We’ve spent the past two weeks watching two separate NHL stories amount to the same non-event: nothing happening, on schedule, seemingly on purpose. The Detroit Red Wings still don’t have a general manager, three weeks after firing the search’s starting gun. Patrik Laine and Vladimir Tarasenko still don’t have contracts, deep into an August when teams are supposed to be scrambling for the last useful players on the board. Put those two stories next to each other and neither one reads like a coincidence anymore.
The connective tissue is scarcity, or rather the total absence of anyone behaving like it exists. Detroit isn’t dragging its feet on hiring a president of hockey operations because ownership is dysfunctional (feel free to keep that theory in reserve for later in the season). It’s dragging its feet because no other team is racing the Red Wings for the same candidates. Nobody’s trying to poach Shawn Horcoff before Detroit gets to him. Nobody’s trying to poach Laine at a price that would require moving fast, either. I think that’s the actual story here: two corners of the league running on the same broken clock, for the same reason.
Why is the Red Wings’ GM search taking so long?
Steve Yzerman stepped down as Detroit’s GM and head of hockey operations in mid-July and moved into an advisory role, and the search for his replacement has stretched into August with little public urgency. One NHL analyst says it could bleed into September as the club works through internal and external candidates.
The Red Wings haven’t had a GM since July 15, when Yzerman stepped down from the job and slid into an advisory role under owner Chris Ilitch. Elliotte Friedman broke the news on X, and a search for the next president of hockey operations began the same day.
https://x.com/FriedgeHNIC/status/2077379926462702014
Nearly three weeks later, that search hasn’t produced a leak worth arguing about. NHL analyst John Shannon said as much last week, calling the process “very quiet” and predicting it “may not be rectified until September.” He added that it’s “going to take a lot longer than people realize,” a line that would sound alarming coming from a team with a roster on fire and sounds almost reasonable coming from one that isn’t.
An aside, from someone who spent two years compiling research notes that TV analysts read on air without crediting: when a guy hedges “may not be rectified” instead of just saying “won’t be done,” that’s usually someone protecting himself against being wrong in either direction. Treat the September marker as a floor, not a deadline.
Detroit is reportedly working two tracks at once, internal candidates like assistant GM and amateur scouting director Kris Draper and Grand Rapids Griffins GM Shawn Horcoff, described as the leading internal option, alongside outside names ownership hasn’t tipped. That’s less indecision than due diligence with no clock attached. Yzerman is still around in a caretaker capacity, which strips out the version of urgency that shows up when a franchise is effectively running itself day to day. Stack that on top of the rest of the uncertainty hanging over the front office (Dylan Larkin’s trade request remains unresolved) and Detroit’s incentive to rush a hire drops even further. Nobody wants to hand a half-built roster to a GM who had no say in building it.
Why are Laine and Tarasenko still unsigned in August?
Laine remains unsigned because the market for him has stayed thin all summer: the Islanders talked to his camp when free agency opened but only offered a professional tryout, not a contract, and nobody else has stepped up with real money. Tarasenko’s situation looks similar, with only depth suitors involved.
The same inertia keeping Detroit’s front office in limbo is keeping two useful players out of training camp jerseys this week.
Laine is still on the board. The New York Islanders talked to his camp when the market opened July 1, but the offer on the table was a professional tryout, not a contract, the league’s polite way of saying prove it without paying for the privilege. The Los Angeles Kings were floated as a fit too, and that went nowhere as well. Laine played only five games last season, which is doing most of the work in scaring teams off, but he’s still more talented than most of what’s left on the board.
Tarasenko is in a similar spot. Edmonton and Ottawa have both been connected to him, and some around the league wonder if he ends up back in Minnesota for another season rather than landing somewhere new. None of that reads like urgency. It reads like a market where every team is content to let someone else make the first move, confident the player will still be sitting there in September if they change their mind.
The same pattern runs further down the board. Logan Stanley wanted four or five years at roughly $5 million annually when free agency opened (a number that looked ambitious in July and looks almost quaint now); that ask was never matched, and it isn’t getting more realistic the longer he waits. Michael Bunting, Eeli Tolvanen, Cam Talbot, and John Klingberg are all still out there too, mostly ticketed for one-year deals or tryouts once the music stops. Compare that to the moves that actually happened this free agency: the players teams wanted badly enough to pay full price for got signed in July. Everyone else is waiting on a market that won’t show up until camps force the issue.
My best guess is that both stories resolve the same way, for the same reason, and neither resolves soon. Detroit hires a GM once ownership feels enough pressure to stop being careful, and right now nothing is generating that pressure, so I’d bet on Shannon’s September marker holding, maybe even slipping past it rather than landing right at the start. Laine and Tarasenko sign once camps get close enough that a professional tryout starts looking like the only remaining option, which tends to happen in the days before camps open, not the weeks before. Scarcity only forces speed when somebody else might grab the asset first. Nobody around the league currently believes that about a Red Wings GM candidate or an unsigned winger with an injury history on his file, and until that changes, everybody’s comfortable waiting.
Watch two dates more than any others this month: whenever Detroit actually names its hire, and whenever Laine or Tarasenko finally sign. My guess is they land in the same two-to-three week window in late August or early September, once the calendar itself becomes the pressure nobody else was willing to provide.
