The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan posted an article regarding the Red Wings’ free agency options this afternoon, and as Kulfan notes, it’s the Red Wings’ middle-of-the-lineup guys who are getting squeezed out by Detroit’s cap crunch:
The focus is re-signing forwards Patrick Kane and David Perron, along with defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere, all while keeping salary cap space available for restricted free-agent defenseman Moritz Seider and forward Lucas Raymond, who are getting significant salary increases coming out of their entry-level contracts.
Forwards Christian Fischer and Daniel Sprong, and goaltender James Reimer, are also potential unrestricted free agents, but the Wings have varying levels of interest on retaining them.
General manager Steve Yzerman said Saturday at the NHL Entry Draft it’s unlikely everyone will return.
“We’d love to bring everybody back, (but) that’s going to be really difficult to do,” Yzerman said. “We’re just not going to have enough money to bring everybody back. That’s just not the way it’s going to work.”
The Wings have about $32 million to work with under the salary cap — but approximately half of that is likely targeted to sign Seider and Raymond at some point this summer.
Continued; it’s guys like Fischer and Sprong who really can’t be re-signed, and I don’t know how I feel about that, honestly. To some extent, I want to see the Red Wings get as young and fast as possible, but Yzerman said yesterday that he’s not going to open up a top-nine spot for any prospect–that they would have to “take a job” from a veteran instead–and if that’s the case, I don’t know whether there are better grinders to fill out the Wings’ four lines than the affable Fischer and scoring Sprong.
