The Hockey News’s Adam Proteau takes on a flight of fancy today, suggesting that the Detroit Red Wings should submit an offer sheet to restricted free agent forward Adam Fantilli of the Columbus Blue Jackets:
The Columbus Blue Jackets‘ standoff with star center and RFA Adam Fantilli has no apparent end in sight, and that is opening up a window for another team to take advantage of the situation by tendering an offer sheet to poach him from the Blue Jackets. And that team, more than any other team, should be the Detroit Red Wings.
Tossing a boatload of money at Fantilli would serve many purposes for the Red Wings. Firstly, they’d be adding a cornerstone player, and someone who could take the place of former captain Dylan Larkin once interim GM Shawn Horcoff trades him. And if Columbus matches the offer sheet, so be it.
Detroit currently has $21.3 million in cap space, and they’ve got all the draft picks they’d need to send the Blue Jackets’ way as compensation for Fantilli. The Red Wings need to be bold, and they need to be aggressive.
They’d be doing both those things by offer-sheeting Fantilli, and they’d be hurting an Eastern Conference rival in the process. And from the perspective of Fantilli, an Ontario native, he’d be playing much closer to home.
Thus, an offer sheet for Fantilli makes too much sense to be ignored. The Blue Jackets seemingly can’t get a deal done, but the Red Wings have the potential to. If Horcoff wants to remove the ‘interim’ tag off his job title, this kind of move would be a huge step in the right direction.
Continued; Fantilli is a hell of a player as a 21-year-old power forward, but Shawn Horcoff’s main job is to sway a certain defenseman named Simon Edvinsson to stay in Detroit, first and foremost.
Fantilli is a secondary target at best, given that Columbus has a generous $12.45 million in salary cap space remaining, per PuckPedia. Having to offer sheet Fantilli at $13 or $14 million = much less money with which to re-sign Simon Edvinsson, and that’s not cool.
