I kind of shrugged at this take on the Red Wings’ salary cap situation from TSN’s Frank Seravalli, who suggests that the Wings are in the “Easy Livin'” bracket of salary-capped teams, but I’m not expecting Yzerman to weaponize too much of his $34.675 million in CapFriendly-estimated cap space this offseason:
Detroit Red Wings: Expect GM Steve Yzerman to use his cap space potentially as an escape ramp for troubled teams as he continues to collect assets in the Red Wings’ rebuild.
Continued with an analysis of all 31 teams’ cap situations…What would you do in terms of taking on “bad contracts” to acquire assets given that the cap will stand at a flat $81.5 million for the next two-to-three seasons?
The team needs to add a center and a defenseman this year anyway, why not take a veteran on a bad contract with 1-2 years left on it for a mid round pick. I definitely wouldn’t take on a ton of term – unless it came with a really attractive pick/prospect package we couldn’t say no to.