After a miraculous 25-season playoff streak, the Detroit Red Wings are poised to miss the playoffs in back-to-back seasons for the first time since the 1982-83 season. With pending restricted free agent Petr Mrazek already dealt to the Philadelphia Flyers, this year's trade season might be treated as an early step in a greater long-term rebuild. If so, what other moves should be made right now and planned for the summer?
Given that the Red Wings are a non-playoff team that is jammed up against the salary cap, the prime consideration should be to clear cap space by moving players whose cap hits outstrip their expected future performance.
Since that is not always possible, Detroit must simultaneously seek out cost-effective players to help them become more competitive while such hefty contracts run their course. If they play this the right way, a return to the playoffs is not too lofty a goal in the near future.
Let's break down all the strategic components and figure out how that goal can be achieved.
Phasing out low-value contracts
While the loss of players like Nicklas Lidstrom in 2012 and Pavel Datsyuk in 2016 coincided with the team's gradual decline since its last appearance in the Stanley Cup Final in 2009, the real culprit is the salary cap. To reach for the gold, teams like Detroit had to sign players to deals that worked well in the short term but involved great risk over the long run. That makes it virtually impossible for any team to maintain a playoff presence indefinitely.
For a perfect example, consider Detroit's current blue line. In the post-Lidstrom era, the Red Wings signed a top four that includes Mike Green, Niklas Kronwall, Jonathan Ericsson and Danny DeKeyser to long-term deals worth a combined $20 million that continued well past each player's prime. In 2017-18, their combined $25.2 million investment in the team's entire blue line ranked fourth in the NHL, but its performance arguably ranks in the bottom five by any metric or subjective ranking.
The trade season is a good opportunity to try to find takers for the contracts that offer the lowest projected return. To help identify which ones those are, teams can build a statistical model that captures a player's contributions in a single metric using a weighted average of the past few seasons, projects it into the future with adjustments for age and random variation, and then compares it to what an average NHL player would contribute for the same cap space.
From this perspective, the Red Wings may want to shop not only their top four but also defenseman Trevor Daley, their remaining goalie Jimmy Howard and forwards Justin Abdelkader and Darren Helm. Seven of these eight players are in their 30s and have cap hits that outstrip what they can be reasonably projected to contribute in the future.
Compared to getting rid of them, identifying the low-value contracts is the easy part. Burying a contract in the minors offers only modest cap relief, and trading one usually requires taking on another low-value contract in exchange, or offering a draft pick or prospect as enticement. In both cases, the long-term health of the organization can be eroded to almost the same extent as simply keeping the big contract for its duration.
In the case of Stephen Weiss, Detroit chose to buy out the contract. Rather than carrying his remaining $14.7 million cap hit during the past three seasons, they chose to carry $9.7 million for six seasons. Even after three seasons without Weiss, that means that his contract still carries an annual cap hit of $1.67 million -- and without any return on that investment whatsoever.
Statistically, this approach only makes sense if a player's cap hit is significantly higher than his projected contributions, which isn't the case with players like Helm or Abdelkader. There are also a number of complicated rules in the latest CBA that make certain contracts ineligible for buyout. In practice, this may only be an option in one or two of these cases, and the remaining contracts will either need to be traded or allowed to run their course.
Finally, there's the elephant in the room: Henrik Zetterberg's contract. He's the team's captain and arguably still its best player, but he's 37 years old and carries a cap hit of $6.083 million for another three seasons after this. Does it make sense to shop Zetterberg?
Even when his intangible contributions to the organization are ignored, trading Zetterberg to clear cap space only makes sense in a truly desperate situation. His actual salary is just $3.35 million in 2018-19 and then $1.0 million for the two seasons thereafter, which suggests that he will either not be playing at all or be the greatest salary-relative value in the league. If he is moved, the only motivation should be to acquire highly valuable, long-term assets in return.
Phasing in players on entry-level contracts
In the salary-cap era, only those on ELCs can be truly expected to offer contractual value. RFAs must be paid near their full expected values, and UFAs often cost a premium.
According to the provisions of the most recent CBA, most players can't receive competing bids for their first, entry-level NHL contracts. They are also limited in size and length, which is why Connor McDavid currently has a cap hit of just $925,000 this season, for example.
Starting with a player's second contract, rival organizations can make competing offers. Since they may have to give compensation to the organization that holds the player's rights, RFAs might get paid slightly less than they are expected to be worth -- but usually not by very much. In theory, this means that value can be found only in cases where the other 30 GMs have significantly miscalculated a player's potential. Obviously, such players are few and far between.
Given their cap situation, Detroit will have a great reliance on players on ELCs. This season, Detroit has only three such players in its lineup: Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha and Tyler Bertuzzi. Each of them will become a restricted free agent at season's end and therefore carry a much greater cap hit in 2018-19.
To make the most of their cap space, the Red Wings need to not only replace these three spots with other players on ELCs but also to add even more. Just how many, exactly? The Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche and Winnipeg Jets -- who are among the teams flying up the standings to the greatest extent this season -- have eight players on ELCs in their lineups apiece, and the Devils have seven. That's a good target.
At the moment, Detroit has roughly 10 candidates to take those ELC spots. They include Filip Hronek, Vili Saarijarvi, Dennis Cholowski and Joe Hicketts on defense, and Evgeny Svechnikov, Michael Rasmussen, Givani Smith, Axel Holmstrom, Dominic Turgeon and Dylan Sadowy among forwards.
Out of 10 such candidates, a team would be lucky if even half of them are NHL-ready next season. Those who are quite familiar with Detroit's organizational strength would probably classify even that target to be overly optimistic. Even though the Grand Rapids Griffins won the Calder Cup as AHL champions in 2016-17, we ranked the Red Wings No. 24 in organizational strength entering 2017-18, an assessment that is quite consistent with mainstream opinion.
Detroit needs more NHL-ready prospects on ELCs, but they're very hard to get. It's certainly possible to acquire one or two for pending UFA Mike Green, but the others will have to be picked up in the upcoming draft. Fortunately for the Red Wings, they already have five picks through the first three rounds, from which they might find at least one player who can make the team next fall.
Managing the free cap space
Whatever cap relief is achieved by shedding one or more of the low-value contracts and finding players on ELCs will have to be managed very carefully.
Detroit will have very little cap space to work with. The current NHL salary cap is $75 million, almost all of which was committed in Detroit this season. The expected rise to somewhere between $78 million and $82 million in 2018-19, trading Mrazek and Green's departure through either a trade or free agency will free up a total of between $13 million and $16 million.
That may sound like a lot, but that entire sum will be immediately swallowed up by the projected cap space required to re-sign Larkin, Mantha and Bertuzzi over and above this season's current combined sum of $2.45 million. Even if it isn't, any spare change will be required to keep other RFAs like Andreas Athanasiou and Martin Frk in town. All else being equal, that means Detroit will spend 2018-19 slammed up against the cap with the exact same team, except one year older and without Green and Mrazek.
In nets, Detroit can safely run with Jared Coreau or Tom McCollum as the backup instead of Mrazek. If Howard is moved, ideal free agents to pursue would include Antti Raanta, Carter Hutton, Aaron Dell and Michael Hutchinson -- if the price is right. If not, then it's also possible that they can secure a more mediocre veteran like Kari Lehtonen, Jonathan Bernier, Cam Ward or Jaroslav Halak to a one-year contract with a cap hit of $2.0 million or less.
As for the blue line, Chicago's tough cap situation saw it pursue low-cost UFAs like Jan Rutta, Jordan Oesterle, Cody Franson and Viktor Svedberg, with mixed results. That's the right idea, but it can be difficult to execute.
To replace Mike Green and any other veterans whose contracts are successfully moved, the Red Wings may want to pursue a low-cost UFA who can kill penalties, play top-four minutes in both zones and keep his shot-based metrics above water. Good examples include John Moore, Nick Holden and Mark Barberio. In addition to those acquisitions, depth options like Nick Jensen and Xavier Ouellet can certainly be challenged with greater roles.
Up front, no additions are required. Even if Abdelkader and Helm are both moved, the Red Wings already have ample young talent to move up the depth chart and replace such players. Any spare cap space should be invested in blue-line upgrades.
The path forward
Outside the playoffs and slammed up against the cap ceiling, the Red Wings are certainly in a sticky situation. However, there is no reason to panic.
If at least half of the eight low-value contracts can be moved, if enough players on ELCs can be inserted into the lineup to maximize cap flexibility, and if the freed-up cap space is invested wisely enough, then it's actually possible for playoff hockey to return to Hockeytown in 2018-19 -- with a little bit of luck on the Red Wings' side as well.