The Sporting News’s Bryan Murphy posted a list of potential landing spots for former Dallas Stars defenseman and soon-to-be-30-year-old John Klingberg. As Murphy suggests, Klingberg and the Red Wings are a bit of an awkward combination:
Detroit Red Wings: Another Atlantic Division team that has taken major strides to becoming contenders are the Red Wings. GM Steve Yzerman had a busy offseason, bringing in Ville Husso, Ben Chiarot, Andrew Copp, David Perron, Dominik Kubalik and Olli Maata.
Despite all of that spending, the Red Wings still have about $10 million left in cap space for this season, which theoretically would be more than enough to bring in Klingberg.
Bringing in the free agent defenseman would make the team better, but may not make a ton of sense. It would bump Filip Hronek to the third pairing, and I’m not so sure Yzerman loves the idea of paying $4 million to a No. 5 defenseman. There also are the upcoming contracts to Dylan Larkin, Mo Seider and Lucas Raymond that all have to be considered in the future.
Klingberg wouldn’t be the top, right-handed defenseman on the team, falling into a similar role as he did with the Stars. Plus, Detroit has plenty of righties on the blue line. Sure, he makes the roster better and they can make it work financially, but it’s not a great fit for either side.
Please no
Exactly so.