It's not 4-D Chess, just a Long Game of checkers right now in Detroit
Some thoughts on the Detroit Red Wings after the NHL trade deadline yesterday.
On December 26 the Detroit Red Wings were eight points out of the NHL playoff picture in the Eastern Conference.
That day, you’ll remember, they fired Derek Lalonde and hired Todd McClellan.
Here was the wild card landscape.
Today, March 8, the Red Wings are one point outside of the playoff picture, despite a five-game losing streak.
Here are the standings after a 5-2 loss to the Washington Capitals last night.
Objectively, progress has been made.
With 19 games to play, the Red Wings are in the playoff hunt, something that back in late December felt practically impossible.
It’s important to note that, especially with some of the discourse and distaste in Detroit after an underwhelming trade deadline for Steve Yzerman accompanied with the team falling apart a couple hours later against the Capitals.
That flash point, right or wrong, has seemingly thrown us back into the black-and-white viewpoint of Detroit’s re-build and the “Yzerplan.”
On social media there seem to be two camps:
One that has reached the boiling point, ready to give up.
One that still wants to remind us what the lineup looked like in April of 2019. when Yzerman took over and how this is all part of the plan.
The reality lies somewhere in the middle.
This is Steve Yzerman’s team, it’s been five full seasons since he took over. The opportunity to blame Ken Holland, in my view, ended about two years ago.
It’s OK to acknowledge the climb was steep, but once you’ve accepted the challenge, it’s on you to limit your stumbles.
This is where nuance is important.
Yzerman has been an effective drafter, the Red Wings have added some nice young pieces despite never winning the draft lottery. Simon Edvinsson and Albert Johansson, even with some recent warts, are going to be an ideal long-term pairing, for example.
Yzerman hasn’t been a good asset manager, and this element of his tenure has hurt his ability as a drafter.
The Red Wings have consistently made bets on the wrong veteran players. Many have struggled to live up to contracts and taken time away from some of the prospects Yzerman drafted.
It’s become an annual tradition now around the trade deadline and in the summer, fans calling for the Red Wings to part with a struggling veteran and the reality that no one else wants them.
On top of that, when Yzerman has seemingly self-sabotaged when he did have a viable piece.
Whether you liked Jake Walman or not, paying a second round draft pick to get rid of him and watching him net a first-rounder for San Jose 10 months later has to hurt. Picking Erik Gustafsson over Shayne Gostisbehere was a mistake, and the now annual, three-goalie carousel has become a ride that always seems to end with a disappointing results.
This is where Yzerman’s reputation hurts or helps him depending on which camp you fall in.
There’s this aura that somehow he’s playing 4-D chess, and for many fans that “gotcha” moment is just right around the corner, it must be, it has to be to justify this long of a playoff drought.
And that moment, sadly, isn’t going to happen.
That’s not how the Red Wings are going to become a winning team, they aren’t one big signing from the magic formula and there was no trade they could have made yesterday that would have turned them from mush middle to legit contender.
Yzerman isn’t playing chess, he’s playing checkers.
Simple, boring, checkers. It’s a long-game, frustratingly long at time, where pieces move in and out. When you are playing checkers promotion is possible — kings can move back and forth! — but you’ll never be able to turn a pawn into a piece that can dominate the board by itself, like a queen in chess.
This is two-fold.
It’s intentional, Yzerman himself has said multiple times he has to be slow-playing things, and it’s a reality of going from a bad to now middling hockey team.
You can’t play 4-D chess, or any chess for that matter, if you don’t have the pieces in the first place. The Dallas Stars and Carolina Hurricanes made a 4-D chess move on Friday, but that was because both teams had played enough checkers to get invited to the chess table — Dallas drafted and developed, could now deal from a collection of pawns and Carolina, over year, has built an organizational ethos that comes from it’s most important piece, Rod Brind'Amour.
Stanley Cup champions play chess. The Florida Panthers and Vegas Golden Knights did that in constructing championship teams in 2023 and 2024. Julien BriseBois did it for the Tampa Bay Lightning after Yzerman left to win back-to-back Stanley Cup titles.
Teams can take the risk, try to jump from the checkers to chess phase, but that can lead to boom/boost results… just ask the Nashville Predators.
And that’s what yesterday’s trade deadline was a reminder of.
The Red Wings are still stuck at the kids' table of the NHL, playing checkers with the rest of the mushy middle. Until they either acquire the right pieces or find the chutzpah to take a real leap, the idea of a big 4-D chess move remains a fallacy.