With fewer than two weeks until the NHL Draft and free agency, Detroit Red Wings supporters must be restless. This month has been incredibly calm in Detroit—too quiet, maybe?—with Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider still looking for a contract for the upcoming campaign. And fans are eager to get into the thick of the offseason as the Stanley Cup Final appears to be coming to an end.
So, let’s dive into the mailbag to tackle some of the biggest burning questions ahead of all the player movement.
Better than is being assumed by many — and that probably includes me, as I’ve done multiple articles this summer discussing Holl being either dealt or bought out.
But the reality is, this same Red Wings management team signed Holl to his three-year, $3.4 million AAV contract one summer ago, and that is an important data point for assessing how it feels about him. It does not look like a good contract today (and it was a questionable one last July 1, too), but the fact Detroit signed it tells us the front office has believed in Holl. That matters.
Now, the reason Holl was not in the starting lineup for most of the season was because they signed that contract before making the trade for Jeff Petry. And eventually, it’s probably preferable to let go if a coach isn’t employing a guy with this kind of financial hit. This is what happened to Klim Kostin during the trade deadline. After dealing him, general manager Steve Yzerman stated, “It doesn’t make sense to have a $2 million player in the role that he was being used in.” To be honest, I feel conflicted about trading him. He’s a large guy, physically strong, but also capable, and we brought him in last year. Simply said, it didn’t function here for some reason.
He’s a young player that wants to play and wants an opportunity to play and just wasn’t getting that (in Detroit). So it’s best for the player, it’s best for us, and particularly we couldn’t afford to have a $2 million forward not in the lineup next year.”
That’s why my feeling has been that Detroit would find a way to move on from Holl, too: If it can’t afford to scratch a $2 million forward, it probably wouldn’t want to scratch a $3.4 million defenseman, either.
Though it’s what I would be trying to do, it’s not a given that the Red Wings take the same approach because Holl is a more proven player than Kostin, and in particular because moving him would probably require a sweetener (or carry a dead cap charge for four years if bought out). Keeping Holl, though, has two secondary implications in my opinion: either you’re moving a different defenseman to free up cap space and give him a clearer path to playing time, or you’re willing to take a chance on a defense corps that is essentially the same as this year, subtracting Shayne Gostisbehere and adding prospects Simon Edvinsson and Albert Johansson.
