Red Wings Fire Lalonde, Bring Back McLellan

The Detroit Red Wings announced the firing of head coach Derek Lalonde on Thursday, with Todd McLellan hired to take his place.

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— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) December 26, 2024

Associate coach Bob Boughner was also let go and Trent Yawney has been brought in as a new assistant coach.

There’s a bit to unpack here.

Coming off of a season where the Red Wings were a tiebreaker away from making the playoffs, this season has been a relative disaster. Detroit sits in 28th place in the 32-team league with the second-worst goal differential.

Lalonde – who was in the last year of his contract anyway – had been on the hot seat for weeks. Something needed to change and with the team up against the salary cap it didn’t seem like it was going to be the roster, so it’s not really a surprise that Lalonde is out.

I really did not expect it to happen over the team’s three-day break for Christmas, though. Maybe the 4-0 loss to the St. Louis Blues on Monday night coming off getting swept in a home-and-home series by the Montreal Canadiens really was the final straw. Or maybe it’s that the next break of more than two days for the Wings doesn’t come until February, leading to a bit of “if not now, when?”

The Red Wings haven’t changed coaches mid-season since the Ilitch family purchased the team (excluding a stint where Dave Lewis and Barry Smith co-coached with Scotty Bowman out). These are literally unprecedented times. Perhaps it makes sense that the transition doesn’t exactly match what we might expect.

Which, I suppose, also brings us to Lalonde’s replacement, Todd McLellan.

Much as when Lalonde was originally hired, I wanted to see “new blood” brought in as his replacement. McLellan, a guy who’s now on his fourth NHL team as head coach, coming back to a team that he formerly coached as an assistant, feels so much like the NHL coaching carousel in action.

If this had been for the rest of the season I might understand it. Bring in an experienced guy to try to right the ship and see what happens. But this is a multi-year deal. McLellan is The Guy going forward.

And with McLellan as The Guy, I think we have to be curious about the state of Steve Yzerman as general manager. His free agent signings haven’t worked. His hand-picked head coach didn’t work. He’s giving it a go with another coach now but what if that doesn’t work?

As I said off the top, though, something needed to change. Now something has. We’ll see what the impact is.