How Committing to the 2-Way Forward Archetype Has Worked Out for the Red Wings

The Red Wings were on a roll, and then suddenly they weren’t. The calendar flipped from February to March, and the team promptly lost the first six games of the month as part of a seven-game losing streak. All seven would have been in the month of March if it weren’t for 2024 being a leap year.

Up until that point, vibes were high. Detroit was scoring at a clip it hadn’t seen since the Ken Holland era. Patrick Kane had chosen to play for the city of Detroit as an early Christmas present, Daniel Sprong was on the heater of a lifetime with 16 goals (nearly 4 above expected), and the Red Wings were holding onto the first wild card spot in the East.

After five straight losses in March, Daniel Sprong was a healthy scratch for the first time. His 16 goals ranked fourth on the team, and he scored them in just 12.6 minutes a night. He went on to be scratched four more times in March and then again April 1. Asked about it, then-coach Derek Lalonde said, “I think it’s our team game…obviously both Spronger and Berggren can produce some offense but just the rhythm or lines right now.”

That, to me, is when the shift toward responsible two-way players started at the NHL level. Robby Fabbri was right behind Sprong on that Feb. 29 goals list, fifth with 15. Neither of them was back for 2024-25. A big reason was defense. By Evolving Hockey’s even-strength defense numbers, Fabbri ranked in the 3rd percentile and Sprong in the 6th among the 412 NHL forwards who played 400-plus minutes. The next-worst Red Wing, DeBrincat, was at the 35th. And yet the two of them scored 28 of Detroit’s 179 goals at 5v5, 16% of the total, on about 11 minutes a night at 5v5.

What the Red Wings prioritized in the draft

Even though this shift may have occurred at the professional level in March 2024, it started at the prospect level almost as soon as Steve Yzerman’s tenure began. Moritz Seider was infamously taken with the 6th pick in the 2019 draft. Most draft boards didn’t even have him in the top 10, but he graded out as a potentially elite defensive defenseman. He’s lived up to that defensive projection and then some, but it’s the offense that made him a star.

Lucas Raymond was the Red Wings’ top pick in 2020, and no one was raving about his defensive prowess. However, the value on the table by picking him 4th was too good to pass up. Turning him into a responsible defensive forward has paid off. Despite his smaller frame, he has proven that he can keep possession in the offensive zone and get to pucks in the difficult areas. He and Mo are mirrors of each other, one great at defense who unlocked good offense, and one with great offense who unlocked passable defense.

2021 may be the last year of trying to get foundational players. With the 6th pick, they selected the perfect complementary piece to Mo Seider. Simon Edvinsson is a big, physical left-shot defenseman who has significant offensive upside. Up until now, Mo has proven to be a bit better on the offensive end, but on draft day Ed was considered the higher offensive ceiling defenseman. In theory, this tandem would be the top defensive pair for a contender. The Wings picked twice in the first round and chose Sebastian Cossa, who they believed would be the Andrei Vasilevskiy-style goalie to build around.

2022 was the year that the 2-way forward archetype went into full effect. After they took Marco Kasper 8th overall as a future top-six center, Kris Draper said, “The intensity he plays with, his compete and work ethic is off the charts.” The term “compete” would become a common thread across most top draft picks moving forward. On the professional level, the Red Wings would sign Andrew Copp to be a middle 6 center.

2023 saw Nate Danielson, another center, selected with the 9th pick of the draft. Steve Yzerman said, “He’s a good skater, he’s got good skills and is a good two-way centerman.” Draper added, “The character and passion he has for the game, a real smart hockey player. He understands how to play in all three zones.” This was also the year the Red Wings added J.T. Compher to be another two-way center.

In 2024, so many journalists and podcasters had the pick mailed in weeks if not months before the draft. It seemed like everyone mocked Michael Brandsegg-Nygård to the Red Wings at 15, and that’s exactly what happened. “Really good two-way player.” “When he’s not scoring, he’ll still be an effective player.” “Competitive hockey player that can obviously think the game.” All three describe MBN.

And to round things out, in 2025 the Red Wings selected Carter Bear 13th overall. This one was celebrated by most fans noting that he has significant offensive upside and only fell in the draft because of a partially torn Achilles. But even here, Yzerman described him as “a very intelligent hockey player, extremely competitive,” while Draper added that “you walk out of the rink and just really appreciate the effort.”

Did it work at the NHL level?

If you want to see what the March 2024 shift produced, look at 5v5 scoring. In 2023-24, the Red Wings ranked 6th in 5v5 goals per 60. They also led the NHL in finishing, with 33 more goals than expected. Seasons like that don’t repeat. That +33 was the 12th-best finishing year by any team since 2008-09 (out of 554), and teams at +25 or better averaged about +11 the next season. Detroit fell to -21, 26th in the league. In 2025-26? How about 29th in finishing?

What was true about both Daniel Sprong and Robby Fabbri is that they both significantly outperformed their expected goals. Despite their warts, they were good finishers. The players the Red Wings are hoping will be their middle 6 centers - Andrew Copp and Marco Kasper - led the Red Wings last year in goals below expected. In fact, Andrew Copp was among the five worst in the entire NHL in goals below expected. He scored 9 goals on 19.8 expected. If Andrew Copp ever scored 19 or 20 goals in a season, there would be much rejoicing in Motown.

Detroit never stopped creating chances. In 2023-24, the Wings generated 146 expected goals at 5v5 and scored 179. The next two seasons, the chances went up (163.9, then 161.1) and the goals went down (143, then 142). The 2025-26 team created more than the 2023-24 team and scored 37 fewer. Chances didn’t go away. Above-average finishing did. That was always a risk. Team finishing barely carries over from one season to the next (a year-to-year correlation of 0.30, compared with 0.64 for creating chances). The hypothesis the Red Wings were operating under was that the improvement in defense would outweigh the dropoff in offense. Yzerman said as much in 2021: “Once you are a solid defensive hockey team, you’re going to be competitive. You can win a lot of nights. Over time you can add to the offense.”

So how were the Red Wings defensively? And how have they added offense? Let’s start with the offense. Alex DeBrincat was easily the most impactful offensive addition the Red Wings landed (or maybe gifted). After a down year by his standards scoring 27 goals, he has put up 39 and then 41 goals in the most recent two seasons. Patrick Kane followed Alex DeBrincat to Detroit and also put up a bunch of strong offensive numbers. He was also the exception to the shift to 2-way forwards, ranking in the 4th percentile in defense over the period of time he’s been in Detroit.

Aside from those two players, it’s bleak. From 2024 to 2025, the Red Wings have signed Vladimir Tarasenko, Christian Fischer, Tyler Motte, James van Riemsdyk, and Mason Appleton. Not stellar in terms of adding enough offense. Take DeBrincat off this team and I don’t want to know what the offense looks like. Adding scoring has been a lot harder than the plan assumed.

Now the defense, because this model lives or dies there. Since 2008-09, 189 teams finished in the bottom third of the league in 5v5 scoring. Only 44 made the playoffs (23%), and three won the Cup. But the ones with top-third defense and top-third goaltending made it 11 times out of 13. Drop both to the middle third and it’s 5 of 22. Over the last two seasons, Detroit ranked 22nd and then 15th in 5v5 chances allowed (expected goals against per 60), and 9th and then 18th in goaltending (5v5 goals saved above expected). For a roster built on responsible forwards, that’s not close to good enough. Last season lands in the middle-middle box, where 5 of 22 made it. The year before, the one top-ten goaltending season came with a 22nd-ranked defense, a box where 3 of 19 made it.

It hasn’t worked. The Red Wings are operating with very little margin for error on the defensive and goaltending sides, and neither has been able to hold up over the course of a season. The philosophy may not be wrong, but the roster construction definitely has missed the mark. The forwards they handpicked as 200-foot players ranked 21st and then 14th defensively by Evolving Hockey the last two years. Of the 18 low-scoring teams that won a playoff round since 2008-09, 12 had a top-ten defensive forward group. If what has transpired this offseason was erased, and you started getting more meaningful minutes from players like Nate Danielson, Michael Brandsegg-Nygård and Carter Mazur, and fewer minutes from the guys labeled “jerseys”, we may finally see a playoff team. Sadly, the 5-3 victory over the Ottawa Senators on October 6 may have just been a glimpse of the team we could have been.

What teams who prioritized 2-way forwards were most successful?

If you’re going to mold your team into this type of hard-to-play-against roster, the logical question is, “Who showed that was possible?” The easy answer is Carolina, but they just won the Stanley Cup, which comes long after this roster reconstruction and drafting philosophy began. There are a few filters we need to put on to get to the likely models for this current iteration of the Red Wings, how close they are, and whether or not ultimate success could have been achieved on their current path.

First, we have to look at teams that won prior to 2021 but still recent enough that they could be considered a modern roster construction. Second, they need to be teams whose forwards were above average to elite on the defensive end. Third, we’re looking at teams that may not have relied heavily on 5v5 scoring, which tends to be a byproduct of more defensive-minded teams. And lastly, they most likely can’t have a star player who is superstar Connor McDavid or Nathan MacKinnon level. Remember: Dylan Larkin is the star player we are building this around as our 1C.

The team that jumps off the page immediately is the 2011-2014 Los Angeles Kings who won 2 cups in three years. Their star player was Anze Kopitar, who ranked 16th in scoring in their first cup season, but was backed up by Jonathan Quick who had a monster year ranking 2nd in goals saved above expected. They ranked 29th in 5v5 scoring during their first cup run, and only 25th in their second cup run. However, in both seasons they had top 5 forward defense and top 3 goaltending. Drew Doughty was their top defenseman.

If Sebastian Cossa had progressed as expected, I believe the Red Wings felt they could have similar elite goaltending, albeit not necessarily as elite as Quick was in those two seasons. Mo Seider is better than Drew Doughty was during the Kings mini dynasty, too. Seider comes out ahead in goals above replacement by a significant margin (especially over the last two years) while also having more extreme expected goals share (xG share) splits. The Kings still hovered between 52-55% xG share when Doughty was off the ice. The Red Wings were at 55% with Seider on, and 46% with him off.

This leaves us with the known commodities: Dylan Larkin vs. Anze Kopitar. The one thing Larkin has going for him that Kopitar never really excelled at during this period is goal scoring. Larkin has averaged 76 points per 82 over the last two seasons, which is in the same ballpark (or arena) as Kopitar’s 73. Larkin’s 36 goals per 82 are significantly more than Kopitar’s 24. But that’s where stats that favor Larkin end. And adjusted for era, Kopitar ranked between 16th and 28th in points per 82. Larkin ranks between 41st and 50th.

The true difference between Kopitar and Larkin happens at the defensive end. The star player for the Kings was also the prototype of the type of roster they wanted to create. No one was a better defensive forward than Kopitar on his team. He ranked on average in the 83rd percentile for even-strength defense among forwards while also ranking in the 76th percentile for even-strength offense. The even strength expected goals share was an average of 60% with him on the ice and 52% with him off. If you were to sum it up, Kopitar at his peak was a top-10 forward who drove play across all 200 feet of the ice - a true 2-way forward.

Now run Larkin through the same test. Over the last three seasons he sits in the 67th percentile in even-strength offense and the 38th on defense. Detroit’s 5v5 xG share is 48% with him on the ice and 47% with him off. Kopitar moved that number eight points. Larkin moves it one.

That leaves Detroit in an awkward spot. The Wings spent four straight drafts stockpiling two-way forwards, and the guy they’re all built around isn’t one. That’s not a knock on Larkin. He scores 36 goals per 82, and he’s the reason opponents can’t feast on how thin Detroit is down the middle. But Kopitar was the template for his team. Larkin is the exception to his.

The team that may be most similar to the Red Wings that won the Stanley Cup is the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues. Led by Ryan O’Reilly and Alex Pietrangelo, the Blues were an unlikely winner. They ranked 3rd in forward defense, but just 17th in goaltending and 16th in scoring. However, the Red Wings still lack a 2-way forward at the level of the Selke-winning O’Reilly. Line this roster up against the Cup teams it was supposedly modeled on, and it doesn’t match any of them.

So what’s the ceiling?

Okay, so if winning the Stanley Cup is not the trajectory this team could have been on, what is the actual ceiling? And I’m not talking for this year. This is based on if everything goes right and they fill out their roster with realistic moves that can make them better around the margins. To find the closest matches, I compared Detroit’s 2025-26 team with 14 model teams on ten ranked measures: 5v5 scoring, chance creation, finishing, chances allowed, goaltending, forward defense, defense-corps defense, and where each team’s top scorer, top forward and top defenseman ranked league-wide. The shorter the distance, the closer the match. Number three on that list is actually the 2011-12 cup-winning Kings, but for the reasons laid out above, that’s not really that realistic. Two teams sit almost tied at the top, well clear of those Kings. They’re the 2016-17 Lightning and the 2019-20 Islanders.

It may come as no surprise that the roster the Red Wings are most similar to is the one Steve Yzerman also had his fingerprints all over. That team was middle of the pack on defense and goaltending, but had an elite defenseman in Victor Hedman. Nikita Kucherov was also 6th in scoring that year, so you might pencil in Alex DeBrincat as the comp for that season. What happened? They missed the playoffs. What happened after that? Kucherov went off the charts, Hedman continued to be elite, and Andrei Vasilevskiy became the best goalie in the world. Aside from Seider being a great comp to Hedman in terms of difference-making, no one else on this Red Wings roster projects to become what that Lightning team became.

The comp that I think makes the most sense is the 2019-20 New York Islanders. They did not have a top scoring center. Mathew Barzal ranked 29th that year. They did have an elite defenseman in Ryan Pulock who ranked 2nd in Evolving Hockey’s goals above replacement (Seider ranked 2nd last year as well). And finally, they had average goaltending. The rest of their forward group got them to 10th in 5v5 chances allowed, and Detroit was 15th last season. If the kids improve the forward defense, 10th is realistic. That Islanders team lost in the Conference Finals.

So what does all this mean? Although it is highly unlikely that this Red Wings core would have reached or even won the Stanley Cup, they were most likely on a trajectory to achieve moderate playoff success. At the very least, they would have ended the longest current playoff drought in the NHL. The slide started on February 29, a date that comes around once every four years. Red Wings playoff games have been rarer than that. And if Larkin does end up traded for futures, we’ll never know what this version could have been.