Happy Wednesday and welcome to day two of NHL free agency. As I noted in my column last night, Detroit added some value/depth on the cheap yesterday. Bad news is that most of the big names are signed elsewhere, but a few interesting names are still on the market. Will we get any movement from Detroit today? Your guess is as good as mine. Detroit still has over $15 million in cap space, and I’m still scratching my head as to what the plan is having so much money freed up.
There are some teams that will need to work on their cap situation — Dallas, Florida, Montreal and Vegas are all currently over the cap right now according to PuckPedia. Vegas and Dallas are the most-likely “trade partners” if that’s the plan. There was a lot of talk that Dallas was looking to trade star forward Jason Robertson, but things have been quiet on that front. Not sure how likely it is that he would be traded, and it might be less likely that the Red Wings are first in line to make an offer. What I’m saying is — keep your hopes tempered.
If you zoom out and look at the bigger picture — maybe the plan isn’t to go crazy this offseason. Look to next offseason, and you’ll find that the potential class of UFAs is far above what we had this year. A lot of these names likely won’t hit the open market (Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel, Martin Necas, Adrian Kempe, Kirill Kaprizov, etc), but things can change in the course of a calendar year. Not saying this is the ideology Steve Yzerman has right now, but it could be some important context to consider.
On Elmer Soderblom — we’re still waiting for an extension there. Detroit did, in fact, tender a qualifying offer for the big guy. A deal could be just around the corner, or maybe there’s a plan to use him as trade fodder. Who knows.
On a more somber note, Amid the free agent “frenzy” yesterday, we learned that Red Wings all-time great Alex Delvecchio has passed. Delvecchio’s playing career lasted over 20 years and 1500 games. He spent his entire career with the Red Wings and was the center for the legendary Gordie Howe. Delvecchio won three championships in Detroit, and was named one of the 100 greatest NHL players of all-time in 2017. Alex Delvecchio was 93 years old. Rest in power, legend.
