Zetterberg Says Red Wings Got Yzerman's Exit Wrong: 'It Has Been Brutal'

Henrik Zetterberg has spent the years since his retirement saying very little about the Detroit Red Wings in public. That changed in an interview with Swedish newspaper Expressen, where the former captain was asked about the state of the only club he ever played for, and he did not hold back. “It has been brutal,” he said. “Things always happen, and there’s a difference between what comes out and what doesn’t, but it’s sad. It was very hard to watch Steve step down.” Then the verdict: “I thought it was wrong.” Zetterberg is not a pundit or a fan with a grievance. He is the player who succeeded Steve Yzerman as the face of the franchise, and his words land as the first public judgment from inside the championship core on how Yzerman’s time as general manager ended.

What did Zetterberg actually say?

He said it in short sentences, and each one was sharper than the last. “It has been brutal,” he told Expressen. “Things always happen, and there’s a difference between what comes out and what doesn’t, but it’s sad. It was very hard to watch Steve step down.” When the conversation turned to whether Detroit made the right decision, he said: “I thought it was wrong.” He stopped short of explaining what he knows. “I’m not going to go into the reasons for it or what happened,” he said. “But it was obviously very difficult, because I thought it was wrong.” Detroit Hockey Now notes that he insists he knows some of the behind-the-scenes machinations in the organisation but declines to elaborate, which leaves the quotes doing all the work. They do plenty.

Why does his opinion carry this much weight?

Because Zetterberg is the franchise’s own measuring stick. He gave Detroit his entire 15-season NHL career, won the Conn Smythe Trophy while leading the club to its most recent Stanley Cup in 2008, and succeeded Nicklas Lidstrom as captain. Yzerman was his first captain when he arrived in 2002, and the two were teammates for three seasons before Yzerman retired after the 2005-06 campaign, with the cancelled 2004-05 season wiping out a fourth. Zetterberg called Yzerman “the captains’ captain” and said: “He’s the icon I’ve been closest to and played with the most. I’ve really seen how much he has meant to Detroit and to the generation that won the Cups in the late nineties and early 2000s.” That history is why a few sentences from a man who rarely speaks about the club now read as a verdict on it. The full list of Conn Smythe winners shows how rare his 2008 run was, and how much of Detroit’s modern identity runs through him.

What happened to Yzerman in July?

The club moved him out of the general manager’s job on July 15, with no advance warning, after seven seasons in charge that produced no playoff appearances at all. The timing followed another late-season collapse after the Olympic break, and it came two months after captain Dylan Larkin asked to be traded. Yzerman moved to a senior adviser role working under governor and chief executive Chris Ilitch, and Detroit began a search for his replacement that still has not concluded. Shawn Horcoff has run the department on an interim basis since September. The numbers explain the decision in ownership’s terms: Yzerman returned in 2019 to restore a franchise that had missed the playoffs for three straight seasons, and seven years later the drought stood at ten consecutive years. Larkin’s own standoff has since become a sit-out, with the captain suspended without pay since October 29, and the two stories now sit side by side as the club’s leadership problem.

What is the other side of the story?

Ownership’s, and it deserves the same hearing. Ilitch concluded after another disappointing finish to the 2025-26 campaign that the organisation needed different leadership, and he has said replacing Yzerman was not something he had considered when Detroit sat near the top of the standings in January. The team’s subsequent collapse prompted an organisational evaluation that convinced him a change was necessary. That is a legitimate reason to make a change, and Zetterberg has not publicly provided specific details showing ownership mistreated Yzerman behind closed doors. The disagreement is not about whether Ilitch could make the call. It is about whether the way it was handled matched what Yzerman meant to the franchise, and Zetterberg’s answer to that question is no. Detroit’s fans have already made their own feelings clear this season, as covered in our story on the ‘sell the team’ chants returning to Little Caesars Arena, and Zetterberg’s comments give that frustration a voice from inside the building’s history.

What has Zetterberg done since retiring?

He stayed in hockey, just not in Detroit. The Red Wings have approached their former captain about joining the organisation in a professional role, and he has declined their offers. Instead he works in hockey operations with Swedish club Timra IK, where Detroit prospect Eddie Genborg is playing. Detroit Sports Nation notes there is no evidence his decision was caused by Yzerman’s removal, and the two developments should not automatically be connected. He stays in touch with the former teammates who still work inside the club. “Yes, we’re definitely in touch,” he said. “A lot of us are, because several are still inside the club. It’s a great group, and we have a lot of history together.” That network is part of why his words matter: he is speaking as someone who still talks to the people running the team, not as a distant observer. His first game back in Detroit after the trade request saga drew its own reaction, as covered in our story on Larkin turning boos to cheers in his return, and the building’s mood has not settled since.

What happens next?

Detroit still has to answer the question Zetterberg raised, and it cannot answer it with a hire alone. The club needs a permanent general manager, a resolution to Larkin’s standoff, and a way back to the playoffs after a decade away. None of those has a date. Zetterberg is not demanding that Yzerman be reinstated, and he is not accusing ownership of specific misconduct. He is saying that the ending did not match the man, and that the organisation should understand why that matters to the people who built its championship identity. “It’s sad that it ends this way, when he even came home to Detroit and took over as general manager,” he said. The Red Wings cannot change what happened in July. What they can still decide is whether the next chapter convinces the people who built the last one that the club still knows what it stands for.