While the expansion draft is set to headline a busy NHL offseason, there are still several other storylines for each team in the months ahead. Here is a closer look at what lies ahead for the Detroit Red Wings.
As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end and that’s what happened to Detroit this season as their quarter-century playoff streak came to a halt. GM Ken Holland doesn’t appear to be willing to kick off more of a full-scale rebuild just yet but even with that in mind, there are a few key things he should be looking to accomplish this offseason.
Fix The Goalie Logjam
The Wings had one of the priciest goalie tandems in the NHL last season with Jimmy Howard ($5.29MM) and Petr Mrazek ($4MM). Both have shown themselves to be capable of being starters but were basically pushed into a platoon situation when both were healthy last season.
There is likely going to be a large amount of goalie turnover across the league this summer and Holland would be wise to try to capitalize on that. At just 25, Mrazek is the likely keeper which makes Howard and the two years remaining on his contract expendable. The 33 year old saw his value get rebuilt somewhat this season with a strong 2.10 GAA and a .927 SV% in 26 games.
In theory, Detroit could try to incentivize Vegas to select Howard as their expansion choice but if that’s a no-go, there are other teams that will be on the lookout for goalie help. With youngster Jared Coreau waiver eligible beginning next season and seemingly ready for a longer NHL look, Holland may want to try to avoid taking on another goalie in a return but that may not be possible.
Shore Up The Back End
Detroit has over $21MM tied up in their defense corps for next season (with Xavier Ouellet to re-sign as a restricted free agent) but their returns on that money have been diminishing. Niklas Kronwall has lost a couple of steps while Jonathan Ericsson also is starting to break down. That placed a lot more pressure on Mike Green (who only has one year left on his deal) and Danny DeKeyser who isn’t a prototypical number one defender.
With the likes of Ouellet, Ryan Sproul, and Nick Jensen, their depth is decent but Holland needs to find a way to bring in another impact defender to allow the youngsters to develop at more of a steady pace. There aren’t many higher-end blueliners available in free agency which could force them to the trade market in a swap of bigger contracts.
Free Up Cap Space
Another reason why the free agent market isn’t a likely looking spot for the Wings is their salary cap situation. To put it nicely, it’s not particularly pretty. As things stand, they have a little over $67MM committed to just 16 players for next season, per CapFriendly. Restricted free agents Tomas Tatar and Andreas Athanasiou (as well as Ouellet) will take up a decent-sized chunk of the remaining room. They will get a bit of relief through long-term injury once Johan Franzen returns there next season but that’s still not much room to work with if Holland is trying to add parts to win in the short-term.
There are some bloated contracts for the team to try to navigate through including forwards Justin Abdelkader (six years remaining at $4.25MM) and Darren Helm (four years left at $3.85MM) as well as Kronwall (two years at $4.75MM per season) and Ericsson (three years, $4.25MM per year remaining), not to mention Howard’s deal. In a perfect world, they could find a taker for one of these contracts without taking much salary back but with a lot of the higher spending teams projected to be tight to the cap once against next year, that doesn’t seem likely to happen.
Instead, the more likely outcome may wind up being simply swapping one not-so-good contract for another while trying to save a few bucks in the process while hoping the new player winds up being a better fit. It’s not an ideal situation long-term (especially with Dylan Larkin and Anthony Mantha among those to need new deals after 2017-18) but that may be the only realistic possibility of player movement in what is looking like will be a fairly quiet offseason for the Red Wings as things currently stand.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.