Barring a miracle, the Detroit Red Wings will likely miss the playoffs for the ninth straight season this year, and fans will spend yet another offseason wondering when the rebuild will finally be over.
To make matters worse, the Red Wings are playing in the Atlantic Division, which has consistently proven to be the toughest division in the National Hockey League (NHL), with four of the last six Presidents’ Trophy winners and three of the last five Stanley Cup winners. The one glimmer of hope for the Red Wings has been that, eventually, the teams at the top of the division would get older and make way for a young Detroit team. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case.
While the Boston Bruins are headed for a long rebuild after a putrid 2024-2025 season, the rest of the division is only growing stronger. The Tampa Bay Lightning are getting older on paper but still have 97 points this season and are a Stanley Cup contender yet again. The defending champion Florida Panthers’ and Toronto Maple Leafs’ contending windows will be open for as long as Matthew Tkachuk and Auston Matthews are on their respective teams.
Concerns are rising for Detroit Red Wings fans as the Atlantic Division is as tough as ever
Most concerning for Detroit is that they have seemingly been passed by teams that were on similar trajectories to them. The Ottawa Senators snapped an eight-year playoff drought thanks to Brady Tkachuk emerging as one of the faces of the league and Tim Stüzle and Drake Batherson having breakout seasons.
Although they appeared well behind Detroit entering the season, the Montréal Canadiens have been one of the biggest surprise teams and will likely return to the playoffs for the first time in four years. They have been led by young stars Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, and Lane Hutson.
The much-maligned Buffalo Sabres have even had a strong second half of the season and may pass Detroit in the standings.
Just one year after having 91 points and missing the playoffs on a tiebreaker, nearly everyone in the Wings’ division has left them in the dust.
Not all hope is lost, however. As has been the case for the past few seasons, Detroit’s saving grace is their prospects. Per a recent ranking by The Hockey Writers, the Red Wings have the fifth-best prospect system in the NHL and will bring in another high-level prospect with their lottery pick in this year’s draft. The Canadiens (third) and Sabres (seventh) are also high on the list, but the rest of the division is ranked 24th or worst.
In addition to the Red Wings having a large influx of young talent on the way, they could also use some prospects to trade for high-end players in their prime to speed up the rebuild.
Detroit may have also been a victim of their own success. Prior to the 2023-2024 season, most experts agreed that the Senators and Sabres were each ahead of the Red Wings’ rebuild. The Wings then surprised, nearly made the playoffs, and all of a sudden they were the next great team to come out of the Atlantic.
In reality, the 2023-24 season may have been more of an anomaly and the Wings’ real contention window was never going to start until 2025-2026 when Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider would be entering their primes and more of their highly-touted prospects would be in the NHL.
This does not excuse or explain the questionable free agency and trade decisions general manager Steve Yzerman has made. But, the Red Wings falling short of expectations this season may be just the fire Stevie Y needs to make some smarter and more aggressive moves this offseason.
Even if Detroit brings more prospects into the NHL next year and Yzerman makes smarter offseason decisions, the team will still have a gauntlet of a division to overcome. Some teams could falter, like the Lightning may finally regress or the Senators’ lack of depth could come back to haunt them. The odds of every team in the division falling off, however, are very low.
All the Red Wings can do is control what they can control, believe that prospects will live up to their potential, and supplement their farm system with better acquisitions. If all that happens, then hopefully the Wings can finally end their playoff drought in spite of their fierce competition.