Updated at 1:45 PM: Of Red Wings-related note this afternoon:
- The Hockey News’s Sam Stockton discusses the declining revenues which appear to be dooming Diamond Sports, which is Bally Sports’ parent company, and Diamond also happens to be going through bankruptcy despite having reached a carriage agreement with XFinity/Comcast recently.
There’s been a long-term discussion as to what’s going to come next for the Red Wings, Tigers and Pistons’ broadcasts, especially as Diamond pays tens of millions of dollars for the privilege of broadcasting the three sports, at the cost of a big carriage fee for every customer of the cable or satellite system that carries Bally (regardless of whether the individual subscriber watches Bally networks or not)…
And I really wonder whether it’s possible that the long-time rumors that the Ilitches might start their own sports network to carry their teams on cable TV and/or online might come to fruition. That buzz has quietly served as an undercurrent to the various guises of PASS/Bally over the past 25 years, and the emphasis was always that, should the Ilitches be able to absorb the start-up costs of establishing a broadcast network, they’d reap the profits thereof.
Nowadays, the profits are smaller due to legions of “cord-cutters,” but if the Ilitches could start up a streaming service for the Wings, Tigers and Pistons, they’d still turn a profit broadcasting their own teams. With more and more teams inking streaming deals or broadcast TV deals that don’t emphasize turning a profit for the respective teams, I wonder whether we’ll see some sort of “Ilitch Sports + Entertainment Network” down the line.
2. Paul Kukla of Abel to Yzerman/Kukla’s Korner posted this trade scenario from Heavy.com’s Cole Shelton, and I’m sorry to admit as much, but I didn’t post it because I couldn’t possibly believe that it would happen:
Red Wings get:
Jets get:
- Jonatan Berggren
- Dmitri Buchelnikov
- 2025 first-round pick
- 2026 second-round pick
Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Even in August, digging through PuckPedia’s “PuckGM” rosters or HFBoards to stir up trade discussion…
But this is an irrational trade. Ehlers is 28, he has a $6 million cap hit, and he’s got a modified no-trade clause, which is one of the reasons that the persistent trade rumors suggesting that Ehlers wants a “change of scenery” haven’t stuck…
And while he’s a 50-60 point-scorer, I cannot possibly imagine Detroit making a trade that doesn’t involve the Jets taking back significant salary–never mind simply giving away a 1st round and 2nd round pick in addition to Berggren and Buchelnikov.
This is a dream trade for a Jets fan who wants to see Ehlers exchanged for a king’s ransom, and if Paul didn’t post it, I wasn’t going to give it any bandwidth. I’m half regretting posting it at all, because it’s just a ludicrously unrealistic trade.
I’m not saying that 24-year-old Jonatan Berggren and the mysterious Russian that is 20-year-old Buchelnikov are the jewels in the Red Wings’ prospect crown, but they’re worth something, and the Red Wings would not trade both players and a first-round pick to Winnipeg for a salary dump, even for a productive forward like Ehlers.
Detroit needs a shut-down defenseman to spare Moritz Seider on the second pair, which is why I’m not completely discounting Eklund’s zombification of the Jacob Trouba trade scenario, even though that’s also a “not gonna happen” situation as well, due to both cap concerns, Trouba’s no-trade list, his familial issues (Mrs. Trouba is in medical school and residency in New York), and his desire to remain the Rangers’ captain, plain and simple.
Seeing a Trouba trade rise from the dead is far more likely than an Ehlers dump for what’s pretty bloody close to a king’s ransom for Winnipeg. Don’t get me wrong, Ehlers is one of my favorite non-Red Wings players, but he’s not worth that return.
Update: Make it three things, because the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan has posted an early-August set of power rankings:
16. Detroit: Right smack in the middle. The Wings could snag one of those final Eastern Conference playoff spots or just miss like last season. Key questions are whether right wing Vladimir Tarasenko can add needed offense, whether right wing Lucas Raymond can build on a terrific late season run, and whether goalie Cam Talbot can solidify the net.
