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The AP headline said: "Steve Yzerman abruptly steps down as general manager of the Detroit Red Wings."

But this is "abrupt" like when someone who has been suffering from a terminal illness gets hit by a bus outside the hospital.

One way or the other, it was going to end badly, and this just gets straight to the point.

The Yzerplan wasn't doomed from the start, but rather by the pivot in the summer of 2022. That was around the time that, after three or so years on the job, Yzerman decided he was tired of losing, and that he needed to accelerate the rebuild he had only barely started. Their core at the time, as defined by the Athletic, was Dylan Larkin, Tyler Bertuzzi, Jakub Vrana, Moritz Seider, and Lucas Raymond. But that wasn't enough, so Yzerman fired Jeff Blashill (fine), and then spent a ton of cap space in free agency on David Perron, Andrew Copp, and Ben Chiarot.

If he thought adding those three guys to that mix was getting him anywhere, history has made fools of you and him. More pain followed, and Yzerman repeatedly produced zero legitimate answers other than trading for Alex DeBrincat, who at that point was something a distressed asset. When you add mediocre-to-good veterans to a mix of young guys without particularly high ceilings, all you're doing is either saddling the young guys with bums (look how Seider's career took off once they moved Chiarot off his pairing) or blocking their ascent up the lineup (Copp was still second among Red Wings centers in time on ice and faceoffs last season, and scored nine goals).

Lesson learned. You'd hope.