Tuesday night, the Detroit Red Wings defeated the Ottawa Senators by a score of 3-2 in overtime. This could be a pivotal battle in the Atlantic Division at about the halfway season of the 2024-25 NHL season. The Senators are one point ahead of the Red Wings in the Eastern Conference wild-card race with 41 points in 40 games played. While it is only one game, the Red Wings bucked a trend of the Senators being a tough division opponent. With this in mind, what must the Red Wings do to make the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2016?
The NHL trade deadline is March 7th. Teams must decide whether they are serious playoff contenders before this deadline. As a cautionary tale, I have written that the Red Wings hindered their future by making the playoffs 25 years in a row from 1990 to 2016. The amount of draft capital given up by then-general manager Ken Holland to extend the playoff streak weakened the Red Wings’ roster down the road. However, in that time the Red Wings did win four Stanley Cups.
Perhaps general manager Steve Yzerman had this thought in mind when he decided not to acquire Dylan Cozens from the Buffalo Sabres recently. Cozens is a 23-year-old center who has scored nine goals and added 12 assists in 42 games played for the Sabres who are in eighth place in the Atlantic Division. This report came from Elliotte Friedman during a recent episode of his 32 Thoughts podcast. That this trade proposal got out of the Red Wings organization is surprising, given that Yzerman is notoriously tight-lipped.
“There’s definitely not a lot that gets out of Detroit, and there’s not very much that gets out of Buffalo, but finally, it got coughed up to me that they believe the Red Wings were looking at Cozens. And it fits, I think there’s a lot of people looking at Cozens. And I will say this, there was a time that a couple people said to me they thought it was close.” Cozens has the same number of goals scored as Patrick Kane.
Just because this trade proposal did not happen does not mean that it cannot happen before the trade deadline. The Red Wings have been playing well as of late. This, along with the amount of draft capital needed to acquire such a player, could be the reason Yzerman declined to make the deal. The Red Wings have not been lacking scoring under new head coach Todd McLellan. Chemistry plays a lot in the game of hockey, and McLellan needs time to work on his systems.
McLellan’s message has seemed to sink with the Red Wings. “Play f—cking hockey. You’ve played it your whole lives.” The Red Wings have won four games under McLellan. Kane has begun scoring again under McLellan. In the six games McLellan has coached, Kane has scored six goals and added nine assists. Kane was one of the Red Wings who was critical of former head coach Derek Lalonde’s coaching style in the last days of his tenure as head coach. Kane had three assists in the Red Wings’ most recent game against the Chicago Blackhawks, his former team.
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