At this point of the rebuild, the focus for the Red Wings has focused to the young players with their whole careers ahead of them. That doesn’t bode well for someone like Justin Abdelkader, who benefited greatly earlier in his career from playing with one of the NHL’s all-time greats, Pavel Datsyuk.

Now, Abdelkader’s contract is widely considered to be one of the worst in the league and his production has slowed considerably. Sure, he’s gritty and plays with heart, but that doesn’t translate to the skill and speed required to keep up in today’s NHL. It became quite obvious this season that Abdelkader is one of the remaining relics of generations past as he faded to the background while Dylan Larkin, Andreas Athanasiou, and Tyler Bertuzzi took center stage.

It doesn’t leave Abby in a great spot going forward and it leaves the Wings in even worse condition.

Evolving-Wild’s RAPM chart is not a pretty sight for Justin Abdelkader. There’s a lot of red. At even strength, it confirms the eye test that we all have: Abdelkader is bad. His on-ice goals for, expected goals for, and corsi for are all in the negative. So he’s not driving the play in the opponents end or creating scoring chances. He spends a lot of time chasing the puck and losing battles against the boards. Unfortunately, these are not qualities that reflect positively in statistics. Hence all the red.

Abdelkader’s plus/minus has been negative for a very long time, but this was his worst season in many years. He only missed 11 games and put up LESS THAN 20 POINTS! He hasn’t had that low of a point total since the lock-out shortened season of 2012-13.

His lack of time on the power play certainly contributed to his low point totals, but the bottom line is that the Wings now have better options for the power play and they need Abdelkader to contribute at 5-on-5. Unfortunately, with no line mates to prop him up, his real value as an NHL player is becoming obvious.

If you thought the basic stats were bad, then I’m sorry to show you this. These further prove my point that when left to his own devices, Abdelkader can’t drive the play. Thought his CF% is pretty bad, you may be surprised to learn that it wasn’t the worst on the team. Among regular roster players, Abdelkader had a better CF% than Frans Nielsen, Thomas Vanek, and Andreas Athanasiou. That being said, he did have the worst GF% among team forwards. But we always knew that Abby was never a goal scorer. He’s always been the grinder-type. Unfortunately for him, this type of player is quickly being weeded out of the league. And due to his contract, he may be one of the last.

It will be interesting to see what Steve Yzerman does with some of these loyalty contracts. In Tampa Bay, Yzerman always maintained a level-head and didn’t let loyalty get in the way of his decision making. This was evident with the Vincent Lecavalier buyout and Martin St. Louis trade. He has a smart hockey mind, especially in today’s cap era, and Abdelkader may fall victim to that.

You can’t buy out Abdelkader’s contract. That would cause more pain than good. But there is an appetite for a player like him around the league and I do wonder if Yzerman tries to shop him around. The contract, though, makes him a very hard player to move. So my prediction is more so that Abby will see reduced playing time and likely lose the ‘A’ on his chest.

His role will decrease as the Red Wings move away from the grinders and into a more skilled NHL.

Abdelkader had one of the worst seasons of his career and I’m not sure he can rebound from it. His playing style is quickly growing irrelevant in today’s NHL and I’m not sure he’s a candidate to reconstruct himself intro a productive player. His prime has past and we’ll spend the rest of his contract cringing whenever he’s on the ice. It’s too bad because he really was a fun player back in the day.