Derek Lalonde’s tenure with the Detroit Red Wings ended with boos, a 4-0 no-show performance against the St. Louis Blues on Monday before he was fired during the NHL’s Christmas break.
For Lalonde, who was a lame-duck coach in the final year of his contract, it had always felt like a question of when not if he’d be let go. Whether it was in the middle of this season or in the summer, when his contract would expire, he wouldn’t be the Red Wings coach to start the 2025-26 season.
While Steve Yzerman rarely explains his logic to anyone outside of his inner circle, the feeling around Detroit was always that the Red Wings GM wouldn’t want an interim coach, instead looking for more long-term solution to help stabilize another stumbling block in the Yzerplan rebuild.
So Todd McLellan got the call, got to bring his top assistant Trent Yawney, and will start a new multi-year deal on Friday morning before the Red Wings host the Toronto Maple Leafs
Now before we get into what McLellan has to bring, we need to acknowledge one of the things that ultimately doomed Lalonde’s tenure in Detroit — he couldn’t help the team overcome any form of adversity.
When the Red Wings missed the playoffs in 2024, on a tiebreaker, it was largely because they went 4-10-0 in games without their captain Dylan Larkin. When Simon Edvinsson got hurt against the Montreal Canadiens last week, the Red Wings quickly unraveled in the following two games.
It’s not solely on Lalonde, it’s also heavily on the players and Yzerman’s decisions, but it’s all reflective of a culture that is quiet and easily broken after years of losing. Lalonde’s job as the head coach was to do his best to change the culture, reverse the accepted mediocrity, and he proved over the past two seasons he wasn’t the emotional leader to do that.
