When you’re a basement-dwelling team, memorable moments don’t come around too often. You’re not winning a lot of hockey games, so the good moments generally come off the ice. The Detroit Red Wings didn’t have a great 2018. They finished fifth in their division with 73 points, nearly 20 points out of the second wild card spot.

With a record like that, you can imagine that there weren’t too many on-ice moments worth mentioning. That being said, unlike some other basement-dwellers, the Red Wings had quite the eventful year off the ice. Their rebuild is well underway now and each of the following moments shows that.

In a down year on the ice, these are actually some pretty exciting moments that will set the team up for future success. Here are my top-5 moments from 2018.

In his press conference at the end of last season, Ken Holland boasted about “youth” being the theme this year, but with the contracts on the books and the signings he made throughout the Summer, nobody really believed him.

Then, several veteran defensemen started the season on the injured reserve. The team didn’t have any chance but to play young players. Their D-lines on opening night were:

Danny DeKeyser – Dennis Cholowski

Trevor Daley – Libor Sulak

Joe Hicketts – Filip Hronek

For a team that infamously over-ripens its young players in the AHL, this was a great moment. They were aggressive, chaotic, and unpredictable. They certainly made their mistakes, too, but at least they were fun to watch. As the vets started to recover, the young guys were sent back to Grand Rapids. First, it was Sulak. Then Hronek. And finally, Hicketts. The real standout was Cholowski who won out a permanent spot on the NHL roster after scoring a goal in his first NHL game.

Once the vets came back, there was much more stability on the back-end and the Wings were able to win some games.

The Red Wings have always dabbled in the trade market, but it’s been quite some time since they made a big splash. Though the Tomas Tatar trade wasn’t the biggest deal that went down on trade deadline day, it did force the Red Wings to admit that they were in a rebuild mode.

After having just signed a 4-year, $21.2-million deal, Tatar was the Red Wings second highest goal scorer at the time of the trade.

But it wasn’t the player that was traded that made this deal successful. It was the return. Ken Holland waited until the last second, but he squeezed George McPhee for all he had, drawing a first-round pick in 2018, a second-round pick in 2019, and a third-round pick in 2021 out of him.

It was quite the haul for a player that the Golden Knights barely played through their historic playoff run and eventually traded to the Montreal Canadiens in the Max Pacioretty deal. While that deal probably worked out for the Golden Knights, it looks even better for the Red Wings, who put that 2018 1st-round pick to very good use.

The Wings never had any real chance, but they didn’t win the NHL Draft Lottery. They had to settle for the sixth overall pick, where we were projecting a defenseman like Evan Bouchard, Quinn Hughes, or Noah Dobson would go. Instead, teams passed on a projected top-3 pick, and the Wings made no mistake in picking the hands-down best player available when they were up: Filip Zadina.

With his elite scoring potential, Zadina immediately re-energized the fanbase. But the excitement didn’t stop there, as the Wings still had Vegas’ 1st round pick. With this one, they picked up Joe Veleno, a young center who was granted exceptional status by Hockey Canada. Once again, the Wings did the best thing and drafted the best player available.

In the second round, they had picks 33 and 36, with which they selected Swedish right-winger Jonatan Berggren and defenseman Jared McIsaac, two other players who were projected to go much higher.

Suffice it to say that the Red Wings had one of the best drafts in recent memory. It’s one that will set the team up for future success.

Speaking of setting the team up for future success, the Wings had some young key players that they needed to sign up prior to the start of the 2018-19 season and they were very tight against the cap ceiling. The fact that Holland managed to lock up Tyler Bertuzzi ($1.4M AAV until 2019-20), Andreas Athanasiou ($3M until 2019-20), Anthony Mantha ($3.3M until 2019-20) and Dylan Larkin ($6.1M until 2022-23) is one of the better moments for Red Wings fans of 2018.

These young players, especially Larkin, are the future of the franchise. The fact that they agreed to such team-friendly deals is nothing short of magic. There are, of course, complications on the horizon, but by the time they are UFAs, a lot of the bad contracts will be off the books and the Red Wings will be in a much different place.

I wanted to single out Larkin’s deal here because it looks like it’s going to be the biggest steal. Currently on a 12 game point streak, Larkin is on pace for a 34 goal and 78 point season. That is great value for $6.1-million. He’s the undisputed leader of this team on the ice and will one day be the captain.

Speaking of captains…

Rumblings of Zetterberg’s LTIRetirement broke late last year, but nobody paid much attention to them. It wasn’t until this Summer that the rumors were taken seriously and, sure enough, the Red Wings captain had dressed in the winged wheel for the last time.

Without Z in the lineup, the Red Wings would be hurting bad, but the pain in his back had just gotten to be too bad for playing comfortably with.

While it’s sad that we lost our captain, Z’s presence was felt on opening night when he dropped the ceremonial puck drop to kick off the 2018-19 season. Though bittersweet in feeling, this great moment was a symbolic passing of the torch to the next generation of Red Wings players to lead Hockeytown back to its winning ways.