Gorilla Crouch

Ken Holland and Jim Nill are on a mission from God

The Red Wings were very competitive in their Western Conference Finals series against Anaheim. What types of moves do they need to make to try and better position themselves next season? I will consider a couple different scenarios over the next couple days. The first scenario is to try and keep the key parts of the team together.

Getting the Band Back Together

Using this famous quote from the Blue Brothers, the team could essentially stay the course and try to bring the bulk of their free agents back. It can be reasonably argued that if not for a really bad string of injuries on defense the team might have been able to knock off the Ducks. Mathieu Schneider might have helped out on those 5 on 3 power plays Detroit had late in the series. And Niklas Kronwall would have been a physical presence in front of the crease that wouldn’t have allowed as many good scoring chances.

This approach depends first and foremost on Dominik Hasek agreeing to come back for one more year. If Hasek does come back it will likely be for a very reasonable salary which will help the Red Wings address their other needs. If he does that the team can then look at keeping their defensive pairings intact. How much it would cost to retain Danny Markov and Mathieu Schneider are the big questions. Andrei Markov just re-signed with Montreal for right around $6 million per season, so Schneider could receive an offer that would push him outside Detroit’s budget. Schneider is older than Andrei Markov so he might not draw as lucrative an offer.

If the Red Wings pursue this angle here is how the salary could end up working out amongst the goaltenders and defensemen:

Goaltenders
Dominik Hasek and Chris Osgood - $3 million

Defensemen
Nicklas Lidstrom and Danny Markov - $11 million
Niklas Kronwall and Mathieu Schneider - $7 million
Chris Chelios or Brett Lebda and Andreas Lilja - $1.8 million
Kyle Quincey - $0.5 million

TOTAL - $23.5 million

In this scenario the Red Wings probably need to move at least one 3rd pairing defensemen. The first thing they need to do is figure out if Chris Chelios wants to come back. Given his reaction to losing Game 6 in the Western Conference Finals perhaps he is contemplating retirement. Ken Holland has said that he wants Chelios back, so if Cheli is up for coming back he will be one of the third pairing defensemen for a fact. If that happens my guess is that Brett Lebda might be the odd man out. He struggled in the playoffs against bigger forwards and he doesn’t create enough offense to be an offensive defenseman. Both Andreas Lilja and Kyle Quincey are big defensive defensemen who could easily fill out the remaining positions on defense.

Conservative estimates suggest the salary cap could go up to $47 million for the 2007-08 season. So if my calculations above are correct that eats up half of Detroit’s cap space. Let’s look at forwards who are either guaranteed to be back next season or are likely to be back (ie, restricted free agents).

Forwards
Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Holmstrom - $9.6 million
Samuelsson, Filppula, Franzen - $2.9 million
Cleary, Draper, Maltby - $3.75 million
Kopecky, Hudler, Grigorenko - $2 million

TOTAL: $18.25 million

In this scenario the Red Wings have a top line that is one of the top scoring lines in the NHL. The second and third lines are both made up of very solid two-way forwards who are by no means dangerous scoring threats but could potentially contain three 20 goal scorers: Mikael Samuelsson, Johan Franzen and Dan Cleary. It’s still far too early to detemine what type of offensive potential Valtteri Filppula has but given the fact the Red Wings organization has compared him to both Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg there is reason to think he could develop into a pretty decent scoring threat.

The fourth line is made up of younger players who could complement one another nicely. Jiri Hudler would be the smallish center, Tomas Kopecky would be the banger who can forecheck and go dig the puck out of the corners, and Igor Grigorenko would be the guy who would go to the front of the net.

With this lineup Detroit would still have a little over $5 million left beneath the cap. They could consider signing Todd Bertuzzi to a short-term contract to see if he could reclaim his game. He might receive a larger offer on the open market but all of the Detroit columnists have suggested he enjoyed being a part of the team and is strongly interested in coming back. The only question is whether the organization really feels they will get enough from Bertuzzi to justify giving up another 2nd round draft pick in addition to the salary he is likely to command.

In this scenario Detroit would have little to no chance at signing any of the marquee forwards who will likely be on the market come July 1st. Chris Drury, Ryan Smyth, Scott Gomez and Danny Briere are all likely to command more than $5 million per year. A more likely route Detroit could go would be to sign a forward who wouldn’t eat up their entire cap space so that they can have some flexibility to consider making a trade prior to the trade deadline. Trade deadline deals are generally prohibitively expensive and it is rare for them to push a team over the top, but that doesn’t mean you need to use up all of your cap space prior to the start of the season.

Cap space is a valuable commodity, so either getting Todd Bertuzzi for a discounted rate or trying to sign a moderately priced forward seem like the best options for the scenario where you tinker moderately with the team in order to give them a chance to compete for the Cup next season.

Free Agents Red Wings

May 28th, 2007
Categories: Red Wings . Author: Dave

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