Steve Yzerman’s decision to trade Vladimir Tarasenko to the Minnesota Wild last July now looks like a move the Detroit Red Wings had to make. Tarasenko finished the 2024-25 season with 11 goals and 22 assists for 33 points, a career low, and reports throughout the season pointed to a player who never looked settled in Detroit.
That is why Yzerman’s trade of Vladimir Tarasenko this last offseason was completely warranted. Tarasenko still managed 23 goals and 24 assists for 47 points this past season, but the split in his numbers only sharpened the sense that the fit in Detroit was off from the start. During the 2024-25 season, multiple reports suggested he was unhappy with the Red Wings and that the system was not a good match for him.
Tarasenko, who had been a high-end scorer for years, turned back the clock this last season in a way that made the Detroit return look even more frustrating in hindsight. His 33-point output with the Red Wings came after the club had already moved him for future considerations, a quiet ending for a player acquired with the hope he could add offense without needing to be the center of the attack. Instead, the season became a story of mismatch and diminishing returns.
The numbers around him also fueled a misleading comparison. Mason Appleton was suggested as Tarasenko’s successor based on paper transactions and box scores, but Appleton never served in a consistent top-six role like Tarasenko. That matters because the two situations were never truly equivalent: Tarasenko was expected to play a major offensive role, while Appleton was operating in a different lane entirely.
The trade now reads less like a gamble and more like a reset Detroit needed. Yzerman shipped out a veteran scorer whose season in Detroit never gained traction, and the late-season rebound only underscored how much of the problem was fit, not just production. For the Red Wings, the bigger question is not whether they should have kept him. It is whether the organization identified the mismatch soon enough to avoid another season built around the wrong kind of expectation.