The Detroit News’s Bob Wojnowski offers a novel suggestion as we reach 2 AM on trade deadline day:
Yzerman didn’t add anyone at [last year’s] deadline, and you’d hope he’d at least snatch a decent defenseman this time. But the seasoning process can’t dramatically be sped up at one trade deadline. It can only be sped up by a larger roster overhaul, and that’s a debate for the offseason.
For now, I might just take a flyer on a goalie switch. The Wings outshot Utah 40-19, and Alex Lyon reasonably should’ve stopped two of the four goals. Yzerman keeps spinning the veteran goalie wheel, from Alex Nedeljkovic to Jonathan Bernier to Thomas Greiss to James Reimer to Ville Husso, now to the interchangeable Lyon and Cam Talbot.
If St. Louis is willing to listen, I’d offer Lyon or Talbot plus a pick or another asset for Jordan Binnington, 31, who won the Stanley Cup with the Blues in 2019 and was brilliant leading Canada to the recent Four Nations tournament title. His overall numbers aren’t much different than Lyon or Talbot, but he’s considered a big-game goalie and has two years left on his contract at $6 million AAV, not unreasonable.
Yzerman has been forced to plug and play with veterans while waiting for his prized young goalies — Sebastian Cossa and Trey Augustine — to sufficiently ripen in the minors and college hockey. In the meantime, the Wings are getting average-to-subpar goaltending too often. They’re last in the league in penalty-killing and 19th in goals-against, and while that speaks to a young defensive corps — rookies Edvinsson and Albert Johansson man the second pairing — it also speaks to weaknesses elsewhere.
“Obviously we gotta play better defensively, and get another save,” McLellan said. “But we also gotta give our goaltenders and our overall defensive game a little bit of breathing room for mistakes, and we haven’t done a lot of that lately.”
Continued; it’s a thought….
