Red Wings agree to Two-Year Deal with Ryan Sproul

Finally tying up loose ends here, we’ve got a bit of good news straight from the organization’s mouth about the last of their unsigned RFAs.

Sproul, the 23 year old 6’4” 206-pound right-shooting defenseman spent all summer as an RFA and it’s a little weird that the end result was a two-year deal instead of one, but it will leave him an RFA at the end of this term and he would have received arbitration rights on a one or two-year deal anyway.

Sproul has spent the last three full seasons in Grand Rapids and has 215 career AHL games played, scoring 28 goals and 91 points in that time. He has one NHL game played, a very late season beating of a depleted Blues team in which he played well.

This will be an interesting case going into camp, as Sproul is one of three defensemen who didn’t make the main squad last year who are now waiver-eligible (Ouellet and Jensen are the others). If Sproul can’t earn his way onto the team by the start of the season, the Wings will have to expose him to waiver claim from the rest of the league. Anybody who would want to keep him on their NHL roster would be allowed to take him.

Contract details are not currently available, but we will update as soon as we have them.

That was quick

I’m kind of amazed Sproul agreed to a 2-way deal in the first year. As a reminder, the two-way deal has no bearing on Sproul’s need to go through waivers before being assigned. All it means is he’ll get paid less in the AHL.