Barring a surprise trade in the next three weeks, when the Detroit Red Wings brass gathers for the NHL Draft on June 26, they will do so without having a first-round pick for the first time since 2012 and the first time since Steve Yzerman took over as general manager in 2019.Detroit traded its 2026 first-round pick to the St. Louis Blues as part of the Justin Faulk trade in March, and while you can debate the trade’s merits with hindsight, all the Red Wings’ front office can do now is focus on maximizing what it can get out of its six picks in Rounds 2 through 7.Certainly, not having a first-round pick ups the degree of difficulty for NHL teams. Round 1 remains the most reliable place for teams to find legitimate future talent. But still, year after year, at least a couple of teams manage to snag a real contributor outside the first 32 picks.For the Red Wings, the 2025-26 season offered one such potential breakthrough, as Emmitt Finnie stepped into the NHL just two years removed from being picked in the seventh round. He managed to play 82 games and register 30 points, playing largely in Detroit’s top six. That’s already a successful pick for a seventh-rounder, let alone at age 20.And the Red Wings needed it. Before Finnie, their drafts in Yzerman’s tenure had yet to yield much at the NHL level outside of the first round.Notable Red Wings picks after Round 1, 2019-25PlayerYear / Round draftedNHL GPNHL PTSAlbert Johansson2019 2nd14320Elmer Söderblom2019 6th10632William Wallinder2020 2ndDonovan Sebrango2020 3rd448Chase Bradley2020 7th20Shai Buium2021 2ndCarter Mazur2021 3rd90Dylan James2022 2ndDmitri Buchelnikov2022 2ndAnton Johansson2022 4thAmadeus Lombardi2022 4thTrey Augustine2023 2ndLarry Keenan2023 4thEmmitt Finnie2023 7th8230Max Plante2024 2ndEddie Genborg2025 2ndThis table doesn’t represent every Red Wings pick after the first round since Yzerman arrived in 2019. They’ve made 58 of those — tied for the second most in the league in that span. However, these are the highlights: Every player who has reached the NHL, regardless of which team he played for when he did so, plus the ones who still appear to have good chances at doing so.Immediately, there’s a theme. Only three have played a full season’s worth of games. Only six have reached the NHL. And of those six, four are now with other franchises.Of course, trading prospects for proven NHL talent (as the Red Wings did with Donovan Sebrango, who was part of the trade for Alex DeBrincat) is a perfectly valid approach. But still, for a team with a draft-and-develop ethos, the relative lack of hits outside Round 1 so far has left the bulk of that burden on the Red Wings’ first-round picks. That’s not what you want.However, it also hints at two realities inherent in drafting after the first round: How much harder it is to find NHL talent and how much longer it takes for those prospects to arrive.Yzerman has been in charge for seven years now, and while that’s a long time in the NHL, it’s also not uncommon for a non-first-round pick to take four-plus years to reach the NHL.Albert Johansson, who was picked in the second round of Yzerman’s first draft class in 2019, didn’t make his NHL debut until five years later, in October 2024. That’s stretching the limits, but players like Finnie, who was picked in 2023 and debuted in 2025, tend to be much more of the exception than the rule.That colors the assessment here, and from the drafts in the chart above, some of the Red Wings’ most promising post-Round-1 prospects are still shy of those five years, with plenty of time to graduate.That includes 2024 second-round pick Max Plante, who just won the NCAA’s Hobey Baker Award last season after turning 20 in late February. It also applies to 2023 second-round pick Trey Augustine, who won the NCAA’s Mike Richter Award as the nation’s best goaltender, and 2022 fourth-round pick Anton Johansson, who arrived from Sweden for the AHL’s Calder Cup playoffs and was very impressive.