You could see the frustration on the faces of the Detroit Red Wings, and you certainly heard it in their words.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know it, right? Marches and late seasons \u2026 when it gets tight, we come up short,\u201d Dylan Larkin said on the night the Red Wings were officially eliminated from playoff contention for the 10th straight season. \u201cWe talked about it. We tried different things. Then it happened again this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Red Wings are stuck. There\u2019s no other conclusion after a 10th straight year outside the playoffs, and a third straight collapse in March. They haven\u2019t been good enough to get into the postseason, and haven\u2019t been bad enough for a few years now to have the silver lining of a high draft pick.<\/p>\n
So, what do they do about it? That\u2019s the big question as the offseason begins. And while there\u2019s no easy answer here \u2014 if there were, they wouldn\u2019t be stuck to begin with \u2014 there are some recent examples of what works, and what doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Today, we examine four such examples of other \u201cstuck\u201d teams, how their situations turned out, and what lessons they can offer.<\/p>\n
Toronto Maple Leafs<\/p>\n
The parallels: The Leafs were obviously more successful in the regular season than the Red Wings have been, but once the playoffs arrived every year, they couldn\u2019t find a way to elevate enough to make a deep run. Basically, it was a luxury version of the Red Wings\u2019 struggles in March.<\/p>\n
The outcome: Toronto spent years trying to find the right supporting cast around its core of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, John Tavares and Morgan Reilly. The Leafs tried a stylistic change, they brought in toughness and experience, they fired coaches and executives. Yet in the end, they topped out with just two first-round series wins.<\/p>\n
When the frustration over those playoff woes boiled over, the angst and toxicity in the market rose to a level that effectively ran off a hometown star in Mitch Marner \u2014 a move that immediately sent the Leafs spiraling to a bottom-five finish this season.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen if Toronto can rebound in the years to come. But the outlook now is even bleaker than during those repeated first-round exits.<\/p>\n
The takeaway: \u201cBlowing up the core\u201d is just as likely to prompt a new rebuild as it is to solve the key issues.<\/p>\n
Now, an important distinction here is that Marner\u2019s departure came with him on the doorstep of unrestricted free agency, meaning Toronto didn\u2019t get any real value back for him. They traded him to Vegas for Nicolas Roy on the eve of free agency, and tried (unsuccessfully) to use the cap space to replace his impact in the aggregate. If Detroit made a change to its core, the Red Wings would have more leverage in a potential trade and could certainly get a superior return. Still, they likely wouldn\u2019t be getting back equivalent talent in the present, leading to a step back of some kind.<\/p>\n
Another key difference between the Leafs of last season and the Red Wings of this year (besides Toronto\u2019s far-superior regular-season success): the Red Wings have a farm system full of young players on the way, while Toronto did not. That\u2019s notable too. It\u2019s certainly not a one-for-one comparison.<\/p>\n
But the principle here is that it\u2019s a whole lot easier to get worse when losing a star than it is to get better. And there\u2019s a real chance that doing so simply creates a much bigger hole.<\/p>\n
Some Red Wings fans would be OK with that, or even prefer it to the way things are. But with frustration at a boiling point with a 10-year playoff drought, going backward would be a hard sell for many others.<\/p>\n
Vancouver Canucks<\/p>\n
The parallels: Vancouver underwent a long stretch outside the playoffs that yielded a collection of impressive young talent, but never amounted to enough success together.<\/p>\n
Between Bo Horvat, Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser, Vancouver had a strong group of scoring forwards, a dynamic star defenseman and even a high-level goaltender in Thatcher Demko. But the Canucks could not consistently turn that core talent into winning seasons, with a lack of depth and balance around them.<\/p>\n
The outcome: The Canucks made playoff appearances in 2020 and 2024, both times making it to Game 7 in the second round. But it would be hard to say they lived up to the potential of their best players. It unraveled slowly, but all of Horvat, Miller and Hughes are now elsewhere, and Pettersson has regressed substantially.<\/p>\n
Not all of that is Vancouver\u2019s fault. The Pettersson fall-off has been staggering, and the saga that led up to Miller\u2019s exit is its own story<\/a> altogether. But all the hope that surrounded that prime-aged core nonetheless dissolved due to organizational dysfunction and short-sighted decisions \u2014 including bridging Pettersson out of his ELC (leading to the now-ugly extension signed in 2024), not maxing out on term with Hughes (who signed for six years) and trading away a top-10 pick (which became Dylan Guenther) for Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Conor Garland and the ability to clear cap space from Louis Eriksson, Jay Beagle and Antoine Roussel.<\/p>\n In theory, this was done in the name of competing in the short term. And the flat cap exacerbated all of the issues. But the end result was a team whose window to find success became shorter than it needed to \u2014 and never really delivered much.<\/p>\n Last week, after finishing the season dead last in the NHL, Vancouver fired general manager Patrik Allvin<\/a>, though team president Jim Rutherford remains in place.<\/p>\n The takeaway: Even a strong core is not enough to overcome mismanagement.<\/p>\n As with Toronto, the Canucks are not a perfect analogue for the Red Wings, nor are they a perfect analogue for anyone else, really. They never fully embraced a true rebuild to begin with, and few teams have dealt with the level of internal chaos the Canucks have, at least not publicly.<\/p>\n But Detroit has nonetheless had its own share of scrutinized front office decisions in recent years. Did the Red Wings try to exit their rebuild a bit too soon? It\u2019s certainly possible. Did they overpay for redundant players and leave their lineup without requisite balance? It would be hard to argue otherwise. And the Jake Walman saga, in which the Red Wings attached a draft pick to move Walman to San Jose only to see him land the Sharks a first-round pick in a trade later that season, screams of asset mismanagement.<\/p>\n The Red Wings still have some room to maneuver as of now, but they nonetheless face the question of whether they can properly steer the ship out of no-man\u2019s land better than Vancouver did.<\/p>\n Minnesota Wild<\/p>\n The parallels: The Wild have been somewhere in between the Red Wings and Maple Leafs for the last decade. Minnesota\u2019s core has evolved over that time, but for most of the span, the team has been the picture of \u201cgood, not great.\u201d The Wild have made the playoffs in eight of the last 10 seasons (before this year), but have hit a wall in the first round of the playoffs year after year.<\/p>\n The Wild haven\u2019t won a playoff series in a decade, despite four 100-plus point seasons in that span. That has made them an NHL avatar of being stuck in the middle.<\/p>\n The outcome: Realistically, the Wild\u2019s story isn\u2019t done yet, currently tied 1-1 in a heavyweight first-round series with the Dallas Stars. But after some big decisions in the past five years, they finished the regular season with 104 points, the third most in the Western Conference and seventh most in the NHL. It\u2019s not actually their best regular season of the era we\u2019re covering here (they had 113 points in 2021-22) but the Wild do look like legitimate Stanley Cup contenders \u2014 if they can emerge from the loaded Central Division.<\/p>\n Their transformation into this current form started with the arrival of forwards Kirill Kaprizov in 2020 and Matt Boldy in 2021, but it really ramped up after the Wild bought out aging veterans Zach Parise and Ryan Suter in 2021, then traded Kevin Fiala for defense prospect Brock Faber in 2022. And it reached a crescendo this season with the blockbuster trade for Quinn Hughes, one of the top defensemen in the NHL.<\/p>\n The Wild still lack what many would consider a \u201ctrue\u201d No. 1 center, but in Joel Eriksson Ek and Ryan Hartman, they have multiple playoff-style pivots, and major star power on the blue line, on the wing and in goal. This tough series against the Stars will determine if they can finally break through the first-round wall, but the feel of the organization and its ceiling has been transformed.<\/p>\n The takeaway: Escaping the middle takes some bold moves.<\/p>\n The Hughes trade is the most recent example, and one that is certainly relevant to the Red Wings. But don\u2019t forget the less obvious moves that paved the way for it.<\/p>\n