Red Wings Selling But The Summer Extensions Continue To Haunt

There’s often a “middle ground” when something doesn’t work out in a professional relationship.  It’s hardly a universal principle that there’s only blame to shared one way, and not the other.

Take the case of Tomas Jurco, now a Chicago Blackhawk, as the Hawks are going shopping to fortify the supply shelf for a run at a fourth Stanley Cup title since 2010, while the Red Wings gear up for a remarkably unusual confluence of events, and that means selling assets for futures for, truly the first time since the spring of 1990. Even in 1991, when the Red Wings made a first-round exit to St. Louis after a hard-fought seven-game series, they went out and acquired a veteran defenceman like Doug Crossman, and a scoring winger like Kevin Miller (whom they’d later flip for Dino Ciccarelli), GM Bryan Murray had genuine interest in the “now” and not the future.

Times have changed, and while the Red Wings have certainly earned all applause for a quarter-century playoff run, and the four Stanley Cup wins, and the other two Final appearances in 1995 and 2009 to boot, it became quite clear quite early what this team would need to do this time of year for the first time since Red Wings general manager Ken Holland was in that office, or even a high-level Red Wings employee.

Admittedly, now and then, logical Red Wings’ fans about what the 2016-17 edition is and isn’t, and what the future should be, and what should be avoided, would worry that a mild spurt of results by the team might convince Red Wings’ management to hold back on an all-out yard sale of assets to teams far more poised to contend than Detroit is.  From mid-January on, the Wings won three straight (including regulation victories against the Penguins and Canadiens) and got points in six straight.  

February began with victories over Nashville and the Islanders, and a close OT loss to Columbus.  But the reality is there’s not enough points, too many teams to hop over in this utterly maddening point system that champions mediocrity so 24 (or so) of 30 GMs can sucker their fans into thinking “we’re a .500 hockey team!”, or worse “we’re in the playoff hunt so we’ll keep buying tickets!”  

But the Jurco trade is a significant step forward in reality for the Red Wings.  The question remains: where was this reality last summer?  If you were adamant on trading the cap space of Pavel Datsyuk away to refurbish the team in light of the absence of the Russian superstar for the first time in 15 seasons, that’s one thing — but why make the long-term commitments in Datsyuk’s absence that they did make?  

The Red Wings made a remarkably astute signing in snagging Thomas Vanek for one season.  In all honesty, I feel the Wild gave up on him far too soon, nor did their coaching staffs put him in a good position to succeed there, and he was far from horrible, just below the usual levels of production Vanek has established for himself since the 2005-06 season when he was 21 years old.

Though I’d never in a million years have signed Steve Ott for any purpose, and it’s been laughable to see print journalists who cover the team praise his grit and tenacity, even if we disagree about how bad a hockey player he currently is, at least the Red Wings only made a one year commitment, and for very little money.  The issue would be going back to the dessert bar and signing him again for next season.  Holland has made enough of those mistakes this century in giving Red Wings players a second tour of duty with the team, regardless of age or how far those players’ peak years were in the rearview mirror.

But was there a pressing need to sign Frans Nielsen until he’s 37 years old?  He’s only 31 now and has SEVEN even-strength goals in 57 games.  

Darren Helm has missed half his team’s games for the third time in the past five seasons.  He’s signed for another three years, and his age just hit the wrong side of 30, also.

Then there’s the utterly disastrous and unnecessary (in ALL cases!) extensions given to Luke Glendening (thru 2021), Danny DeKeyser (thru 2022), and Justin Abdelkader (you DON’T want to know….ok, but you have a right to, eating up a $4.25M cap hit through the hockey year 2022-23, when he’s 36 years old.  

Now, there was no leverage for Glendening to get those years, but DeKeyser I understand a little bit better, and do believe he’s a far better defenceman than he’s demonstrated this season.  But given the overhaul the Red Wings need is completely most-necessary on the blueline, making DeKeyser an immovable object (either by lowering his cap hit as he carries on his career, or keeping the ability to trade him if need be) wasn’t a smart decision, either.

And it feels good not to even have to mention the continuing contracts of Jimmy Howard and Jonathan Ericsson because no one is left to shout out that there’s a “case to be made” for both players’ deals when they were made.  Bad enough Alexey Marchenko was waived through the league and lost to Toronto, when Ericsson could have been waived through and the action would have simply set about mass amounts of snickering from the other 29 NHL general managers.

But what of Jurco?  Well, the team didn’t like him and didn’t feel he was the kind of competitor that fit what they’ve been attempting to do, and Jurco, judge for yourself, clearly didn’t feel the Red Wings were a team he wanted to play all out for.  So there is some untapped potential there with the 24-year old, to be a 3rd-line player in Chicago that could provide the occasional offensive moment, and play the other aspects of the sport well enough so that Joel Quenneville could find regular minutes for him.

For the Red Wings, it’s a good bit of business for Holland to get the third-round pick from Chicago for a player they didn’t want around and with him the relationship had soured.  For Chicago, maybe they see a Richard Panik-esque talent who was a promising OHLer with Windsor, but who Tampa Bay, and subsequently, Toronto, didn’t believe in and couldn’t find room for.  Panik, in seeing him up close as a Leaf, never really got the opportunity he perhaps could have in 2014-15, a year with tons of turmoil inside and outside the dressing room.  Chicago certainly has a track record the last decade of taking castoffs from elsewhere and making them not only regular players, but notable contributors.  

But if only the Red Wings had more pieces on the chess board they could sacrifice to fight another day.  They don’t have near what your traditional “bottom five seller” does and nor can they force other teams to take their bad contracts and make them disappear.

It’s been a year from hell, no question. The slump of Dylan Larkin in his sophomore year and another year of mostly fruitless evenings for Gustav Nyquist hasn’t made it any easier to tolerate.  There’s also the embarrassment that night in, night out, the Red Wings’ two most entertaining AND productive players, Anthony Mantha and Andreas Athanasiou (scoring 21 percent of the Red Wings’ even-strength goals this season) weren’t even in the Opening Night roster in Tampa, and were getting ready for another rousing Opening Night in Grand Rapids at the Wings’ AHL affiliate.  But Abdelkader, Glendening, and Ott got a combined 37 minutes of icetime that evening, so that’s nice!

The Jurco trade at least will bring more activity in the days to come before the Wednesday afternoon deadline — even the Leafs-based rumours of Toronto’s head coach Mike Babcock being into the concept of reunions with both Riley Sheahan (not surprising) and Brendan Smith (slightly more surprising, but Toronto’s blueline is below league-average as well and falls off a cliff after Rielly/Gardiner/Zaitsev).

Everyone associated with the Red Wings wants to reach out and hit the reset button and transport themselves to next season.  Fancy new building, younger skill players another year older, and the Vegas Expansion Draft, and this year’s terrible season far behind them.  The only problem is, they’ll take forward mistakes from Summer 2016 into the new building, whether they like it or not, and no other NHL team is going to sympathize.