DETROIT – Steve Yzerman had to do something.

After watching his team get booed off home ice in the Red Wings’ final game before the Christmas break on Monday night, dropping them to the NHL’s bottom five after 34 games, it was clear that Detroit’s patience was running out. And on Thursday, Yzerman acted accordingly, firing the team’s third-year head coach Derek Lalonde and assistant coach Bob Boughner and replacing them with veteran reserve coach Todd McLellan and assistant coach Trent Yawney.

It was a move many fans had called for during the team’s disappointing 2024-25 season, as the Red Wings slipped from a tiebreaker just shy of the playoffs last season to one of the league’s worst teams in a matter of months. They were unconvincing offensively, leaky on the penalty kill and simply flat on too many evenings.

These are all things that McLellan, who has more than 1,100 games of experience as an NHL head coach, will get right, starting Friday with a home game against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

But even though Yzerman, the team’s general manager since 2019, made this change, it may not be his last. Not if McLellan will have a serious chance of succeeding where Lalonde had no chance.

Because while Lalonde wasn’t a perfect coach, the Red Wings’ failures this season are about much more than just coaching.

Lalonde is a sharp hockey player but was, at least in public, a relatively soft-spoken communicator. So it’s entirely possible that a new voice and a new message can ignite even more fire among the Red Wings’ players.

But when a room full of professional athletes really needs someone to light their fire, that speaks to a much larger problem. Especially for a team that has placed an emphasis on bringing in experienced executives over the past three offseasons – and has handed out some cumbersome contracts in the name of that task.

So while trading Lalonde for McLellan could certainly make a difference for Detroit, as coaching changes often do, at the same time Yzerman needs to take a long, hard look at his roster and perhaps make a change or two there once the NHL’s trade freeze is lifted on Friday becomes.

Although the Red Wings came close to the playoffs last season, that result now looks more like a mirage year than a building block season. And while some important pieces of Detroit’s agricultural system are still on the rise, glaring long-term questions remain.

The biggest are at the front. Detroit has long been building around top center Dylan Larkin, but the slow pace of the rebuild looks more and more like Larkin, 28, will be in his 30s when the team is in serious contention. It’s not the end of the world – Yzerman didn’t win his first Stanley Cup until he was 32, and Larkin should be an extremely effective player for many years to come – but it does mean the team needs a strong core of younger players around him.

Dylan Larkin is an extremely effective player, but he can’t carry the Red Wings alone. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)

Detroit has one such young star, Lucas Raymond, who is headed for a potential 80-point season this year at age 22, and another scoring winger in Alex DeBrincat. However, much remains to be seen from there. Recent first-round picks Marco Kasper and Nate Danielson look like playoff-style two-way centermen who will really help the Red Wings, but both have some questions about what their ultimate NHL goal productivity will be. The team’s 2024 first-round pick, Michael Brandsegg-Nygård, has a great chance with his heavy frame, but he is only 19 years old and has gotten off to a slower offensive start in the SHL than hoped.

Kasper, Danielson and Brandsegg-Nygård all appear to be good NHL players. But to get where the Red Wings want to go, they need more star power alongside Raymond and Larkin at the top. They’ll certainly have to continue to look for it in the draft, but as they’ve seen, that process won’t be quick.

So as Detroit makes changes, is there a young forward it can trade whose contributions can come sooner? Trevor Zegras in Anaheim or Dylan Cozens in Buffalo would be considered young players who have already proven in the NHL that they can score 60 points on offense but have seen a decline in performance recently.

Such a trade could be costly, but you won’t find players as young as these two in free agency, which is largely limited to players 27 and older. And honestly, Detroit’s approach to this market is another area that Yzerman may need to rethink in the coming months given the way his forays have been going as of late.

After firing the team’s last coach, Jeff Blashill, in 2022, Yzerman tried to give Lalonde a better roster to work with, bringing in proven players like Andrew Copp, Ben Chiarot and David Perron. Then, in 2023, he added JT Compher, Justin Holl and Shayne Gostisbehere and traded for DeBrincat and Jeff Petry. This summer he signed Vladimir Tarasenko and Erik Gustafsson to multi-year contracts.

There have been some success stories in the mix, but most of those deals have not aged well and Yzerman may now have to try to get out of one (or more). Part of this is simply due to the risk of operating in free agency, but the low success rate suggests a potential need for additional voices in player personnel and pro scouting departments as well. The Red Wings, for example, never officially replaced Mark Howe as director of pro scouting when he retired.

Such changes and hires can take longer and be more subtle than firing a coach. But make no mistake, the roster in Detroit — and the way it was assembled — is the main reason the Red Wings are where they are today.

Yzerman found himself in an extremely difficult situation five and a half years ago. Success – let alone quick success – was never a given, no matter how much hope its arrival brought. But he’s now fired two coaches without playing in the playoffs, and that inevitably puts him even more in the spotlight as general manager. His next steps are being scrutinized more closely than any other so far.

The decision to leave Lalonde seemed inevitable, and the decision to do so during the season rather than wait until the summer could give Yzerman’s team a short-term boost. That seems to be the calculation.

But if the Red Wings are serious about solving their problems long-term, they can’t stop there. As on the first day of Yzerman’s term, there is still much work to be done.

(Top photo by Steve Yzerman: Dave Sandford / NHLI via Getty Images)