Detroit Red Wings

Atlantic Division, Eastern Conference · 22 reports in the 2026-27 edition.

The club

2025-26 · 82 games · 200 for, 220 against

How it played

Shot attempts share, five-on-five: 48.8% 21st of 32
Expected goals share, five-on-five: 48.2% 22nd of 32
Power play expected goals per sixty: 8.19 4th of 32
Penalty kill expected goals allowed per sixty: 6.92 9th of 32

Where the record lies

Finishing goals scored above what the chances were worth: -20.7 30th of 32
Goaltending goals prevented beyond what the chances allowed were worth: +6.0 12th of 32

Detroit Red Wings scored 20.7 fewer goals than their chances were worth — 21 goals of the record that the underlying play does not explain, and it regresses.

Roster shape

Points-weighted, so these are the ages and origins of the production rather than of the sweaters.

Average age: 27.6; weighted by points
From 33 and up: 8.6%; of skater points
From under 26: 39.7%; of skater points
Homegrown: 51.6%; drafted by this club
Continuity: 86.4%; of last season's five-on-five minutes

The read

the numbers, and the eye

The third-worst finishing in the league on top of a middling process, and a defenceman who was outchanced by 12 goals in his favour and outscored by 20.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

The book

28th of 32

The numbers

26th of 32

The two place this roster within 2 spots of one another. Every report underneath was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

Both bars rank this club among the 32 in the edition. The report bar is the mean of its players' grades, weighted by the five-on-five minutes each of them played; the numbers bar is their expected-goal share on the same weighting. It counts 20 of the 22 reports on this roster — the rest have no five-on-five record long enough to weigh — and it reads the roster as it stands rather than the club's own last season.

Who the words reach 21 of 22 · 99% of the five-on-five minutes who is left out (1)

The bars above counted every man on the roster with enough ice time to weigh. The paragraphs name whoever they name, and no rule says who that should be — so this says who it was, over the write-up as a whole. Each section below reaches far fewer than this, which is the figure that matters: the section is where the selection happens, and the count sits under each one. The share is of the five-on-five minutes played by the 20 men on this roster who have a measured record.

Not named: Nate Danielson.

Who this names 7 of 22 on the roster · 38% of their five-on-five minutes details

Both columns above are searched, and a name counts on the same terms the page links it: in full always, by surname only when one man in the edition wears it. Nothing here says who ought to be named — only who was, so the weighting can be seen rather than guessed at.

Not named here: Viktor Arvidsson, Jacob Bernard-Docker, Jacob Bryson, Ben Chiarot, J.T. Compher, Andrew Copp, Nate Danielson, Justin Faulk, Emmitt Finnie, John Gibson, Albert Johansson, Marco Kasper, Dylan Larkin, Axel Sandin-Pellikka, Daniil Tarasov.

What the Quant Says

A middling process and the third-worst finishing in the league. Detroit was 19th in even-strength expected goals per 60 and 22nd in chance share — and scored 241, having finished 20.7 goals below expectation at 5-on-5, thirtieth of 32.

The goaltending was not the problem: 6.0 goals better than the chances faced, 12th. The special teams carried the club — 4th on the power play, 9th on the penalty kill, and the eighth-lightest shorthanded workload in the league. With continuity at 86.4 per cent, 5th, this is largely the same team again, and the thing it is owed is goals.

What the Scout Says

A club with 2 genuinely gifted young players, one of the best defencemen alive, and an enormous amount of roster spent on men who do not score. Lucas Raymond and Alex DeBrincat can beat you with skill; Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson can carry a game from the back. After that it thins fast.

The bottom 6 is the tell. Mason Appleton, Michael Rasmussen and now Keegan Kolesar are all forecheckers who do not create, and Rasmussen wins net-front position without anything happening once he gets there. Kolesar's 55 penalty minutes and willingness to fight are real and useful; whether a club this short of finishing needed a third helping of that particular thing is the question the roster asks of itself. The identity is skill on the top 2 lines, weight below it, and a blue line that is 2 men and a long drop.

Who this names 6 of 12 forwards · 57% of their five-on-five minutes details

Not named here: Mason Appleton, J.T. Compher, Andrew Copp, Nate Danielson, Keegan Kolesar, Michael Rasmussen.

What the Quant Says

A team that scored 241 goals and should have scored more. Detroit finished 20.7 goals below expectation at 5-on-5 — 30th in the league — on an even-strength chance profile that is merely ordinary, 19th in creating and 22nd in share.

The finishing that did happen was concentrated. Alex DeBrincat scored 41 goals on 287 shots at 5 foot 8, Dylan Larkin 34 in 74 games, Lucas Raymond 76 points at 24 — though Raymond's shot chart is drifting away from the net, a median of 32 feet with a third of his attempts from beyond 40. Emmitt Finnie, a 201st overall pick, played all 82 games as a rookie and took 56 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet. Marco Kasper, 8th overall in 2022, managed 19 points and minus-20. Viktor Arvidsson arrives having scored 25 goals and gone plus-20 on a club that was minus-17.

What the Scout Says

2 players make this attack dangerous and they do it in opposite ways. Alex DeBrincat has one of the three or four quickest releases in the league and does not need space — a lane for a fifth of a second is enough, and the shot beats a goaltender clean rather than through traffic. Lucas Raymond is the passer: the hands and vision that made him a 4th overall pick have arrived, and the best of his work is made at speed through a closing gap.

The limitation both share is where they are willing to go. Neither DeBrincat nor Raymond wins a puck by force or goes to the net front — DeBrincat's 19 penalty minutes are the record of a man who has built a career on being where the puck is about to be rather than where a defenceman can reach him. The punishment gets taken by Viktor Arvidsson, who forechecks with real intent and stands in front of goaltenders at a size that gives him no business doing it. Dylan Larkin goes to the hard ice and Marco Kasper arrives in the right places without finishing; the most encouraging page is Emmitt Finnie, who was positioned better than any forward here as a rookie and simply needs the strength, because grown defencemen move him off pucks.

Who this names 8 of 8 defencemen · 100% of their five-on-five minutes details

What the Quant Says

24th in even-strength expected goals against, and the home of the single largest gap between play and result in this entire edition. Moritz Seider had the expected goals run 72.1 to 57.3 in his favour across 1,596 5-on-5 minutes — 86th percentile — and the actual goals go 55 for and 75 against. That is a shortfall of roughly 32 goals for 1 player in 1 season, and the plus-15 beside his name is still understating him.

Simon Edvinsson is 6-6, 23, plays 22:21 and posted the 74th percentile. After those 2 it falls away sharply. Ben Chiarot played the second-most 5-on-5 minutes on the club at the 9th percentile, with the expected goals 55.8 to 73.6 against him — a 16-goal deficit in chances before any luck is applied. Axel Sandin-Pellikka put up 21 points as a rookie and minus-20 at the 13th percentile; Albert Johansson played all 82 at the 19th. Justin Faulk arrives at 34 having posted the 13th.

What the Scout Says

Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson, and then a long way down. Seider breaks the puck out under pressure against every top line on the schedule and finds the stretch pass while doing it. Edvinsson is 6 foot 6 and genuinely mobile — able to carry a puck out of trouble rather than chip it — and his 75 penalty minutes are a young defenceman playing on the edge rather than a liability. He is the one Detroit sends to clear its own crease.

Behind them it is a set of players in one narrow range. Albert Johansson defends positionally and is outmuscled at his own net; Jacob Bernard-Docker is a defensive defenceman without the physical presence the label usually implies; Jacob Bryson survives on a quick first pass and cannot clear a crease, and does not pretend otherwise. Ben Chiarot still fights and still clears the front — 75 penalty minutes of genuine willingness — but the skating went years ago, and forwards have worked out that changing direction is enough. Axel Sandin-Pellikka has the skating and the puck-moving that made him a first-round pick and cannot yet hold a man out of the slot, which is what a slight, gifted 20-year-old looks like while he learns where to stand.

The roster

Evidence 17 Full 5 Light 0 No record

Mason Appleton

#22

C · Detroit Red Wings

465 games, and the 5th percentile.

Viktor Arvidsson

#33

LW · Detroit Red Wings

5-10, 25 goals, and plus-20 on a club that was minus-17.

Jacob Bernard-Docker

#25

D · Detroit Red Wings

207 games, 29 points, and the 12th percentile.

Jacob Bryson

#78

D · Detroit Red Wings

5-9, 304 games, and the 51st percentile.

Ben Chiarot

D · Detroit Red Wings

1,500 minutes, and the 9th percentile in every one of them.

J.T. Compher

#37

LW · Detroit Red Wings

658 games, and the 13th percentile last season.

Andrew Copp

#18

C · Detroit Red Wings

60 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet, and 9 goals.

Nate Danielson

C · Detroit Red Wings

28 games at 21, and the best of a bad set of Detroit numbers.

Alex DeBrincat

#93

RW · Detroit Red Wings

5-8, 41 goals, and nobody has stopped him yet.

Simon Edvinsson

#77

D · Detroit Red Wings

6-6, 22 minutes a night, and the 74th percentile at 23.

Justin Faulk

#72

D · Detroit Red Wings

1,058 games, 16 goals from the blue line, and the 13th percentile.

Emmitt Finnie

C · Detroit Red Wings

A 201st overall pick who played all 82 games as a rookie.

John Gibson

#36

G · Detroit Red Wings

A career .909, a season at .901, and a finish at .863.

Albert Johansson

#20

D · Detroit Red Wings

82 games at 19 percentile, in a role the club had nobody else for.

Marco Kasper

C · Detroit Red Wings

The eighth pick in 2022, 19 points, and a minus-20.

Keegan Kolesar

#55

RW · Detroit Red Wings

55 penalty minutes, 6 goals, and a Stanley Cup ring.

Dylan Larkin

#71

C · Detroit Red Wings

34 goals, the captaincy, and 808 games in one uniform.

Michael Rasmussen

C · Detroit Red Wings

6-6, the 9th overall pick, and 154 points in 454 games.

Lucas Raymond

#23

LW · Detroit Red Wings

76 points at 24, and a shot chart drifting away from the net.

Axel Sandin-Pellikka

D · Detroit Red Wings

21 points as a rookie defenceman, and a minus-20 beside them.

Moritz Seider

#53

D · Detroit Red Wings

25 and a half minutes a night, 60 points, and a 32 goal shortfall behind him.

Daniil Tarasov

#80

G · Detroit Red Wings

6-5, a career .897, and a backup job that keeps finding him.

How they were used

2025-26 · 82 games

Measured from shift charts at five-on-five, not projected. Units are built from the strongest partnership outward and ordered by how much they were used; the percentage is the share of the first player’s five-on-five ice time spent alongside each linemate. A low number means the club never settled on a combination. Players who have gone are marked — either to another club, or off an NHL roster altogether, which covers retirement and an unsigned summer alike.