Daily Faceoff’s Scott Maxwell posted a Red Wings season preview today, and he has the same questions that we do:
BURNING QUESTIONS
1. When are the Red Wings hiring their new general manager? The timing was certainly weird on Yzerman’s “promotion.” Detroit gave him free rein to operate at the draft and free agency to set the team up for the season, and only then did they decide to move on from him. It’s an awkward situation for the incoming GM to come into, overseeing a team they didn’t have any say in creating, but it also gives them a year free of blame. But with two other big looming decisions entering the season, Detroit needs a GM in place to get everything done. It’s been a month and a half since Yzerman stepped down from the role, so why hasn’t a new GM been named yet?
2. What will happen with Dylan Larkin? One of the biggest stories of the summer was Larkin’s trade request. It sounds like he wants to move on from his boyhood team in hopes of winning a Stanley Cup, and it’s hard to blame him with the Red Wings’ lack of success during most of his tenure. But he also isn’t making it easy for Detroit to make a move, as he initially only gave them three teams he’d accept a trade to before adding one more to the list – and none of them is bustling with trade assets and cap space to pull off a deal. Does Larkin hold strong on the few teams he’d accept a trade to, or does he budge and open up his options even more if a deal doesn’t get done soon enough? Or does he rescind the trade request and give the new GM a chance to build a contending team?
3. When does Simon Edvinsson sign? The obvious answer is “when the new GM is hired,” but there is more to this decision than that. Cap space isn’t the problem for Detroit, as they have almost $20 million available to sign the defenseman, according to PuckPedia. That doesn’t mean the Red Wings should use all of it, but it doesn’t mean Edvinsson will bend to whatever Detroit wants either, and they don’t have the defensive depth to play without him. Was the new deal far along when Yzerman stepped down, and how much longer will it take to come to an agreement?
Continued at length (it’s a very good preview, as much as any preview uncertain about Dylan Larkin’s future can be); we’re in the “everything’s an open-ended question” period right now, and until the new GM is hired, the organization has never been very good at communicating (see, most recently, the fact that the team can’t even share its new players’ numbers)…
So we wait. And we shall see, hopefully sooner than later.
