The Athletic’s Harman Dayal names the Red Wings among 7 teams which “need to make an offseason splash” in a pre-free agency article:
Steve Yzerman’s stunning trade to give up a second-round pick to offload Jake Walman’s contract ($3.4 million AAV for two seasons) must be a sign that he has something major up his sleeve. There aren’t many other reasonable justifications for being that desperate to clear cap space.
After the Walman trade, we estimated that the Red Wings could have just over $13 million to play with after you plug in Evolving-Hockey’s RFA estimates for Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond and Joe Veleno. They’ll need to add a few depth pieces to the lineup (most likely through calling up young players internally), but after that, they’ll still have the room to chase a couple of impact players.
Adding top-six help should be high on Yzerman’s wish list. Re-signing Patrick Kane or taking a run at Steven Stamkos given Yzerman’s ties are a couple of possibilities that immediately come to mind. On the back end, it’d be ideal to land a shutdown top-four righty. An upgrade in goal would provide a substantial boost too. Detroit may need to carve out even more room — perhaps through a Justin Holl buyout, as one example — to effectively address all three of those needs.
Continued (paywall); if you missed last night’s TSN video…
Insider Chris Johnston said: “Patrick Kane is still in discussions with the Detroit Red Wings, where he spent last season, I think there’s at least a reasonable chance he ends up as a Red Wing. There’s been a lot of people connecting him to the Rangers, maybe to his hometown Buffalo Sabres, but it sounds like Detroit’s still in decent position, if they can get an agreement on term there…”
