If anyone expected more pop from the Detroit Red Wings’ free agent moves, so did Steve Yzerman.
Heading into free agency, his Red Wings were expected to pursue a impact forward to reinforce its roster that finished one point out of the playoffs. By the time the free agent frenzy had finished, Detroit hadn't added the big upgrade it wanted. In the aftermath, Detroit now sits with a roster much the same as last season's — a good one, but not one that is a clear playoff team. Now poised for another season on the playoff bubble, the Red Wings nonetheless protected their future where they hope to be a more competitive team.
“We all would love to make the playoffs next year, we would have loved to have made the playoffs last year, but ultimately we're still trying to put together that core of young guys that is going to be together and start to creep into the playoffs and hang around the playoffs and maybe eventually win," Yzerman said Thursday at his first press conference since free agency. "So again, that is the big picture, the long term plan and we'll stick with that.”
The Red Wings’ long term plan might prioritize the future, but Yzerman admitted that he had short term plans for a splashy addition. But as he explained Thursday, Detroit watched as it got priced out. With a significant portion of Detroit's cap space already spent or earmarked for certain RFAs, it didn’t have the flexibility to compete in a record-breaking free agent market that saw more than $1 billion in contracts signed away. Even if Detroit wanted to cast lines on big fish, its monetary bait couldn’t reel them in. Instead of chasing a trophy fish, he went for trout.
“There was one player we thought might have been a real good fit, but it was going to be a challenge to get it done,” Yzerman said of one anonymous free agent the team pursued. “And the concern on that day, on July 1, is (that) everybody's gone if you kind of go down a certain road. So, we had to adjust what we decided, which way we were gonna want it to go here, and chose the path we did.”
Who was that mystery free agent? Yzerman didn’t say, but it could’ve been anyone from his former Tampa Bay captain Steven Stamkos to Conn Smythe-winner Jonathan Marchessault and beyond. Instead of landing a big upgrade, Yzerman had to settle for the depth-driven approach he has favored over the past couple free agency cycles. The Red Wings added seven new players — headlined by signing forward Vladimir Tarasenko, defenseman Erik Gustafsson and goaltender Cam Talbot to short term deals — while retaining forwards Patrick Kane and Christian Fischer for another season. But, in the process Detroit also lost a lot of offensive firepower as it retooled its roster as power play quarterback Shayne Gostisbehere and forward David Perron in particular signed elsewhere. Detroit treaded water, if not got worse, through the free agent frenzy.
Amid that frenzy, what took Yzerman by surprise wasn’t so much the dollar amount spent by teams utilizing the first salary cap raise in years. What surprised him was the term that players are getting. Impact players that he would have been interested in were signed to long-term deals, and that extended term reaches into territory that Yzerman isn’t ready to commit to just yet. The Red Wings have a number of prospects coming down the pike as part of a future core, and he has repeatedly focused his approach on maximizing the contention window driven by those players. Signing players to poorly-aged contracts in those years is antithetical to his approach.
“We're trying to build a core that's going to be together for a number of years, and unfortunately it takes time,” Yzerman explained. “And depending on how your drafts go or who's available in those drafts, it can expedite the process or it can be slower. And I'm going to continue to try to be patient with our draft choices, our prospects until they're ready to go and we'll keep building on that group, and as we've gotten a little bit better each season.”
Yzerman wanted to make moves that helped the Red Wings’ present without selling the future, but his past past approach didn’t do him any favors. Whereas extra cap space might have allowed him to give players more money to sign for fewer years, Yzerman’s past two free agent cycles of adding relatively overpriced contracts for players such as Ben Chiarot, Justin Holl and Andrew Copp significantly hamstrung him. As much as he tried to clear cap — the Jake Walman trade and its lost second round pick, for example — Yzerman couldn’t move enough to get a big upgrade without what he called “major surgery” on the existing roster.
Instead of picking up the scalpel, Yzerman picked up his few depth additions in free agency, capped off so far with Tarasenko’s signing and a corresponding cap dump that traded forward Robby Fabbri to Anaheim.
Is Yzerman truly done? The current construction of the roster and particularly the cap space appears to be a finished product once Detroit’s four restricted free agents are signed, but there might be some tinkering to do. When asked if there might be another move possible to recover some lost offense, Yzerman said, “I would say there's another move possible. We’d consider that. I don't have anything on the go at the moment.” He’s not committing to more roster changes, but his response suggests he also isn’t fully satisfied with where the roster is currently at.
Detroit is in familiar territory to where it was last season, when it finished within reaching distance of the playoffs for the first time since 2016. It was a year of meaningful progress, but Yzerman’s free agent moves haven’t given clear upgrades for the Red Wings to take the next step. That doesn’t preclude internal improvement, and Yzerman noted that he expects a bump from Lucas Raymond’s development, Alex DeBrincat’s improvement from a low shooting percentage and Kane’s full season in Detroit. In other words, the Red Wings are playoff hopeful, as in they’re hopeful that their adjustments might still keep playoffs within reach.
“I don't think it's any different than I felt last year,” Yzerman said. “I think we're in with that group of teams that has a chance to compete for the playoffs if we stay healthy, if our goaltending is good and (if)… some players outplay your expectation, we might get in or (we) might just miss by a point on the last game of the season. That's the fine line of it all.”
Whether one can blame Yzerman’s past spending extravagance or just the whims of a historic market, Detroit’s free agent strategy was an audible that leaves it in a sort of playoff-border purgatory. But so long as this status doesn’t sacrifice the future, Yzerman is willing to live with it. Even if such a close playoff push might elevate expectations for his Red Wings, Yzerman isn’t ready to go all-in.
“Pressure, I guess whatever you want to call it — it's not going to change what I'm trying to do,” Yzerman said. “It's the right way to do it. And it's taken some time, and I can’t tell you it's five years, seven years, 10 years, (but) I'm just gonna stick with it here and we'll keep going. But we would all love to win.”
