The Steve Yzerman Era in Detroit is over. And it didn’t go the way anyone wanted.A hiring that was set up to be a fairytale homecoming has ended in a flameout.There’s no doubt Yzerman inherited a tall task back in 2019. But to go seven years without making the playoffs would have surprised any skeptic back then — if such skeptics even existed.The question now is, how did this happen? As the Red Wings turn the page and begin the search for the next general manager, it’s worth examining where it all went wrong for Yzerman in Detroit.How to win a Stanley Cup without superstarsHarman DayalNot picking a laneFrom Day 1 on the job, Yzerman preached patience. Even more than that: he was steadfast, throughout his entire tenure, in not offering a timeline.Maybe that was part of the problem.Of course, back in 2019, it was hard to say exactly how long a process Yzerman was in for. It was always going to be a huge turnaround job, and it was fair to give him some time to get the lay of the land. But even by the end of the 2021-22 season, when he fired head coach Jeff Blashill, Yzerman was intentionally vague about where exactly the Red Wings were in their rebuilding process.“I think we’re at the end of Year 3,” he said at the time. “And the beginning of Year 4.”It was a good line, especially if you viewed Yzerman’s secrecy as a feature and not a bug. But in hindsight, it’s fair to wonder: was there really a grand plan there to conceal? Or was it simply patience for the sake of patience?Another Yzerman quote from that same year-end news conference in 2022: “The danger becomes you start to get a little impatient, desperate, I’m not sure what the right word is, and then you do something stupid. … Any time I’ve tried to force something — force a trade, force a signing — I’ve kind of regretted it for different reasons. I think you just have to remain patient. Quite frankly, I think it’ll be easier for me to be patient than it will for yourself.”There’s certainly truth in that sentiment. But the timing of it is interesting, because that 2022 offseason has become a flashpoint in autopsies of Yzerman’s tenure, with some actually viewing it as an example of the general manager getting impatient and pulling out of the rebuild too soon.That summer, the Red Wings made their first major foray into free agency under Yzerman, signing Andrew Copp, Ben Chiarot, David Perron and Dominik Kubalik to multiyear deals and Olli Määttä to a one-year deal.The Red Wings did marginally improve that season — going from 74 points in 2021-22 to 80 points in 2022-23 — and picked ninth that year, just outside the range to land wingers Matvei Michkov and Ryan Leonard (who went seventh and eighth, respectively). And those players might have made a real difference. Both are already legit NHL contributors, while Detroit is still waiting for its No. 9 pick, Nate Danielson, to become a full-time NHLer.In reality, though, the true stars of that draft were Connor Bedard, Leo Carlsson, Adam Fantilli and Will Smith, all of whom went in the top four. And the teams that landed those players all finished the 2022-23 season with 60 or fewer points. Getting into that range would have actually required a sell-off by the Red Wings in the 2022 offseason to get 14 points worse than they had been in 2021-22.You can debate whether that would have been a worthy pursuit for the Red Wings, coming off Moritz Seider’s Calder Trophy win and Lucas Raymond’s similarly stellar rookie season. Hindsight may even favor that view.But the real sin was that Yzerman was all over the map in the years that followed. After adding those veterans (some on fairly long contracts) in the 2022 offseason, he traded Tyler Bertuzzi and Filip Hronek months later at the 2023 trade deadline. Then he signed J.T. Compher and Justin Holl, and traded for Alex DeBrincat and Jeff Petry in the summer of 2023 — and signed Patrick Kane early in the 2023-24 season.