Daily Faceoff’s Scott Maxwell is examining the NHL’s 32 teams’ respective salary cap situations, and he has particularly harsh words to say about the Red Wings’ salary management:
30. Detroit Red Wings (2022: 22nd)
Good Contract Percentage: 24th (2022: 16th)
Quality Cheap Deals: 9th (2022: 15th)
Contracts with No-Trade/No-Move Clauses: 28th (2022: 9th)
Dead Cap Space: 24th (2022: 27th)
Quality of Core: 20th (2022: 26th)
Cap Space to Skill Differential: 21st (2022: 9th)Steve Yzerman’s direction with the Red Wings continues to be at-best confusing and at-worst misguided. Last season saw the Wings rank poorly on this list due to a questionable 2022 offseason that saw Yzerman load up on older players to complement a core that wasn’t ready to be competitive yet. He backtracked at the deadline when that didn’t pan out, but come summer of 2023, he’s done the exact same thing, and it’s dropped the Wings even further down the list.
Sitting in the 20’s in five of the six categories certainly doesn’t do you any favors, and a lot of that is due to the back-to-back summers of spending in free agency. Some of the contracts like David Perron, Daniel Sprong, Shayne Gostisbehere, and James Reimer look favourable, but the additions of Andrew Copp and Ben Chiarot last year and J.T. Compher and Justin Holl this year drag that way down, not to mention that a lot of these signings have some no-trade/no-move clauses attached to them to hinder another category. All of that builds to a roster that doesn’t grade out well, and even with more than $5 million in cap space, the system thinks a team of this quality should have more cap space.
However, they did see some marginal improvement in couple areas. They see their quality of core get better as Dylan Larkin and Alex DeBrincat’s contracts kick in (and more importantly, Chiarot no longer qualifies as a core player), and their dead cap space went down with Frans Nielsen’s buyout all wrapped up. Where they look best, though, is with their quality cheap deals, as their rebuild has given them plenty of quality young players on entry-level contracts like Moritz Seider and Elmer Soderblom. But, there’s still a lot left to be desired with their cap situation, which is disappointing when you consider that all that’s left of the cap hell Ken Holland left behind is Justin Abdelkader’s buyout penalty.
I don’t know how to elucidate my point other than to say what I feel to be true.
Yzerman is still in the early stages of a real from-the-ground-up rebuild of the Detroit Red Wings, which may take a decade or more to reach its fruition.
You don’t want to hear that, and I don’t want to hear that, but Yzerman had to burn down what Holland left him before really starting the rebuild in earnest. When you are starting a rebuild, you have to overpay in terms of both salary and term of contract. You make a couple of mistakes, and you assuage for them as best you can.
And you get panned for “not having a direction” and being a fraud and all that bullshit.
Thankfully, the Red Wings’ GM is not concerned with the court of public opinion, and while I don’t think that any of us truly know where the Red Wings will end up this upcoming season, I do believe that the team is building a stable of prospects, depth players and the kind of atmosphere which will eventually attract the kind of marquee free agents which will help the Wings assuage for shitty draft lottery luck.
Yzerman is playing the long game against an impatient fan base, and he’s going to get slagged at times over the next couple of seasons. It’s trendy right now to bash him as a fraud, in fact, and that aggravates me. But he’s got a thick skin and a lot of hockey knowledge, and, if only eventually, I believe that his vision for the team will prevail.
Paying fans have every right to want to push the timeline forward, and most of their constructive criticism is healthy. But this hating-on-Yzerman bullshit is short-sighted.
