Red Wings fill two Biggest needs
Brad Stuart running Floppa
Ken Holland likely signed Andreas Lilja yesterday afternoon as an insurance policy in case he couldn’t get Brad Stuart to extend his stay in Detroit. We’ll likely find out if that’s the case at some point in the near future as the general manager was able to ink Stuart to a new four year deal. The dollar amount was probably about $500,000 more per year than Holland wanted to spend but given how seamlessly Stuart fit in playing alongside Nick Kronwall and his overall performance during the playoffs it was money well spent.
I definitely wanted to see the Wings sign Stuart; here is what I said when considering the possibility of him remaining with the team next season:
Brad Stuart…put up 7 points in the playoffs and was +15. Did he have his moments when he got a little outside of his role on the team? No doubt. But with more time in the lineup and playing alongside Niklas Kronwall would likely result in Stuart having his best professional season and the Red Wings defense being quite possibly the best the team has iced during their resurgence that began in the early 90s. That would be kind of nice.
The question was whether he’d return to the west coast or test the free agent waters to try and secure a better payday. I gave it one in three odds on him signing with Detroit and I’m glad to see both sides reach an agreement. Let’s take a closer look at Detroit’s top 4.
Nicklas Lidstrom had one of his best point totals and plus/minus ratings in his career last season.
Brian Rafalski set a career best for goals, tied his career best for points, and had his second best plus/minus rating.
Niklas Kronwall set career marks for goals, assists and plus/minus.
Brad Stuart’s 9 regular season games [a stretch to be sure] extrapolated over a full 82 game season would give him a career best +54.
Right now the Red Wings are in an enviable position of having 10 NHL-ready defensemen. Here is how I see the depth chart looking right now.
Lidstrom-Rafalski
Kronwall-Stuart
Lebda-Lilja
Meech-Chelios/Quincey
Ericsson
I wondered the other day whether Ericsson would become a Group 6 free agent and my guess is Holland feels comfortable about the prospects of signing Ericsson to more than a one-year contract extension. If that’s the case he won’t become an unrestricted free agent next season if he doesn’t play at least 72 games for the Red Wings, and would likely result in him spending one more season in Grand Rapids where he will no doubt dominate the AHL. Even if Ericsson heads down to Grand Rapids the Wings will likely need to trade one of their defensemen or will have to put one of them on waivers on the way down to the AHL, where that player would likely be claimed.
I wanted the Red Wings to try and sign Brian Rolston but there’s no way they should have tried to compete with the $20 million for four year offer that New Jersey put up to secure his services. The Red Wings had the third most goals for this past season and were only 5 goals behind league leader Montreal. With Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk being in their prime, and players like Valtteri Fippula, Johan Franzen, Niklas Kronwall and Jiri Hudler only continuing to improve there’s little reason to expect the goal scoring to drop off much if at all.
Conklin could play outdoors at Wrigley this new year’s day
The second signing this afternoon was Ty Conklin, who had a very solid season last year for the Pens after struggling quite a bit with consistency issues at the NHL level in previous seasons. But he’s a proven NHL goaltender and could easily beat out Jimmy Howard for the backup spot in Detroit. If that happens Howard will battle Daniel Larsson for the #1 spot in Grand Rapids.
Detroit had a serious need for a proven NHL goaltender after Dominik Hasek decided to retire following the season. It was a good call on Dom’s part as he wasn’t dominant this past season, so Holland needed to provide his squad with another solid netminder in order for the team to have a good shot at defending it’s title. I would have liked for Detroit to sign Olaf Kolzig at the $1.5 million he received from the Florida Panthers. With that being said I really question whether he would have accepted being a backup, or signing a two-way contract for that matter although he would have almost assuredly beat out Jimmy Howard for at least the #2 spot. Conklin performed well last season so at least there’s reason to believe he can build off that performance, particularly playing behind the defense Detroit will put on the ice next year.
As far as Valtteri Filppula’s new contract goes, I suspect Detroit is going to leave plenty of cap space in case anyone tries to sign him to an offer sheet. It doesn’t seem likely but Ken Holland has indicated he’d match any offer so he needs to make sure he has the cap space to do so. The lone need Detroit probably has is for a banger/grinder to fill Dallas Drake’s spot in the lineup. That shouldn’t cost too much money to fill.
Brad Stuart Red Wings ty conklin Valtteri Filppula1 Comment(s)
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
haha…today has just been so funny and yet so exciting! I was laying in bed thinking…”man, if the red wings sign sundin…its like not even going to be fair to the other teams…ah well who cares, we’ll win again!”
Then I go to check my macbook and find out we signed Hossa to a 1-year deal!? LOL
The day is only getting better! I was slightly worried about Chicago because they are like the penguins..up and coming…but now I fear no team! I can see cup #12 very clearly now! (knock on wood)