When the Red Wings announced they had put Brian Lashoff, Andy Miele and Mitch Callahan on waivers yesterday as part of a series of moves that would lower the Wings roster down to 27 and then assumptively 24 after those three cleared/were claimed, there was a blaring oddity on the roster among forwards:
- Dan Cleary wasn’t put on waivers.
- After all the waiver-exempt forwards were sent down, Dylan Larkin remained on the roster.
This caused a lot of hand-wringing in Red Wings nation thinking that the final forward roster spot would come down to Dan Cleary or Dylan Larkin. Fortunately, the Wings made the right choice.
Larkin made the roster Blashill said
— Ansar Khan (@AnsarKhanMLive) October 5, 2015
I may be jumping the gun here, but I don’t see how Larkin making the roster leads to any answer other than Dan Cleary is going to hit waivers today at noon. It’s possible that another player such as Joakim Andersson or Landon Ferraro goes on the wire, but Cleary is the painfully obvious solution there.
The remaining hurdle for Larkin is what the Red Wings are going to do once Darren Helm is taken off injured reserve. Helm will be eligible to come off IR in time for the season opener if he’s deemed ready for action. However, based on follow-up tweets, it seems like the Wings have every intention of using Larkin in the top nine. I would think that either Andersson or Ferraro will hit the waiver wire for Helm.
We’ll update at noon with waiver news once we get it.
UPDATE
Callahan, Miele and Lashoff have all cleared waivers.
— Ansar Khan (@AnsarKhanMLive) October 5, 2015
UPDATE 2
Helene St. James announced the Wings aren’t putting anybody else on waivers today, but @DetroitHockey96 noticed that Kindl is now listed on the Wings’ site as being on injured reserve. This brings the roster to 23 players after the three who cleared waivers are assigned.
The reason for this move is to get the Wings as close to the cap as possible before putting Pavel Datsyuk on LTIR (which they can’t do before the Tuesday deadline). Once things settle with the final roster getting the maximum possible LTIR space out of Datsyuk, things will likely change before the season opener on Friday, as I don’t see the Red Wings carrying 15 forwards and only 6 healthy defensemen into the start of the season.
