DETROIT — The Red Wings had a chance to keep their season alive Sunday. Instead, they lost 5-4 to the Minnesota Wild after climbing out of a 4-1 hole, and the result pushed Detroit’s NHL playoff odds deeper into the kind of late collapse that has defined its spring.
With five games left, Detroit’s playoff-clinching odds had fallen to 11.5 per cent. When play resumed after the Olympics, those odds were nearly 82 per cent. The loss was the Red Wings’ sixth in eight games, and they are now 2-6-0 in their last eight. In 19 games since the Olympic break, Detroit is 7-10-2.
The bigger picture is even harsher. Buffalo finally ended its own 14-season drought, leaving Detroit with the NHL’s longest active playoff drought. The Red Wings have now missed the postseason in nine straight seasons, a stunning drop for a franchise that reached the playoffs in 25 consecutive seasons from 1990-91 to 2015-16 and won four Stanley Cup titles in that span.
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Detroit’s problems have been piling up for weeks, but the late-season numbers show how the slide hardened after Dylan Larkin returned from an apparent leg injury suffered March 6. He missed seven games and has four points in seven games since coming back. Since March 24, Larkin has averaged 13.8 possession-driving plays per 20 minutes, down from 18.7 before the injury. His slot-driving plays also dropped from 4.16 per 20 to 2.48 per 20, and he has recorded four scoring chances off the rush in his past seven games.
That drop-off has shown up on the scoreboard and in the shot metrics. In Larkin’s minutes since his return, Detroit generated 33.1 per cent of the expected goals and was outscored 4-1 at five-on-five. Before the injury, the Red Wings were at 49.3 xGF% with him on the ice. As a team, Detroit has left 18.5 goals on the table based on shot quality, a finishing problem that ranks 27th in the league. Through the end of November 2025, the club was ninth in expected goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five and 27th in actual goals per 60. Since Dec. 1, 2025, the offence has ranked 30th in five-on-five expected goals per 60.
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Coach Todd McLellan did not sugarcoat the slide. “There’s teams that are elevating right now, and there’s teams that aren’t. And right now, we’re one of them that aren’t,” he said after the loss. On Larkin, McLellan added, “It’s clear he’s not 100 per cent, the way he’s skating,” but also made clear the standard has not changed. “Yet there’s some situations that he has to play better. If you’re going to put the gear on, you have to be (really) good and positionally sound. So we expect that from him. We’ll have to manage him a little bit with situations and minutes, but when he is out there, we have to expect the best (from) him.”
Detroit’s attack has not produced enough at five-on-five to survive the slump. The Red Wings scored 33 five-on-five goals in 19 games since the Olympic break, or 2.14 per 60 minutes, and only the Toronto Maple Leafs with 32 and the Vancouver Canucks with 31 have fewer in that span. Sunday’s rally offered a final burst of life, but the loss left Detroit where the standings and the numbers have been pointing for weeks: outside the race, short on finishing, and running out of time.
