making his presence felt on the forecheck. One reason Kasper's emergence was so important was that he does those things, which are the less-heralded components of creating offense. Detroit is going to need more of that, especially in their top six.
That's one of the reasons Detroit's five-on-five offense fell short this season. It's great to be able to sling passes east to west and score off the rush, but when goals are hard to come by, it's those heavy elements that often make the difference, whether it's creating an extra opportunity or jumping on a rebound to catch a goalie scrambling.
We may never get the full story for why the Red Wings' top two scorers, Larkin and Raymond, were as quiet as they were after the 4 Nations break. But I have to think at least part of it was losing Kasper, who moved off their wing to center the second line when Andrew Copp went down after doing a lot of that dirty work on their line.
Those two need to drive the team's offense, to be sure, and that means doing more than they did in some of those crucial March games. But finding a player who can bring those hard elements to their line, while still thinking the game at their level (and ideally with some pace) would help them do so — and make Detroit tougher to play against in the process.
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This one probably goes without saying, as Detroit's playoff drought stretches to nine years while Larkin approaches his 29th birthday and DeBrincat is now within two years of unrestricted free agency. But we'll say it anyway: the Red Wings can't afford to let this drought continue to drag.
And that's about more than a frustrated fanbase. Detroit is risking becoming the next Buffalo, where losing becomes too familiar and young players arriving to the team don't know what it looks and feels like to play winning hockey.
McLellan seems to be setting a good standard, which is important, but actually winning is what will ultimately make that standard sink in.
The Red Wings don't need to pull a Nashville and throw huge contracts at as many big names as they can this summer — that obviously didn't go well — but finding one or two real fits in important roles would go a long way. I would prioritize Los Angeles' Vladislav Gavrikov, a shutdown defender who has distinct familiarity with McLellan and Yawney. Certainly there are some free agent forwards to consider as well, whether it's Mitch Marner, Sam Bennett, Brad Marchand, Brock Boeser or Nikolaj Ehlers, or perhaps someone else via a trade. They may only be able to make a truly big swing at one position.
But whether it's one of those players or someone else, what the Red Wings can't do is just run this back and expect internal improvements to take care of everything. This team needs more of a jolt than that.
Free agency, of course, is not a one-way street. Teams can be interested in all the big names they want, but if that interest isn't reciprocated — or another team simply outmaneuvers you — then a team trying to be aggressive can end up looking like they just sat July 1 out. Or, perhaps worse than that, it can lead to a panic move.
I don't know what exactly happened in last year's free agency for the Red Wings, but coming out of it with Vladimir Tarasenko as their main addition looked iffy at the time and even worse in hindsight — Tarasenko delivered just 11 goals for Detroit while making $4.75 million for this season and next. He's a buyout candidate just nine months later.
Was Tarasenko their Plan A? Plan B? Plan C? I'm not sure. But whatever the case, Detroit will have to make sure that they aren't left scrambling if their top target doesn't come their way.
(Top photo of Marco Kasper: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)