For a franchise worst ninth straight season, the Red Wings will miss the playoffs.
Detroit was officially eliminated from playoff contention Saturday night when the Canadiens gained a point in their overtime loss to the Maple Leafs. The Red Wings entered March with the top wild card spot in the East, but have since gone 7-11-1 to fall out of the race.
It's an all too familiar story for the Wings. For the third straight season, their slide started with an extended losing skid that bridged the trade deadline and tanked their playoff hopes. They lost six straight this year and two years ago and seven straight last year.
After a brutal start to the season, Detroit showed signs of life when Steve Yzerman fired Derek Lalonde and replaced him with Todd McLellan. The Red Wings ripped off two seven-game winning streaks early in McLellan's tenure, but couldn't carry their momentum into the stretch run.
Yzerman now faces a critical offseason in which he needs to make changes to the roster after the Red Wings regressed. They will finish with fewer points and further out of the playoffs than they did last year, while getting passed in the standings by teams like Ottawa and Montreal.
Most of Yzerman's veteran additions last summer flopped, namely Vladimir Tarasenko and Erik Gustafsson, both of whom are signed for another year. And while Cam Talbot played well down the stretch, the Wings got mediocre goaltending for most of the season, a trend for several years.
The Red Wings did see important growth in young players like forward Marco Kasper and defensemen Simon Edvinsson and Albert Johansson, but it wasn't enough to help a middling roster take a step forward.
Instead, in year six of Yzerman's tenure, the Red Wings took a step back.