Once one of the most envied organizations in professional sports, Chris Ilitch's hockey team has a vacant leadership position it can't seem to fill, an interim general manager auditioning for the job by handling franchise-altering decisions, a hometown captain who wants out and a supposed building block who remains unsigned and out of the lineup two weeks into the season, as "Sell The Team!" chants echo throughout Little Caesars Arena.
But Ilitch apparently has no regrets about the way he's run the Red Wings -- into the ground -- over the past several months.
In an interview with four beat writers and the team's official website Thursday, Ilitch was asked, per The Athletic, if he would have done anything differently in the last six months, over which time all of the aforementioned issues bubbled to the surface and fan frustration boiled over.
His response: "I stand by the decision and the timing of the decision” to make a leadership change.
"The direction I’m taking this franchise is the right direction," Ilitch said. "It’s one of the most important things I can do, and one of the biggest contributions I can have to this franchise is to go out and find an innovative, difference-making leader who’s going to be able to help us build that championship team again. I’m determined to find the right leadership, and I’m not really looking backwards to say, ‘Should this have happened or could that have happened?’ I’m looking forward, and very focused on finding our next leader."
Credit the Red Wings for making Ilitch available to at least a small portion of the media. They could do themselves -- and frankly Ilitch -- even more favors by putting him in front of cameras and microphones and a room of reporters for the first time in seven years and allowing for an open back-and-forth. He might be compelled to answer questions without canned statements. The fans of the team deserve to hear from the owner who claims to have their best interests in mind.
It appears that Ilitch answered every question he faced Thursday by rehashing the seemingly rehearsed responses he offered the Detroit News in a one-on-one sit-down last month, and echoing the vague, empty sentiments he expressed in a LinkedIn post this month, deeply ironic for how UnLinked he is with his paying customers. Ilitch says he shares "the fan frustration." It's not really his to share. He is the source of it. Their frustration should be his embarrassment.
Ilitch made the decision in July to remove Yzerman as general manager. The Red Wings spent the next couple months interviewing several qualified candidates to take over hockey operations, one of whom already works under Ilitch's purview as general manager of the Tigers: Jeff Greenberg. Said to be Ilitch's top choice, Greenberg removed himself from consideration over reported concerns about a lack of autonomy and the inner workings of the org, on top of a desire to see things through with the baseball team across the street. Can you blame him?
The Red Wings were left with no choice but to turn around a couple days before training camp and hire in an interim capacity the top assistant of the GM they'd just dismissed. With all due respect to Shawn Horcoff, a good man and by all accounts a sharp hockey mind who deserves credit for extending Alex DeBrincat at fair market value, the timing and circumstances of his promotion suggest that he's the only one who wanted the gig.
Either the other candidates -- such as Panthers assistant GM Brett Peterson, Sharks assistant GM Jeff Kealty and Stars assistant GM Scott White -- turned the Red Wings down over similar concerns as Greenberg, or, just as likely, they proposed a plan for the organization that Ilitch couldn't abide. In his first meeting with the media after being appointed to his new role, Horcoff declared a rebuild for the Red Wings is "out of the question."
With the team already mired in a franchise-worst 10-year playoff drought, it was likely exactly what Ilitch wanted to hear. External candidates might have sized up the Wings' roster and good-not-great prospect pool and suggested a different -- longer -- path forward, to which Ilitch might have said, "Thanks, but no thanks." Is Ilitch truly searching for "an innovative, difference-making leader," or someone who affirms his own hope that the team is about to break through?
The Red Wings are a mighty oak tree, proud and deeply rooted in Detroit. Dylan Larkin, personal feelings aside, has become lichen. Simon Edvinsson is a branch the organization is threatening to sever. All those Cups feel more like the catkins that fall to the ground. The legends in the rafters comprise a lush canopy obscuring rot at the trunk.
The tree is too strong to ever die. But it used to be bustling with life. These days, it feels more like Little Caesars Arena: grand but bare. The arena last Friday night was maybe a quarter-full at puck drop, before a 6-3 loss to Seattle. The fans who were there were angry, briefly, before accepting their fate. Ilitch should be thankful for their passion. Most of this fanbase is veering toward apathy.
LCA opened in 2017. Even in the throes of their protracted rebuild, the Red Wings consistently ranked among the NHL's top five teams in attendance. That's Hockeytown. Through six home games this year, which includes a sell-out on Opening Night, they rank 13th -- and 30th in percent capacity. They're averaging their second lowest attendance in the last 40 years, and the newness of the season has yet to fade. The longer the product on and off the ice looks like this, the further the crowds will thin, like an oak shedding its leaves.
It's a daunting thought, but the Red Wings' attendance numbers might soon look like they did in the mid-80s, an era everyone would like to forget. Welcome back.
When Ilitch was asked Thursday, per The Athletic, if he’s concerned that the organization’s reputation has taken a hit due to the general dysfunction of the offseason that's seeped into the season, he said that "our players, our coaches, are competing game in and game out, trying to win games. I don’t know that there’s a lot of folks focused on that, per se."
"I think we just need to continue to compete; to continue to get better as a team, as an organization, and all of that other stuff will take care of itself over time," he said. "I think winning solves a lot of those issues."
Ilitch is both right and wrong. Of course winning will take care of it. That's what restored the Red Wings' sterling reputation in the first place, after Chris' late father Mike bought the team in the early '80s and eventually rebuilt it into a powerhouse.
But winning doesn't take care of itself. Ilitch hasn't even found a leader willing and able to take over hockey operations. The way his preferred candidate withdrew from the job, and the way others seemingly backed away, there is, indeed, a lot of folks -- important folks -- focused on what Ilitch would rather ignore: the Detroit Red Wings are a mess.
"The thinking is always that the search is going to be quick, so you just don’t know how these things are going to go," Ilitch said. "And I would say to you, sitting here today, this search could end soon; during this season; it could be at the end of this season. As I said before, I’ll make the hire when I find the right person. It’s just too important for this organization. We have to find the right leader."
All of this will go away if and when he does that. In the meantime, Ilitch could do right by the fans, and certainly by himself, by expressing a little more human humility when he speaks. He claims to be "accountable for this franchise," but says he wouldn't have done anything differently on the path that led them into this wilderness. He's happy to take general responsibility for where they're headed -- wherever that might be -- but loath to accept specific blame for where they are.
The criticism, Ilitch told The News last month, "is just talking heads. To be frank, inside the organization, things are operating perfectly well. It’s a bit of an amusement to hear and look at some of that stuff."
Sadly, the Red Wings are the amusement here, the circus of the NHL. The owner is the ring-leader.
