Custance on ‘where things stand’ in terms of the Red Wings and the deadline

From The Athletic’s Craig Custance:

Setting the Red Wings’ deadline trades over/under: 2.5

There are a lot of irons in the fire for GM Ken Holland but varying degrees of heat. He doesn’t seem especially motivated to move anyone with term on their contract who he believes can keep the team competitive during the rebuild. The Red Wings have a lot of those players, which we’ll get at in a second.

So let’s start with the low-hanging fruit. Barring an injury, and it’s not believed his current upper-body injury is serious, Mike Green will get traded. There’s one. The Philadelphia Flyers goalie situation ups the likelihood that Petr Mrazek gets dealt, with TSN’s Darren Dreger first reporting that there are ongoing discussions between the Red Wings and Flyers on that front. There has been interest in both Red Wings goalies, with Detroit more eager to move Mrazek than starter Jimmy Howard. That gets you to two trades. Then it becomes about trading a player with term on his contract, which brings us to our next area of analysis.

Continued (paywall)

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, and have worked with MLive and Kukla's Korner. Thank you for reading!

3 thoughts on “Custance on ‘where things stand’ in terms of the Red Wings and the deadline”

  1. Craig brings up a point I hadn’t considered, the guys with longer term contracts becoming more valuable trading chips as they burn off years. While I would love to see the likes of Helm, Ericsson, DeKeyser and Glendening moved ASAP I can see the reason behind a more patient approach. This thought process also makes it more reasonable to move Mrazek at this deadline. Then have the option to do the same with Howard next year or keep him on a short deal as a stop gap. I think Howard is better “wired” to endure the pain of this rebuild/retool than Petr is.

    1. It is entirely possible that Helm, Ericsson, DeKeyser, Glendening and perhaps even Abdelkader and Nielsen will be more valuable in a year or two, assuming that their performance doesn’t drop off.

      And my heart says stick with Petr because he’s younger, but Howard is definitely more ready to deal with the hiccups of the rebuild.

      1. But who takes over for Howard? There is nobody right now. If the Wings can get a top goalie prospect back in one of those trades that could work, but no top goalie prospect puts the Wings in a very bad spot. Unless there is someone to draft this year and the Wings can get that done.

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