The Malik Report

97.1 the Ticket’s Will Burchfield weighs in regarding the Alex DeBrincat trade this morning:

Suddenly, this is a team that can, and arguably should, expect to make the playoffs next season for the first time in eight years. DeBrincat is that good, and that suitable to the Red Wings’ biggest need, a two-time 40-goal scorer who looks like a natural fit next to Dylan Larkin, a burgeoning playmaker in his own right. Yzerman had added depth and toughness to Detroit’s roster this offseason, especially to the middle two forward lines. DeBrincat adds top-line talent.

“Good teams have depth. I think we have some depth. We would all love a couple of big-time scorers,” Yzerman said last week after a series of free agency signings. “We’ll continue to work at that, and how we go about it is a bit of a challenge.”

Don’t be fooled by DeBrincat’s size. The 5’8 sniper is about as big-time as they come. His 187 goals are 14th most in the NHL over his six-year career. He’s one of only four wingers with multiple seasons of more than 40 goals in the last five years, a list otherwise comprised of Ovechkin, Pastrnak and Robertson. DeBrincat also scored at a 50-goal pace in the COVID-shortened season of 2020-21, when his 32 goals trailed only McDavid and Matthews. When it comes to putting the puck in the net, this is the company he keeps.

Critics will understandably point out that DeBrincat is coming off a down season in which he scored just 27 goals and finished minus-31. We’d only counter that 27 goals still would have ranked second on his new team and that his shooting percentage is likely to rebound to his career norm after a rather precipitous drop last season. And that even if it doesn’t, DeBrincat’s plus-minus should benefit from the Red Wings’ improved defensive structure under Derek Lalonde.

Continued

EP Rinkside’s Ryan Lambert weighs in as to the boost that Alex DeBrincat may or may not be able to bring to Detroit this morning:

Detroit is making a solid bet here. The money’s fine, the acquisition cost was pretty good, and DeBrincat no doubt makes them better. This would have been a difficult trade for them to not-win, and in the end they won handily. 

The concern, I think, is that this just nudges them up into the “Buffalo and Ottawa” tier of Eastern Conference also-rans. Which, as noted several days ago, just ends with them picking 15th or so for the foreseeable future. The Senators brought in a better crop of players last summer than Detroit has since the free agency window opened, and it didn’t get them very far.

The real issue for the Red Wings is that they absolutely need Raymond and Berggren and even Moritz Seider to take additional steps. It’s not impossible, and DeBrincat certainly raises the floor on what they’re going to achieve this season and at least the three beyond it.

But let’s not get too out over our skis about this being any kind of rebuild extender or youth movement. DeBrincat is only a year and a half younger than Larkin, and doesn’t have a lot of room left to grow as a player. He is what he has been.

It’s up to him, his teammates, and the coaching staff to ensure that’s closer to the 40-goal guy he was in Chicago than the 25-goal guy he was in Ottawa.

Either way, though, is an offensive weapon they got for a shockingly low price. So Wings fans should be happy with the outcome. Even if this was the only place he was ever going to wind up.

Continued (paywall)

For your entertainment purposes, the Red Wings are offering a signed jersey to a fan who picks Alex DeBrincat’s number:

Since The Cat isn’t Abel to wear No. 12, we’ll send a few lucky fans a signed sweater if you can guess which number he’ll be! 😺

Ready, GO! pic.twitter.com/GRMvnjdd6I

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) July 10, 2023

MLive’s Ansar Khan filed an early-morning column which discusses the optimism surrounding the Red Wings’ trade for Alex DeBrincat:

For the first time since their 25-year playoff streak was snapped in 2017, the Detroit Red Wings will head into a season with legitimate aspirations of getting back to the postseason.

That wasn’t the case 10 days ago when general manager Steve Yzerman made a flurry of free-agent signings that amounted to depth moves which seemed to improve the roster marginally at best.

The outlook changed Sunday, when Yzerman acquired Alex DeBrincat, the bona fide goal-scoring threat the Red Wings so desperately needed.

On top of a team-friendly contract for a two-time 41-goal scorer (four years at an average annual value of $7.875 million), the Red Wings didn’t weaken their current roster, relinquishing what will be the lowest of their two 2024 first-round picks, expendable winger Dominik Kubalik, fringe defense prospect Donovan Sebrango and a fourth-round selection.

This was the kind of move many were waiting for Yzerman to make when he took over in 2019, the type of trade that only makes sense if a team is on the verge of competing for a playoff spot, which the rebuilding Red Wings were nowhere near during the former captain’s first four years.

Continued

The Athletic’s Ottawa Senators correspondent, Ian Mendes, passes judgment on the Alex DeBrincat trade from a Senators perspective this morning:

Not all trades are created equally, which leads us to Alex DeBrincat and his departure from the Ottawa Senators. There are rare instances in hockey where there is no “bad guy” per se in a trade. And the DeBrincat deal to Detroit might be one of those transactions.

Consider that DeBrincat never asked to be traded to Ottawa last summer. And he didn’t exactly demand a trade out of Ottawa this summer either.

And these two sentences seem to perfectly encapsulate DeBrincat’s brief stay in Ottawa. DeBrincat wasn’t an explosive and dynamic sniper in Ottawa. But he also wasn’t an abject failure either.

He scored 27 goals and 66 points, while carrying a minus-31 rating.  Any positive element of his game seemed to be mitigated by a negative one. In many ways, it was a zero-sum game during his tenure in Ottawa.

And that’s how a lot of Ottawa fans might classify the return on his trade with the Red Wings. Not terrible — but certainly not great either.

Continued (paywall), and Mendes argues that the Senators will be judged on what GM Pierre Dorion does with the rest of his cap space over the balance of this summer…

Bleacher Report’s Sara Civian suggests that there were no “losers” in her analysis the Alex DeBrincat trade this morning. She gives the Red Wings a “winning” grade…

DeBrincat has two 40-goal seasons under his belt already at 25 years old and he accomplished that task on pretty weak teams — it’s not like his numbers were pumped up too hard by his teammates.

He lost a bit of his finishing touch last season, dropping from 41 goals and 78 points in 82 games with Chicago in 2021-22 to 27 goals and 66 points in 82 games with Ottawa in 2022-23. His shooting percentage dropped from 15.2 percent to 10.3 percent, so you figure there’s a good chance something as luck-based as that can come back up again, especially with the help of someone like Dylan Larkin.

When DeBrincat is on top of his game, he’s an electric, creative, offense-producing forward who will generate quality chances and finish off shots. The Red Wings need exactly that as they’ve constructed the right depth throughout the rebuild, but are lacking the clutch scoring only high-end talent can produce.

Then there’s the extension. There’s no doubt, even with DeBrincat’s down 2022-23, that he was expected to command something in the eight-by-eight range. Instead, I’d consider the four-year, $7.875 AAV contract a hometown deal, especially when you consider the cap is allegedly going to sky rocket in the next three offseasons that DeBrincat will now be locked up for on something of a bridge deal.

All of this is great news for the Red Wings. You’ve got the hometown kid looking to prove himself and taking less money to be there.

Yes, Detroit had to give up a first-rounder, a middle-six player and an enticing prospect, but it was worth it at this stage in the Yzerplan that was growing more urgent.

And Civian continues, naming the Senators a “winner” as well…

Of Twitter-related note:

Steve Yzerman got the deal done that everyone was waiting for: Alex DeBrincat is a Red Wing pic.twitter.com/d0QtgE46d3

— Jeanna Trotman (@JeannaTrotmanTV) July 10, 2023

Here’s a video of TSN’s Jay Onrait discussing the Red Wings and Ottawa Senators’ decision to trade Alex DeBrincat for Dominik Kubalik, Donovan Sebrango, a conditional first-round pick and a fourth round pick–from an Ottawa perspective:

At the 8:10 mark of the following video (which may or may not be embedded…I did my best!), the Detroit News’s John Niyo, 97.1 the Ticket’s Mike Stone and Fox 2’s Woody Woodriffe discuss the Alex DeBrincat deal:

If anything struck me about the timing of the Alex DeBrincat trade, it was simple:

We’re not working on regular time in Detroit–we’re working on Yzer-time, and that’s how this rebuild is going to continue to mature.

That’s a good thing, not a bad thing, because I fully believe that, had Steve Yzerman attempted to trade for Alex DeBrincat during the draft, or, on the first day of unrestricted free agency, the price Pierre Dorion and the Ottawa Senators were asking for would have been much higher–and the price that it would have cost to sign DeBrincat to that four-year, $31 million extension would have been higher.

Now there’s no doubt that surrendering Dominik Kubalik (an every-other-game point-scorer), Donovan Sebrango, a conditional 1st round pick and 4th round pick is not exactly fleecing Ottawa. That’s a significant price to pay for the 25-year-old DeBrincat.

But the Red Wings’ GM didn’t care for the price the Senators or DeBrincat’s agent, Jeff Jackson, were asking for the price of making a draft-day splash.

We all knew, despite the Vatican-level of security around the Red Wings’ front office, that DeBrincat wanted a Timo Meier-sized, $8.8-million, 8-year contract. And we all knew that Dylan Larkin’s $8.7 million cap hit was and is the team’s “internal salary cap.” And we knew that nobody was going to get an 8-year term if they weren’t named Moritz Seider or Lucas Raymond.

We also had some hints and inklings from various scribes that Jonatan Berggren would be among the Senators’ “asks,” and we all knew that wasn’t going to happen, either.

So what did the GM do?

Continue reading On the DeBrincat trade’s Yzer-timeline