The Athletic’s Corey Pronman and Harman Dayal discuss 10 notable players on the waiver wire, and they include this assessment of Red Wings defenseman Justin Holl, who was waived at 2 PM today:
Justin Holl, RHD, Detroit Red Wings
Holl established himself as a competent No. 5 quality defender during his tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He was a whipping boy at times for making loud, costly mistakes but his overall body of work wasn’t bad. Holl offered size (6-foot-4) and genuinely excellent penalty-killing ability and wasn’t even half-bad at moving the puck according to manually tracked data. Right-shot defensemen with that profile are desirable, but the Red Wings went too far and overpaid him last summer on a three-year contract with a $3.4 million cap hit. Holl has been a disappointment in Detroit. The Red Wings had a logjam of bottom-of-the-lineup defensemen and Holl became a frequent healthy scratch. The 32-year-old is still a bona fide NHL quality player, but with two years left on a bloated contract, it’d be surprising if a team rolls the dice on him.
Continued (paywall); Holl will probably be recalled at some point this season, given that injuries are inevitable on the Wings’ roster. I just don’t know if he’s going to re-earn a regular spot.
At this point, it looks like either a trade with salary retention on the Wings’ part or a buy-out this summer are the options for Holl as Detroit will only receive $1.15 million in cap relief for Holl playing in the AHL.
