The Athletic’s Sean McIndoe consistently reviews teams’ offseason moves each September, pondering how strange the moves might be via a “bizarro meter.” He discusses the Eastern Conference today, and McIndoe seems a little surprised that the Red Wings managed to get their offseason work done before the end of training camp:
Detroit Red Wings
The offseason so far: At a high level, pretty much the same offseason Steve Yzerman has had for the last few years, as the Wings added a few interesting players without doing anything that really made you think they’d take a significant step forward.
But their strangest story was: Getting the Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider deals done, although it took until the last few days for it to happen. Still, both deals were reasonable and could even be bargains, so Yzerman clearly played it well.
Bizarro-meter ranking: 3.8/10. Pour one out for the theory that Seider’s agent was playing the long game to get his payback against Yzerman and the Wings. Ah well, the Yzerplan marches on.
Continued (paywall); yadda yadda, Yzerplan in neutral, yadda yadda, Claude Lemieux vs. Steve Yzerman, etc. etc.
I was disappointed that I wasted chunks of my summer worrying when or whether Raymond or Seider would re-sign, given that the team’s methodical GM simply utilized time and the potential of missing games to extract fair deals from J.P. Barry and Lemieux, respectively…
But my therapist got a laugh out of me pondering when Raymond and Seider might re-sign as an anxiety trigger, and the Red Wings’ management group made the inevitable happen.
That’s not bizarre. It’s Yzerman and company grinding away until the job was done.
