What does success look like for the 2023–24 Detroit Red Wings?

We’re less than a week away from the start of the 2023–24 NHL season, and the Detroit Red Wings are in the fifth year of the “Yzerplan.”

The team has steadily improved over those past five seasons, but it’s been a slow and arduous process. The Red Wings haven’t had any lottery luck, only picking in the top five once since Steve Yzerman became the team’s GM in 2019.

So instead of having their fortunes changed with a face-of-the-franchise player, they’ve accumulated a number of good to very good players.

Moritz Seider might be the best of the bunch, winning the Calder Trophy as the league’s best rookie in the 2021–22 season. He took a step back from an offensive perspective last season but improved dramatically once he was paired with Jake Walman after starting the season with Ben Chiarot.

And because of the lack of lottery luck, Yzerman has had to plug the holes of the sinking ship he inherited by signing veterans or young reclamation projects to short-term deals, hoping to get by until the draft picks mature and are ready to contribute.

Red Wings fans have watched teams like the New Jersey Devils, New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings go from the bottom of the standings to a playoff spot in the same five-season window.

But of course, all of those teams have had the lottery luck to help them. However, the Rangers’ lottery picks of Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere haven’t exactly materialized into franchise-changing players; same could be said for the Kings’ top pick of Quinton Byfield.

In other words, winning the lottery doesn’t ensure a winning team.

So while Yzerman has made a lot of great moves to incrementally improve his team, they haven’t all been game-changers, and he’ll probably be the first to tell you that.

However, this season’s Red Wings feature the most amount of positional depth that Yzerman has had. They traded for Alex DeBrincat and added center depth by signing J.T. Compher in free agency. Additionally, they added forwards Christian Fischer, Daniel Sprong and Klim Kostin; defensemen Justin Holl and Shayne Gostisbehere; and goalies James Reimer and Alex Lyon.

So what does success look like for the 2023–24 Red Wings?

Do the Red Wings need to make the playoffs?

No, I don’t think success relies on this team making or missing the playoffs. If they make the playoffs, that’s an obvious win, as the team hasn’t made the playoffs for the past seven seasons.

And while an eight straight season of missing the playoffs might be disappointing for large chunks of the fan base, it’s a little more nuanced than that.

Firstly, you have to consider the teams in their own division, a very tough Atlantic Division.

The Tampa Bay Lightning, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins and Florida Panthers have been duking it out at the top for the past five seasons.

Each team has its own set of question marks coming into the season, but you can safely expect two of the four to hold onto playoff spots and cautiously expect three of the four to be in the playoffs.

The Bruins lost their top two centers, Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, to retirement this summer, which means they could tumble down the standings.

But we’ve been predicting the Bruins’ demise for the past few years, and they keep proving everyone wrong.

The Lightning will be without goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy for the first two months with no solid backup option.

They could crater to begin the season and be unable to make up the points when Vasilevskiy returns, or because they are the Lightning, they could stay in the mix until he returns, then go back to dominating as they have been known to do.

The Maple Leafs should be fine, extending Auston Matthews for the next four years after this season.

But can the core four of Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner and William Nylander finally get over the hump and make a real playoff run despite the team’s defense and goalie concerns? Or will one of them get traded before the season is over?

Finally, the Florida Panthers squeaked into the playoffs last season and made a miraculous run to the Stanley Cup Final.

But which Sergei Bobrovsky will we see? The one who can stand on his head and go on a winning streak, or the one who turns into a pumpkin and causes the bottom to fall out.

That doesn’t consider the two teams most similar to the Red Wings in terms of rebuilding, the Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres.

The Senators lost DeBrincat but added forwards Vladimir Tarasenko, Dominik Kubalik, as well as Joonas Korpisalo to address their goalie woes. Josh Norris will return from injury coupled with a full season of Jakob Chychrun, who they acquired at last year’s trade deadline, and this looks like a team that could push for a wild-card spot.

Remember, it was two dominating wins the Senators had last season against the Red Wings that all but dashed any hopes Detroit had of making the playoffs.

The Senators are slightly ahead of the Red Wings in their rebuild, and that’ll be one of the teams they have to leapfrog if they hope to get in.

The Sabres, a team that knows a thing or two about long rebuilds, was one point behind the Panthers for the final wild-card spot, and they’ll be looking to improve on their fifth-place finish in the division.

This team’s offense is legit, with Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch, Dylan Cozens and Jeff Skinner leading the way, not to mention Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power being able to chip in from the blue line.

However, the defense doesn’t look great on paper, and there are concerns if goalie Devon Levi can carry this team to a playoff spot.

What is a successful season if Detroit misses the playoffs?

To put it simply, if they improve on their 80-point finish from last season and have meaningful games in March and April, I will consider the 2023–24 season a success.

Detroit was in a playoff spot last season before those two games against Ottawa on Feb. 27 and 28.

It’s the first time in a long time we weren’t talking about the NHL draft before the trade deadline.

After those two lopsided losses, Yzerman opted to sell at the deadline, and the Red Wings fell to seventh in the division after losing 15 of their final 22 games.

It’s a division that features a couple of powerhouse teams and scrappy teams nearing the end of their rebuilds. It will be difficult for the Red Wings to leapfrog three teams to make the playoffs.

If the Red Wings are buying at the deadline (and I don’t mean selling major parts of the future for minor improvements), that will be considered a success.

Additionally, if key Red Wings players see improvements, regardless of whether the team makes the playoffs, that will be considered a successful season.

• Can Dylan Larkin be a point-per-game player?
• Can DeBrincat reach the 30- or 40-goal mark again?
• Can Seider take a step toward becoming a Norris-caliber player?
• Can J.T. Compher/Andrew Copp solidify the center position behind Larkin?
• Can Simon Edvinsson establish himself as a middle-pairing defenseman?
• Can Marco Kasper/Carter Mazur receive a call-up and contribute meaningfully?
• Can Ville Husso put up solid numbers without the dropoff in the second half of the season like last year?

All of these questions and more are what I’ll be looking for when the Red Wings begin the season next week.

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