‘Getting the crankies out’ regarding Raymond and Seider

I’m writing this in the darkness of a power-less condominium in South Lyon, so I’m getting my “crankies” out here.

I’m getting tired of the late-summer narratives suggesting that either the Red Wings’ GM should be fired and/or that the “rebuild is off the rails” because it is August 28^th, and the Red Wings have yet to reach contract agreements with Lucas Raymond or Moritz Seider.

Contract negotiations aren’t built upon what makes the fan base comfortable. If that were true, the Red Wings would have been able to hammer out extensions with their two marquee restricted free agents as soon as they were able to be signed to extensions last January.

It’s late summer. The whole fan base is getting jittery about seeing their Red Wings back on the ice in late September, and the hope is of course that Raymond and Seider will be among the players who hit the ice in Traverse City. If they don’t, it’s something of a failure for management for sure.

But there’s nothing worth staging a public execution for, simply because the team’s making the fan base sweat. Negotiations are difficult, especially when you’re hammering out 8-year contracts with two players who are going to command in the neighborhood of $8 million per player. Negotiations get harder when we’re talking about power-broker J.P. Barry in the case of Lucas Raymond, and everybody’s favorite player agent, one Claude Lemieux, in the case of Moritz Seider.

Sometimes negotiations take a damn long time, sometimes they’re contentious, and sometimes things lag time-wise. There’s no better motivator than getting back on the ice for training camp, the exhibition season, and the start of the regular season, of course, and we’ve got over a month until the Red Wings’ regular season schedule opens.

For better or worse, GM Steve Yzerman and the Red Wings’ management team are trying to place square franchise pegs in round holes in terms of managing the team’s salary cap situation, they’re negotiating in terms of both salary figures and player and agent egos here, and everybody’s on the clock as it ticks down toward the start of training camp on September 19^th…

At the same time, I just can’t quite freak the hell out about the fact that two franchise cornerstones have yet to be re-signed simply because it’s giving me the jitters. Hell, I’ve been talking to my therapist about how the negotiations are starting to get on my nerves, but there’s just nothing I can do about the situation, so we talk about how to ameliorate my anxiety about the issue instead (I happen to have an anxiety disorder, so *everything* makes me jittery).

The rebuild has not gone off the rails. The GM should not be fired into space on sight. There is nothing that’s “not gone to plan” until and unless one or both players has or have not been signed by September 19^th.

Even then, there are contingency plans in terms of re-signing the duo before the regular season via “bridge deals” or shorter-term contracts, should the long-term contract routes not pan out.

The long story long here, however, is pretty simple: the vast majority of the comments and complaints regarding what is definitely becoming a more and more worry-inducing situation…Consist of just that. Worries and over-hyped, late-summer news cycle stories that are being written to generate clicks and generate discord among the fan base for the sake of promoting discussion during the last “quiet bit” of what has in fact been a rather busy off-season.

And, for the present moment, anyway, we all need to take a couple of deep breaths, try our best to be patient as the looming deadlines in terms of return-to-play begin to impact the course of contract negotiations, and then we wait and see.

It’s not an exciting way of looking at the situation, but unless we happen to be members of the Red Wings’ management team or the representatives of Raymond or Seider, we have no power to change the situation by ranting, complaining or otherwise grumbling loudly for all of the internet to hear.

Things will get done when they get done. Or they won’t. And there’s nothing we can do about it but wait and hope. To quote the great Bob Wojnowski, all this “Panic in Hockeytown!” is honestly a waste of energy and time.

And if you’ve got that energy and time to waste, that’s up to you to exercise your freedom of speech. Me, I’m getting tired of the pitch and tenor of the whine-mobile around here, and I figure that it’s time to let other people know that it’s sound and fury, signifying nothing.