It’s been a month since the Detroit Red Wings’ season came to an unceremonious ending.And with another month to go before player movement picks up, fans have plenty of questions — reflecting on last season’s collapse and looking ahead to what has to change next season.We tried to answer some of those questions in a May mailbag.(Note: Questions have been edited for clarity and length.)Was the Justin Faulk trade still worth it even though the Wings didn’t make the playoffs? How badly does losing a first-round pick hurt the team? — Zac B.It’s a legitimate debate. On one hand, Faulk was tied with Lucas Raymond for fourth on the team in goals (five) and was sixth in points (eight) after the trade, so he did help the Red Wings. And they still have him for another season, in which I’d expect him to play 20-plus minutes a game in all situations. That’s all valuable, in my eyes.But the move was made to make the playoffs, and the Red Wings did not. Meanwhile, their first-rounder, which ended up landing 15th, belongs to St. Louis. That stings extra hard for a non-playoff team, although considering the pick was stunningly left unprotected, it could have been a lot worse!I still lean to the “yes” column, though. As much as the 15th overall pick should net a good prospect, I also don’t think it will be anything the Red Wings don’t already have. The players you’d be looking at around that range include big-bodied scoring winger Oscar Hemming, undersized puck-moving RHD Ryan Lin and big, two-way center Oliver Suvanto. And Detroit already has prospects who fit those profiles.Maybe someone exciting slips on draft day, and I’ll feel differently. However, as of now, I don’t think the 15th pick is likely to be a massive difference-maker for their farm system. Meanwhile, Faulk makes a real, tangible impact right now.I also want to add that, while the question gives me hindsight in answering it, I still think you have to judge these things based on the information available at the time of the deal. On the morning of the trade deadline, the Red Wings had the fourth-most points in the Eastern Conference and seventh-most in the NHL. So it was reasonable to expect the pick would be more like the 23rd or 24th — or at least the 20th — when they traded it.I’m also just imagining what the conversation would be if the Red Wings had stood pat at this deadline, only to collapse in March. In that scenario, I think all the criticism would have been about general manager Steve Yzerman sitting on his hands, hoarding picks and prospects, and not giving his group a real chance to survive the injuries that followed. And it would have been justified!So, to me, the Faulk trade was the right idea, though I readily acknowledge that the pick being in the top 15 hurts the value considerably.In your opinion, what have been Steve Yzerman’s three biggest mistakes as GM over the last seven years? — Bruce E.I’m going to exclude draft hindsight here, as every team can point to players it wishes it had picked in retrospect.One obvious one would be the Jake Walman saga, in which the Red Wings attached a second-round pick to move the defenseman to San Jose to clear cap space in the summer of 2024, only to see him traded to Edmonton for a first-round pick later that season.I’m sure Walman’s huge workload in San Jose helped solidify his value in the intervening time period, but it’s hard to buy that the market went from negative value in the summer to first-round value at the trade deadline.And it wasn’t the only poor blue-line decision Detroit made that summer, as the Red Wings also let Shayne Gostisbehere walk in free agency. Detroit’s left side was certainly getting crowded, with Albert Johansson needing a roster spot, Simon Edvinsson ready to become a regular and Olli Määttä still under contract, and they were in a tough spot cap-wise, to be sure.However, the Red Wings let Gostisbehere leave for Carolina at a lower AAV than they were already paying him ($3.2 million, compared to $4.1 million), and for only $1.2 million more than the player they tried to replace him with, Erik Gustafsson, who spent most of this past season in Grand Rapids.