The Detroit Red Wings enter the 2026-27 NHL season with their fanbase staring straight at the hard stuff. The captain is no longer the captain, and he also wishes he could say the same thing about his standing with the team.
The club also still hasn’t found a permanent replacement for the GM it removed. Add in a second-best defender who is a restricted free agent and skating in his homeland of Sweden while waiting to see whether a contract offer ever comes, plus a playoff drought that has now stretched to a decade, and the mood around this team is easy to understand.
That bleak backdrop showed up clearly in a league-wide fan survey. A study of 5,000 NHL fans across all 32 teams measured each fanbase’s hope level heading into the new season, and Red Wings supporters landed 27th. On a hope scale of 100, Detroit checked in at 35.
The survey looked at expectations for the regular season and playoffs, plus views on the Stanley Cup Final, coaching and goaltending. The results for Detroit weren’t exactly a burst of sunshine.
Only 12% of Red Wings fans think the team will reach the Cup Final, and half of that group believe the Wings would win the Stanley Cup. Just 10% are forecasting at least 47 wins, while 90% expect fewer than that.
As for the postseason, 42% think Detroit will make it. Another 44% see the club missing out but still staying competitive, and 14% believe the season ends near the bottom of the Eastern Conference. Fans graded the goaltending and coaching just a touch below the league average.
That skepticism is hardly surprising, and Todd McLellan isn’t pretending otherwise. The Detroit coach said the organization has tried to change things, but he also made clear that belief only goes so far.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be different than any other year,” McLellan told reporters. “We’re trying our darndest to change it.
We’ve adjusted some things systematically. We want our guys to play harder and heavier, and have brought a couple of players in to do that.”
McLellan pointed to the areas that have to improve if Detroit is going to shift the conversation.
“We’re going to have to spend less time in our zone,” McLellan said. “So that’s where that structural thing comes through. We’re going to have to spend more time in o-zone.”
He also acknowledged the gap between planning a system and actually making it work once the games begin.
“Will it be different than last year?” McLellan said.
“I can’t read into the crystal ball, but we’re going to do everything we possibly can to make it better and to change. And that’s where we’re at right now.
And we start playing, and we see what happens.”
Inside the room, Moritz Seider said the outside noise is not the thing Detroit is focused on. The defenseman said the locker room is the place that matters, and that skepticism from outside can be used the right way.
“We’re just very worried about our own locker room, and we don’t really care about what other people think,” Detroit defenseman Moritz Seider said. “And if we see something, I think we just use it as motivation.
“I’ve said it plenty of times. It’s a great feeling, proving people wrong, and I think we have a great chance in this locker room to do so.”
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Recent efforts to sell affordable ticket packages also speak to the reality around the franchise right now: the Wings are still trying to re-energize the fan base while building a roster that can change the leagues perception of the organization. Insider Elliotte Friedman has noted that Detroit has not always been viewed as a destination of choice for players, and that kind of reputation is harder to shake than a valuation ranking. The on-ice progress is only part of the challenge, because the Red Wings still have to convince people they are a place stars want to be. [Read more 🡒]