When Derek Lalonde arrived in Toledo back in 2014, the Red Wings’ ECHL-affiliate Walleye were staring up at a wide gap in the league’s standings.
They had finished the previous season 24 points behind the North Division’s second-to-last place team, and their previous head coach, Nick Vitucci, had stepped down midseason. But when Lalonde took over the bench the following season, fresh off a successful USHL stint in Green Bay, he showed little desire to slow-play the team’s turnaround.
“He went in there just with that attitude where he expected to win right away,” former Walleye forward Shane Berschbach recalled over the weekend. “And he planted that in our brains right at training camp … He kind of said, ‘I know that this team was not very good last year,’ he was pretty blunt about it, and he wanted to flip it right away.”
The rest quickly became lore: In Year 1, Lalonde led Toledo to the ECHL’s regular-season title, and into the third round of the playoffs. One more successful season catapulted him into the AHL, where he took over a last-place Iowa Wild team and brought them to the brink of the postseason that first season. And this all came after he had led Green Bay to a USHL title in his first season there.
In all likelihood, Lalonde’s first year in Detroit will not feature a storybook leap, with GM Steve Yzerman still focusing on a long-term build that has the current roster comfortably short of playoff-caliber.
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