I’ve been saying for a long time now that I believe the Red Wings need to add two players by the 2025 trade deadline–another forward who can provide secondary scoring, preferably in the form of a big body who can go to the net and be physical (I can dream, can’t I?)…
And I’ve been really hammering home the suggestion that the Red Wings desperately need a shut-down defenseman who can spare Moritz Seider some of those tough match-up minutes on Detroit’s second pair.
As we’ve watched the Erik Gustafsson experiment peter out, however, I’ve become more convinced that the Red Wings need to add both that power forward type and a two-way defenseman who can begin to meaningfully address the Wings’ lack of secondary scoring from the blueline over a defenseman that’s just a shut-down guy.
This morning, The Athletic issued “wish lists” for every one of the NHL’s 32 teams, and Max Bultman and I seem to agree about what the Red Wings need on the blueline:
A long-term second pair D: The Red Wings appear to have found their top defense pair for the next decade in Simon Edvinsson and Moritz Seider, who have been excellent together this season. But there’s still plenty of questions behind them, both this season and for the future. Swedish RHD prospect Axel Sandin Pellikka could be part of the answer in a couple of years, but Detroit has work to do to identify at least one more two-way building block on the back end. — Max Bultman
The Wings definitely need a defenseman who can spare Seider some of the minutes that he and Edvinsson play defensively, but there just isn’t somebody who can be utilized like Shayne Gostisbehere on the back end, and if the team still needs to address David Perron’s absence as a vocal leader who could go to the dirty areas on the ice–and they do–they need to find a genuinely complete two-way defender as well.
