Chris Ilitch has run the Detroit Red Wings badly enough that the people chanting "sell the team" five minutes into a season opener are telling the truth. A fan base that's watched a proud, winning franchise rot for the better part of a decade under one owner finally said so out loud, cameras rolling.
Friday night went like this. The Rangers came to Little Caesars Arena for the 2026-27 opener. Fans booed Dylan Larkin during pregame introductions, even though he was scratched with an upper-body injury and never set foot on the ice. New York struck early. By the time the first period was five or six minutes old, the "sell the team" chant was already up and running. Homemade signs dotted the building. Some fans wore altered Larkin jerseys with "Loser" and "Traitor" stitched over his name. Detroit got shut out, 2-0, the sixth time in its 101-year history it has been blanked in a season opener.
The chant didn't come from nowhere. Two days before the game, a fan had already launched a petition demanding Ilitch sell. Behind it all is one number: Detroit has missed the playoffs ten straight years, the longest active drought in the NHL. That streak starts almost exactly where Chris Ilitch's ownership starts.
Consider what he inherited. Mike Ilitch bought the Red Wings in 1982 and won four Stanley Cups, the most decorated owner this town has had in any sport. When he died in 2017, his son Chris took over as principal owner. The playoffs stopped almost immediately and haven't come back. You can't hand a man a dynasty and then call a decade in the basement bad luck.
The front office hasn't exactly projected calm either. Detroit fired general manager Steve Yzerman, a franchise icon, during the offseason. Firing him was the move of an organization with no idea what it's doing.
Then there's the part that has nothing to do with hockey, and it's the part that enrages people. The Ilitch family's real-estate arm promised housing, retail and hotels around Little Caesars Arena as part of the public deal that built the place in 2017. Years later, a long-promised hotel next to the arena still sits undeveloped after repeated delays. As of late 2025, the timelines were still vague. Fans look at that and conclude ownership cares more about parking lots than points. Hard to argue.
Rebuilds take years, and booing an injured player off the video board and chanting at the owner can poison a room instead of fixing it. The players were the ones stuck absorbing it. Moritz Seider handled it like a professional afterward: "Everyone has a right to express their feelings and we just have to deal with it. We handled it pretty well. Everyone gave it their best shot and that's what we'll continue to do." He's right that the players did nothing wrong.
The Larkin part is a sideshow, and a petty one. He asked out this offseason and admitted it plainly to The Athletic in September: "I did ask for a trade." He was stripped of the captaincy before camp and still has five seasons left on the eight-year, $69.6 million deal he signed in 2023. Boo that if you want. It changes nothing about who built the mess he wanted out of.
A chant can start in one section and swallow a building, and there's no way to count how many fans actually want the family gone. The whole arena wasn't unanimous. It doesn't need to be.
Ten years, no playoff rounds, a fired legend, and a skyline of empty lots where the promises were supposed to go. The fans are the only ones in that building keeping score honestly.
