A decade after the 2017 draft, the Michael Rasmussen pick is still tied to Detroit’s long playoff drought

What happened in 2017 is now carrying more weight than it did at the time. In the 2017 NHL Draft, the Detroit Red Wings selected forward Michael Rasmussen with the ninth overall pick, and multiple later-era evaluations argue that Detroit bypassed other prospects who would go on to have greater NHL impact. The story is resurfacing as the Red Wings reach a major milestone: they have not played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for 10 seasons.

The Red Wings used to be defined by postseason momentum. As recounted in coverage resurfacing this draft decision, Detroit previously owned a run of 25 consecutive trips to the playoffs, reaching six Stanley Cup Finals and winning four championships. From that perspective, the contrast is stark, and the narrative around Rasmussen’s selection is being used as shorthand for a wider rebuilding arc that has been difficult to translate into sustained playoff relevance.

In retrospective discussions like this, the mechanics of a first-round pick matter as much as the player. A ninth-overall selection is expected to become a meaningful contributor, not merely a developmental project. That expectation is part of why Rasmussen’s drafting has remained a talking point. Coverage framing the decision emphasizes that the pick is viewed as “fateful,” not because the player failed to develop at all, but because the trade-off between Rasmussen and the other elite talents Detroit could have selected has become clearer over time.

There is, however, a caveat to keep the story grounded. Draft-day outcomes are never single-factor. The NHL is a long timeline of development, coaching fits, organizational depth, and roster construction. Even when a team selects a player who later does not reach the ceiling it seemed to hold, the gap between “passed on multiple future stars” and “a franchise set back years” is still a conclusion drawn from later results rather than a documented, one-year causal chain. Still, the 2017 pick matters in this context because it sits inside a draft class window where the Red Wings’ long-term roster direction has been repeatedly questioned.

Detroit’s current reality adds pressure to any assessment of its older draft capital. When a team reaches a decade without postseason games, analysts and fans tend to revisit pivotal selections from the years when playoff hockey was still expected. In that sense, the Rasmussen decision functions less like a one-player indictment and more like an anchor for broader questions about how the organization has managed the transition from the peak playoff era to the present rebuild phase.

Looking ahead, the implication is not simply whether Rasmussen was a good or bad pick. It is whether Detroit’s scouting and development processes can reliably convert first-round opportunities into top-pair defense, impact scoring, or other foundational roles that shorten rebuilding timelines. As new prospects graduate and roster roles solidify, future draft decisions will likely be judged with the same unforgiving lens now being applied to 2017.