The Athletic’s Harman Dayal issues a list of the “9 best contracts” signed over the course of unrestricted free agency (thus far, anyway), and Dayal includes the Red Wings’ 2-year, $10 million contract with 33-year-old winger Viktor Arvidsson on his list:
Viktor Arvidsson, Detroit Red Wings
Contract: $5 million x 2 years
The Red Wings were anemic offensively at even strength last season, ranking 30th in the NHL in five-on-five goals scored. There’s still a ton of work required to fix that, but Arvidsson is a smart, relatively low-risk gamble who will help in that area.
Arvidsson scored 25 goals and 54 points in 69 games for the Bruins last season. Crucially, nearly all of that production came at even strength; he scored 3.02 points per 60 at five-on-five, which ranked third-best among all NHL players, behind only Nikita Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon. That said, Arvidsson is due for some regression next year — his line scored on an unsustainably high 14 percent of their five-on-five shots in 2025-26 — but at a modest $5 million AAV, they don’t need him to keep scoring at last year’s rate of 64 points per 82 games to live up to his contract.
It’s also noteworthy that his offensive numbers weren’t inflated by playing with star talent, which should increase Detroit’s confidence that his scoring will translate in a new environment. He never played with David Pastrnak because they’re both right wingers; Casey Mittelstadt and Pavel Zacha were his most common linemates last year according to Natural Stat Trick.
Arvidsson is 33 and injury-prone, so this isn’t to say it’s a completely risk-free deal, but the odds are stacked in the Red Wings’ favor.
Continued (paywall); Arvidsson is indeed a solid scorer at even strength, and he can play with both “top six” and “bottom six” forwards, so it’s possible to play Arvidsson “up and down” the lineup while expecting him to succeed. He is a little fragile injury-wise, but sometimes you look at his established production and cross your fingers that things work out here.
