Painting the picture with one brush stroke saying they've missed the playoffs for 8 straight years and Yzerman still hasn't "righted the ship" per se, isn't really a surefire indicator of success or not without context.
For context to start, Yzerman joined 2 years after the team's first playoff miss in 26 years. They rode out every last aging piece they had. They had Larkin, but critically missed drafting a legitimate impact NHLer in the stacked 2015 draft. Missed again in 2016 round 1. Ended up with Hronek in round 2.
This team had an identity from the start of Yzerman - fully committed to tearing it down and rebuilding, and haven't drafted in the top 3 one single time. Yes, the lottery luck has been shit. So what do you do? Scout and spend maybe some more time in Europe where you're finding young kids playing pro hockey on bigger ice. Looking damn good so far employing that strategy.
So what I don't understand, is how so many franchises that "rebuild" go up and down, up and down, over and over again. New Jersey, Philadelphia, Montreal, Arizona, Columbus, Ottawa, Buffalo (still haven't made it). All of these franchises have drafted in the top 3 in the last 7 years, and some multiple times in the last 10 years (some twice at 1st overall!!!). All of which have been stuck in purgatory missing the playoffs and making the playoffs over the last half-decade at least, and all have missed the playoffs this season. Is the fire GM after GM the right strategy? Is what these teams doing working for them?
Detroit has at least committed to a plan of bottoming out, and then slow-burning their prospects because, well, what's rushing them going to anyway? Yes, watching a worse off team spend an extra year sucking is hard. 8 years is a long time. Even hardly top 3 picks spend their D+1 in the NHL. So you can imagine how much longer it feels when the top picks Detroit have had under Yzerman are spending a little bit more time developing than other teams prospects typically might be.
The signing criticisms are more than fair. However that's still somewhat up in the air as the team is finally pushing the playoff envelope and they don't have any legitimately crippling contracts. See; Justin Abdelkader. Re-signed by Holland for 7 years 4.25m, bought out and Detroit is still paying for it
His trades have been solid enough, bringing in good young players and signing them for reasonable deals, and offloading veterans for picks
• offloaded Bertuzzi and Hronek each for 1st round picks, both of which would have had to be overpaid and they're both middle of the lineup players.
• brought in Walman, Debrincat.
• Mantha trade brought in a total haul and he was a flop until this season (playing hard for a contract like he did in 19-20, shocker). Offloaded Vrana eventually when he opted not to commit himself to his game.
Not amazing by any means, but the focus has been to draft + develop and not sign crippling veteran contracts. Yes some veteran contracts aren't great, us Wings fans already know this and are very vocal about it. We're hoping he has some tricks in his sleeve this summer but we'll have to see + the draft lottery awaits.
The drafting and developing has given Detroit a top 3 prospect pool with all of their 1st round picks during Yzerman's time taking excellent steps forward in their D+1, something of a consistency that leads me to believe he's on the right track here by taking the extra little bit of time with the rebuild and building a deep team by committee.