The Athletic’s Max Bultman filed a notebook feature this morning, and here’s one of his Q and A answers:
With the cap expected to positively explode over the next 2-plus years, is this year’s free agency a portent of things to come? The Haves resign their players and roll it back, while the Have Nots (our Wings) are only able to sign scraps? How does this affect Steve Yzerman’s plan of building through the draft? — Jeffrey W.
It sure looks that way to me.
Right now, there are 13 teams with at least $10 million in unused cap space, according to PuckPedia. And it’s not just rebuilders who are looking to stay cost-effective in their lean years. There are playoff teams and playoff hopefuls in that group — even the reigning Presidents’ Trophy winners, the Jets.
In other words, thanks to the rising cap, most teams will have the space to keep their stars when their current deals expire. That doesn’t mean some players won’t shake loose for other reasons (like Marner leaving Toronto), but even then, the most desirable markets now have the space to snap up those players, too. So I certainly wouldn’t count on getting a star in free agency.
That does make the Red Wings’ commitment to building through the draft more important. They look like they’ll be a deep team in the near future, though, and the rising cap should at least allow them to keep that depth together.
The issue, though, is that the Red Wings still need to find a way to add some star power, and free agency looks less and less like a viable avenue to doing so. That means they’ll likely either need the draft-and-develop approach to produce a star who outperforms expectations or use their prospect capital to trade for one.
The Red Wings’ farm system is good and should have enough to help make this a playoff team soon. To be a true contender, though, they’re going to need more than just time.
Continued at length (paywall); you would think that, as the salary cap’s upper limit crosses $100 million, Detroit would become one of the “haves,” but it doesn’t appear that way, at least not with the Wings being a middle-of-the-pack team.
As Bultman says later in his mailbag, the Red Wings aren’t an unattractive place to play in terms of their intangibles, which include the facilities at Little Caesars Arena, the history of the franchise, the Metro Detroit area and more, but people want to win, and Detroit hasn’t won in a bit now.
Max has become such a naysayer. I always like what he wrote. The last 2.5 years have not been good.