As a rule, Steve Yzerman tries not to let much slip to the media.
The Detroit Red Wings general manager once famously, and accurately, said at a news conference, “I’m trying to answer that (question) without answering it.” So yes, he’s guarded.
But when Yzerman met virtually with local media Friday morning, he did reveal at least a bit of his thinking around some key offseason topics — starting with the as-of-yet unsigned contracts for key restricted free agents Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider. Here’s what Yzerman said, and what we can glean from it.
Seider and Raymond’s contracts
All summer, the operating assumption around extensions for Seider and Raymond has been that a deal needed to be done by July 1, if not a few days earlier at the NHL Draft. The logic was that without knowing what his two marquee young pillars would cost on their next contracts — which Yzerman noted will “go up significantly, and that’s going to take up a major portion of our cap” — it would be challenging to conduct the rest of their offseason business.
Challenging, but not impossible. In fact, less than a week out from the draft, it sounds like Detroit is preparing to have to do just that.
“I’m just going to have to work around it,” Yzerman said. “Ultimately I can’t force anything. They’ll get done in due time. I prefer to have them done, but to be quite honest I don’t anticipate that happening at this stage, and we’ll just work around it and make decisions along the way, fully aware of — we’ll plan to get them under contract at some time here.”
Yzerman noted that he has had “very good dialogue” with the agents for both players, so it’s not as though this is an entirely stalled-out process. He said “both parties really have a tremendous interest in getting something done,” and that “it just takes time.” In short: A deal is going to get done at some point, which is no surprise. But it does sound like the Red Wings will have to go into the meat of the offseason activity with less certainty than they’d like on their cap sheet.
So, what will that look like?
“I don’t know what will happen in free agency, kind of have ideas, thoughts of things that we’d like to do,” Yzerman said. “And part of that is ‘OK with Lucas and Mo signed at particular ranges,’ I’ll say. And if they’re not signed, and there’s still moves that we really think are important for us, that make sense, we’re going to do that, and we’ll potentially have to adjust the negotiation plan with those guys after the fact if that’s the case. But we will try to do things that improve our team and give us a better chance next year.”
Basically, unless a deal gets done in the next nine days, the Red Wings will have to go about free agency with a ballpark range on what they expect Seider and Raymond to cost and operate based on that. His point about potentially adjusting the negotiation plan after the fact speaks to the potential downside of this situation — having less cap space to spend, if that’s the way it works out, could potentially lead to shorter contracts.
But, it’s a reality the Red Wings are seemingly preparing for.
“I anticipate getting both of them signed,” Yzerman said. “I don’t have a timeline for it. I don’t control that. I can only do my part. But again, the dialogue has been good, and we’ll continue to work towards it and we’ll plan accordingly, but we may have to adjust on the fly.”
The defense corps
The most crowded position on Detroit’s depth chart (and cap sheet) right now is on the blue line, where Detroit has five returning players under contract, Seider as a restricted free agent, plus two impending promotions from the AHL for Simon Edvinsson and Albert Johansson. That’s eight players already, and that’s before discussing last year’s power-play quarterback Shayne Gostisbehere, who led Detroit defensemen with 56 points last season.
Of Gostisbehere, Yzerman said Friday that he has “had talks and will continue to talk with Shayne’s agent” and would like to try to keep Gostisbehere in Detroit.
Doing so, however, would likely have to mean moving someone out — especially with Edvinsson and Johansson (the latter of whom is no longer waiver-exempt) needing NHL spots next season.
So, who could be the odd man out? It’s hard to say concretely, but I will note that Yzerman’s discussion of Detroit’s talks with Gostisbehere, and the state of the blue line, came in response to a question about Justin Holl’s usage and his role going forward.
Yzerman signed Holl last summer for three years at $3.4 million annually, but Holl ended up playing in only 38 games for Detroit. The general manager went back and explained his thinking at the time of signing this deal, which boiled down to wanting to get a right-shot defenseman while the team’s prospects continued to develop. After the first couple of days of free agency, the team had seven defensemen in place and was comfortable with that, figuring there would be injuries and that, while the coaches “may have some decisions to make periodically,” it would basically sort itself out.
That dynamic changed a bit when Detroit traded for Jeff Petry, suddenly giving them eight NHL defenders on the roster. Yzerman felt his team looked “somewhat competitive” and felt the acquisition price for Petry (a fourth-round pick) and the fact his cap hit was down to just $2.34 million would be a good value addition to the team’s depth.
But whereas the Red Wings expected some injuries, the team’s blue line instead stayed remarkably healthy, and the coaching staff settled on a lineup that played the left-handed Gostisbehere on the right side, as well as Petry, which consistently left Holl on the outside looking in.
“That pushed Justin Holl down on the depth chart,” Yzerman said. “Wasn’t necessarily the plan going in, he’s an NHL defenseman. I’m not sure we’ll go back with the same group of D-men next year. But Justin was a good player in the NHL and will be, just didn’t get opportunity. … And as of now you see what our roster looks like on the blue line, I still have had talks and will continue to talk with Shayne’s agent here, haven’t ruled that out, we would like to try and figure something out. But in order to do that, as I said, we’ve got potentially Simon and Albert Johansson, we’ve got to make room for those guys and figure out a way to do that.”
If Holl were to be the odd man out, it would either mean trading him (which almost surely would require attaching an asset, considering the two remaining years on his deal and his 10-team no-trade list) or buying him out, which would add a $1.13 million dead cap charge for the next four seasons. One of those two options is probably the most logical course for Detroit, even though a trade may prove tricky.
Detroit could instead alter the blue line in other ways, though. Olli Määttä has been a steady, effective defenseman for Detroit the past two seasons but does not have trade protection. I wouldn’t expect Detroit to trade Jake Walman, who has frequently been deployed on the top defense pairing for the Red Wings the past two seasons, but Yzerman’s assessment of where he fits into the organizational picture did leave a bit of ambiguity there as well.
“As the season went on, I think a lot of our guys — I don’t want to single out any individual — but a lot of our play was a little bit up and down,” Yzerman said. “And the coaches made some changes to the pairings, and Ben Chiarot went up with Seider and played with Mo, and they were pretty effective down the stretch.
“Jake was battling a muscle injury and he was playing and he was struggling with that, and finally came out and Olli went in, and Olli was really solid, and the coaches elected to go with again the six of Chiarot, Simon and Olli (on the left side), and then on the right side, it was Ghost (Gostisbehere), Jeff Petry and Mo. And we had the fortune of having what we considered eight NHL defensemen, and unfortunately when everybody’s healthy somebody’s sitting out. And that’s kind of what happened down the stretch for Jake.
“So depending on what we do or don’t do this summer, he’ll be back in competition for ice time, like they all are. I guess we’re fortunate in some ways, we have depth on the blue line, might have to tweak things a little bit, we’ll see how it plays out here — I want to say in the next few weeks, but it might be over the course of the summer.”
The plan in goal
The Red Wings have both Ville Husso and Alex Lyon under contract for next season, so they don’t technically need to do anything in net. Yzerman said he expects Husso to be “100 percent ready to go at the start of training camp” after a year spent battling injuries, and that Detroit is hoping he rebounds.
But he also acknowledged “we will look at the goalie market, and if something makes sense for us to do that we think improves us, whether that be via trade or free agency, we’re not opposed to doing that.”
Now, before you go racing to make your best Linus Ullmark trade proposal, Yzerman did quickly follow up by saying, “Having said that, I don’t anticipate using prime assets, whatever you would consider those to be, to really go out and acquire like an older goaltender that might not be here two, three, four years from now.”
That invites a discussion on what exactly a prime asset would be, but it would seem to rule out a player like the Bruins’ 2023 Vezina Trophy winner (Ullmark) or Nashville’s Juuse Saros.
Whether Anaheim’s John Gibson would cost a prime asset is a potentially pertinent question here — although he does have a pricey contract at $6.4 million for the next three years and has had some rocky stat lines behind a bad Ducks team the last two seasons.
Still, whether it’s an upgrade on their current NHL situation or something for depth, you can expect the Red Wings to pursue some goaltending this summer.
“We will definitely want another goaltender, say if you want to call it a No. 3, whether he’s a veteran, define a veteran,” Yzerman said. “But yeah, another guy that in the event we have an injury up top, or we need a goalie for whatever reason, that we have someone there.”
Yzerman didn’t rule out Sebastian Cossa playing his way onto the team in training camp, but he did say he would currently anticipate Cossa taking on a bigger role in Grand Rapids.
As for where the Red Wings would put that potential No. 3 goalie, though, Yzerman also said he didn’t “see us really doing three goaltenders throughout the course of the season,” as they did in 2023-24, adding “that wasn’t really the plan last year either, but injury kind of dictated that.”
“The three goaltenders, in talking with our guys, when they’re all healthy — one, they want to play, and two, in practice, they’re used to having the net now,” Yzerman said.
That would seem to suggest that a potential depth goalie signing would be in Grand Rapids, and therefore perhaps a goalie Detroit could get to pass through waivers.
But as always, much of this will simply depend on what’s out there, and plans are always subject to change.
“It’s an important position,” Yzerman said. “And if we were to go and say get another goaltender, we’ll figure it out as we move along.”
Yzerman did not let much on as to the status of pending unrestricted free agent winger Patrick Kane, beyond saying that he has spoken with Kane’s agent Pat Brisson. He said he has talked with all of Detroit’s free agents, explained his situation and gotten a feel for what they were thinking.
“We just pretty much all agreed, let’s stay in touch,” Yzerman said. “This is a busy week — not just a busy week for the draft, but a busy week trying to see if we can’t put some of these pieces in place.”
(Photo of Steve Yzerman: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)