I’m not one to criticize other people’s blog posts for the sake of criticizing other people’s blog posts. Even in the middle of July, the hockey news cycle moves so fast that there’s no time to waste getting petty–and no readers’ time to waste, ever–for the sake of arguing.
In this instance, however, I’ve thought about this for almost 12 hours now, and I cannot hold my tongue here.
The Hockey News’s Jake Tye discusses the Red Wings’ goaltending situation going forward, and by going forward, I mean not only into course of the 2025-2026 season, but to what might happen to the Red Wings’ goaltending situation in the summer of 2026.
That’s a whole year from now, and in the cases of the Wings’ NHL goaltenders in John Gibson and Cam Talbot, the team’s AHL goaltenders and prospects in Sebastian Cossa and Michal Postava, and top prospect Trey Augustine, we’re talking about a long period of time.
Especially in the cases of Cossa, Postava and Augustine, the Red Wings’ young goaltenders are all facing pivotal developmental seasons, and what next year at this time brings is a difficult question to answer.
Tye is already surmising that the Red Wings’ status as having four known quantities in Gibson, Talbot, Cossa and Augustine = a crease crunch that will take a trade to alleviate next summer at this time:
One thing to keep in mind is that Gibson is signed on for two more seasons and if the two young goaltenders push their way to the front, he may be out of a job once again like he was in Anaheim with Lukas Dostal. There could also be a scenario where Gibson is still playing at a high level and will be in a position to keep his role.
We could see a similar situation to what happened with the Nashville Predators and Yaroslav Askarov. The two sides were close until it was time for Askarov to make the jump to the NHL level and there wasn’t any room for him as Juuse Saros was still at the top of his game and they still had a reliable backup in Justus Annunen.
San Jose would go on to trade and acquired Askarov from Nashville in exchange for a replacement goaltender in Magnus Chrona as well as a forward prospect David Edstrom and a 2025 conditional first-round pick belonging to the Vegas Golden Knights. The deal was a big one as the Sharks got their goalie of the future and this could be something that the Red Wings look to do in the near future.
The hope is in a couple years the Red Wings could be contending a if John Gibson is still effective in his late 30s like some goalies are, Talbot for example, Detroit could use one of the goaltenders as a valuable asset. They will need to make these decisions soon as Cossa is set to be a restricted free agent and Augustine is still unsigned with his rights not expiring with the team until he decides to leave the NCAA which could be two more seasons at most.
Augustine has a lot of hype right now and could force the Red Wings to potentially move off Cossa if Augustine is determined to take over Talbot’s backup role. Time will tell how the story will turn out but the battle between two elite goaltenders will be something to watch next offseason.
Continued; given that Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman has suggested that Cossa must establish himself as a full-stop starter in the AHL before he is brought up to the NHL on a permanent basis, given that Augustine hopes to “turn pro” after the 2025-2026 season, given that we’re not even assuming that Talbot might not retire after the 2025-2026 season, and given that we’re not considering the performances of Postava, Carter Gylander or any of the Red Wings’ other goaltending prospects (and it’s a deep pool thereof)…
With all due respect to Mr. Tye–and there’s a while lot of respect here, quite honestly–this ain’t checkers, and it’s not even 3-D chess. Attempting to discern what the Red Wings’ crease crunch looks like a year from now depends on the performances of half-a-dozen goaltenders, their respective injury statuses, their contractual statuses, ages, and where the Red Wings’ yet-to-be-named goaltending staff determines that each and every one of the organization’s goaltenders and prospects are headed in terms of their developmental windows (and goaltender development is not usually linear).
Long story long, it is way, way too early to surmise that Cossa is going to be traded to make space for the Next Big Thing in Augustine, or that Gibson might be booted from the crease to make room for Augustine and/or Cossa.
This makes a nice “thought experiment” and all, but it’s just not realistic to assume that we can use a crystal ball, the hype surrounding Augustine and the situation that the Nashville Predators found themselves in last year to yield a likely trade scenario that’s written in the stars already.
I’m not willing to go that far down the road. That’s too theoretical, too abstract, and, in all honesty, just not necessary.
We’ve got a LOT of fine writers and reporters and bloggers alike trying to determine what the NHL’s 2026 offseason is going to look like, whether Connor McDavid might somehow leave the Edmonton Oilers, how the increasing salary cap may or may not afford teams enough space to keep their players (see: today’s entry about the Dallas Stars and Jason Robertson), etc., and those kinds of entries and stories and rumor columns all get clicks because the 2025 offseason has kind of been a dud.
But it’s all a writing exercise at this point, and given how panicky Red Wings fans can get about the status of their team’s goaltending, my honest and bottom-line advice to you and me about what happens to the Red Wings’ crease next summer is this:
Things will take care of themselves. It’s not something to waste time worrying about in great detail, because goaltending is the most difficult position to forecast, some 34 years into my tenure as an NHL partisan and 26 years into my status as an NHL internet person of some sort.
The universe will unfold as it is destined to unfold, players will perform, and I’m just not going to write another one of these, “If hypothetical A, then hypothetical B, then…Hypothetical Z!” articles again, unless I really have to calm down a pitchfork-and-torch-carrying mass of Red Wings fans (again).
