The Detroit Red Wings opened training camp on Monday, Sept. 14 with Shawn Horcoff handling daily hockey operations and no permanent leader in the team’s top front-office job. The arrangement leaves the club moving forward without a general manager or head of hockey operations in place as practices and roster decisions begin to matter.
That matters now because the Red Wings are heading into official practices at Little Caesars three days after Monday and then into a four-game exhibition season, all while hopefuls are trying to win jobs. Horcoff, the assistant general manager, is carrying out the daily work, but any potential trading or re-signing of players still has to go through ownership while the position stays vacant.
The opening comes at a time when the franchise can least afford drift. The Red Wings are entering the 2026-27 season after a playoff drought that stretched to an active NHL-record 10th consecutive year last spring, and the search for a new leader is being led by Christopher Ilitch with help from a search firm. The organization wants the next hire to be fluent in analytics, a sign that the choice is meant to shape more than one roster move.
There is also a broader reason the search has stayed open into camp: the job is being handled carefully, even as the team needs a final decision-maker. A person with knowledge of the situation described the process in late August as really super thorough, which helps explain the delay but does not erase the practical problem. The Red Wings can keep camp moving, but they are still asking ownership to stand in for a role that normally makes the hard calls.
That leaves the next step as the one everyone around the club is watching. The Red Wings are not just looking for a temporary hand on the wheel; they are looking for the person who will decide when the search ends and who will control the roster from here. Until that hire is made, Horcoff will keep doing the work, and every meaningful move will keep running through a door that should already have a name on it.
