Red Wings 2024-25 Alternate Captaincy Recap

For almost the entirety of the 2024-25 season, the Red Wings did something unique regarding their alternate captaincy. For 80 of their 82 games, they played with a single named alternate.

Detroit hasn’t had formal alternate captains since the departures of Marc Staal and Danny DeKeyser following the 2021-22 campaign. They explicitly did not name alternates for the 2022-23 season before proceeding to roll out some combination of Andrew Copp, David Perron, and Ben Chiarot as alternates for almost every game (Moritz Seider also got an A for one game while Michael Rasmussen got one for two games).

For 2023-24, the unofficial Copp/Perron/Chiarot triumvirate continued, with a handful of exceptions. Rasmussen wore an A in his hometown of Vancouver while Patrick Kane was an alternate for his return to Chicago. Additionally, there were four games with both Perron and captain Dylan Larkin injured where Copp and Chiarot were the only players to wear a letter.

For the Wings’ season opener in October 2024, with Perron having departed for the Ottawa Senators, Chiarot was the only player with an A on his sweater. The next game it was Copp. Then Kane, followed by J.T. Compher, Lucas Raymond, and Seider. Chiarot got the A for a second time on October 24 but then it was Kane again on the 26th followed by Copp on the 27th. Compher got it on October 30 and Raymond on November 2 but then it was back to Kane on the 6th before Seider got it on the 9th.

The initial pattern did repeat from there and twice again starting on New Years Eve but by the end of the season Copp was injured and Seider had somewhat fallen out of the rotation. After the break for the 4 Nations Faceoff, Copp wore the A once before his injury, Seider wore it three times, Raymond had it five times, Chiarot six, and Compher and Kane seven each.

The Red Wings broke their single-alternate streak for the Stadium Series game in Columbus, with both Chiarot and Kane wearing an A. They did it again eleven days later while hosting the Buffalo Sabres, as Compher and Raymond both were alternates.

Perhaps coincidentally, both games in which Detroit dressed two alternates were games that saw them wear their Stadium Series jerseys.  Seider was the only alternate when the Wings wore those jerseys while hosting the Carolina Hurricanes on March 4.

By the end of the season, Chiarot and Compher each had been an alternate 16 times. Kane had 15 times, Raymond 14, Seider 12, and Copp 11.