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The Detroit Red Wings still have a lot of work to do. General manager Steve Yzerman said that repeatedly Friday after selling players for draft picks at the 2023 NHL Trade Deadline.

Look at how the Red Wings stack up in the Atlantic Division alone:
The Boston Bruins are on pace for the best regular season in NHL history. The second-place Toronto Maple Leafs have a star-studded roster. The third-place Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup in 2020 and 2021, and they went to the Stanley Cup Final last season. Each is trying to win now.
The Florida Panthers are in sixth place, but they won the Presidents' Trophy as the NHL's top regular-season team last season.
Those teams aren't the Red Wings' real competition. Their real competition are the fourth-place Buffalo Sabres and the fifth-place Ottawa Senators, who have been rebuilding too.
"That's the group of teams that we've got to be watching," Yzerman said, "because when they're good, we're hoping to be good as well."
How does Yzerman think the Red Wings compare to them?
"I like the nucleus that we have," Yzerman said. "I look at Ottawa and Buffalo, as you mention, and …"
He paused.
"In all honesty," he said, "I think they're ahead of us with their group."
Yzerman wasn't referring to the standings. Detroit is in seventh place, ahead of only the Montreal Canadiens. He was talking about the big picture, and that's an unusually frank, sobering assessment for an NHL GM to make.
He went on to put it in context.
"Now, having said that, they've probably been drafting higher and longer than we have, so I expect them to be ahead of us," he said. "It doesn't necessarily heighten my urgency, because I just can't come up with first-round picks. I can't come up with star players.
"We need these picks to either try and trade for a star player, which, it just doesn't happen that often, or we've got to continue to draft and, regardless of where we're picking, find a player who is an impact guy."
The Red Wings haven't made the Stanley Cup Playoffs since 2016. Yzerman has been the GM since April 19, 2019. When he took the job, he knew he had a big task ahead of him, and he asked for patience.
Although the Red Wings have made progress -- they have a .533 point percentage this season, the best of the Yzerman era, and have prospects in the pipeline -- the message remains the same.
"We're going to stick with it," Yzerman said. "I hope the media, the fan base, continues to be patient. But ultimately, myself and my staff, we've got to run a good program. We've got to draft well and run a good program to get these guys to the NHL, but it is going to take time.
"I'm going to stick with it, and I'm going to try to make some moves along the way that can expedite it, and hopefully those are good moves. But you just don't pull those out of a hat, you know?"
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Yzerman said he had a plan for the Trade Deadline when the Red Wings left for a road trip last month. When they were 7-1-0 in eight games as of Feb. 23, that gave him pause. For a moment, they held the second wild card into the playoffs from the Eastern Conference.
They lost at home to the Lightning 3-0 on Feb. 25, and then they lost back-to-back road games to the Senators by a combined score of 12-3 on Monday and Tuesday. Yzerman said he didn't put it all on the two Ottawa games, but …
"We have a long way to go, and I think those two games were indicative," he said.
The Red Wings signed three players who could have become unrestricted free agents: center Dylan Larkin (eight years, $69.6 million) and defensemen Olli Maatta (two years, $6 million) and Jake Walman (three years, $10.2 million).
They traded forwards Tyler Bertuzzi,
Oskar Sundqvist
and
Jakub Vrana
and defenseman Filip Hronek, mostly for draft picks. Bertuzzi and Sundqvist could have become UFAs. Vrana and Hronek each had a year left on his contract.
Detroit now has 28 picks over the next three drafts, including five in the first round, five seconds, and five fourths.
Yzerman stressed that the Red Wings must make good decisions with them.
"It just gives you different options," he said. "I'd prefer to get a player in return; you know what they are. I'd prefer to get a prospect; you think you know what they are. With a draft pick, ultimately, you're really not sure. …
"I would look at those opportunities in the future for sure to use our picks to get players. Otherwise, we intend to go forward with making selections, and hopefully these selections turn into players."
Bottom line: The rebuild grinds on, and no one can say when it will end, not even Yzerman.
"I can't tell you, 'Here's the plan for Year One. Here's the plan for Year Two,'" he said. "It's not, like, a perfect process. It's going to be up and down a little bit, and hopefully over time we just continue to get better. So, you know, I do have mixed emotions about it.
"But the reality is, we're still building. We're still in that phase of acquiring prospects, acquiring young assets, however we can do that."