The Red Wings may very well be interested in Pittsburgh Penguins forwards Bryan Rust and/or Rickard Rakell to supplement the team’s goal-scoring, but the Wings’ front office is an airtight nuclear submarine, and it offers no hints as to what the management team might be examining.
There is presumed to be interest from Detroit, however, so Bleacher Report’s Adam Gretz discusses the Wings as a possible landing spot for the latter forward, 33-year-old Rakell:
Detroit Red Wings
The Red Wings have to do something else this offseason…don’t they?
They cannot possibly go into this season without any major moves beyond trading for John Gibson. They cannot possibly open the season with a roster that is largely unchanged from the one that hasn’t been good enough to snap their playoff drought.
They cannot go into the season with more than $12 million in unused salary-cap space.
None of that would be an acceptable offseason.
They have the need for more scoring up front, they have the salary-cap space to easily fit Rakell’s contract in, and they have young players who could be flipped and would fit into the Penguins’ long-term rebuild.
There has to be some urgency for Steve Yzerman and the Red Wings right now given how long the playoff drought has been and how little progress has been made in the standings under his watch.
The free-agent market was a bust for Detroit. Trades are going to have to be the path from here. Any of the Penguins’ potential trade chips would fit here.
Continued; Rakell, 32, stands at 6’1″ and 205 pounds, and he posted 35 goals and 35 assists last season. He’s making a $5 million cap-hit deal for the next 3 seasons, and I think that he’d be particularly difficult to pry from the Penguins given his status as an almost-point-per-game player with strong skating skills.
Would the Swede fit right into Detroit’s top six? Sure, but the question always remains: what’s he going to cost?
