DETROIT — Steve Yzerman experienced the end of the Red Wings’ 2023-24 season just like so many in metro Detroit did, watching David Perron score with 3.3 seconds left to keep the Red Wings’ playoff hopes alive, only to turn around, check on the simultaneous Flyers–Capitals game, and see the Capitals score a game-winning goal on an empty net to seal Detroit’s fate.
“It was in the back of the net, and we’re like, ‘we’re done,’” Yzerman said. “So it was great, and then it wasn’t.”
Five years to the day after Yzerman returned to Detroit to become the team’s general manager, this season was the closest the Red Wings have come to returning to the playoffs. They finished with 91 points, missing out on the postseason via the regulation wins tiebreaker. And now, a big offseason lies ahead for the general manager.
The Red Wings have six players set to become unrestricted free agents this summer: David Perron, Patrick Kane, Christian Fischer, Daniel Sprong, Shayne Gostisbehere and James Reimer.
Yzerman said Friday he’s met with most of the team’s players over the last two days and “expressed an interest to all of our guys that look, I have interest in bringing you guys all back. It’s a bit of a puzzle and we have some (restricted) free agents we’ve got to sign too, and some of them are going to have a significant impact on our salary cap — regardless of whether we go short or long term.”
Certainly, the most high profile of those free-agent decisions will be with Kane, the superstar winger who joined Detroit midseason and finished the year as the team’s second-leading scorer on a per-game basis. And surely, the Red Wings are going to have changes next season. It won’t be an identical roster. But as Yzerman alluded, the biggest puzzle pieces to Detroit’s offseason, are with the team’s restricted free agents.
And as the offseason now kicks off, where Yzerman lands with Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider may go a long way toward dictating the rest of their offseason.
Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond (pictured with Joe Veleno) are pillars for the Red Wings. (Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
The trend leaguewide, recently, has increasingly been for teams to sign long-term deals with young players right out of their entry-level contracts. You can see that particularly with two of Detroit’s most comparable division foes, Ottawa and Buffalo.
The Senators have 22-year-old Tim Stützle and 21-year-old Jake Sanderson signed through 2031 and 2032, respectively, at cap hits of 8.35 million for Stützle and $8.05 million for Sanderson. Core players Brady Tkachuk (seven years at $8.205 million annually) and Thomas Chabot (eight years at $8 million per year) did the same thing out of their ELCs, and remain under contract until 2028.
The Sabres, meanwhile, extended defenseman Owen Power before this season to a seven-year deal worth $8.35 million per season, and did the same with Dylan Cozens last spring for seven years at a $7.1 million AAV.
There are more examples: Jack Hughes in New Jersey signed an eight-year deal for $8 million per year right out of entry level; Matt Boldy in Minnesota did the same for seven years at $7 million; Cole Caufield extended in Montreal for eight years at $7.85 million.
Are Raymond and Seider in line for the same?
Both, certainly, are pillars for the Red Wings — the players who will define the franchise’s next generation. They’re going to be in Detroit, and probably for a long time.
And maybe it will be via a long-term contract right away. But the Red Wings still have the option to bridge one or both players, so I asked Yzerman Friday about the long-term trend out of ELC, and how it might shape his plans for Seider and Raymond.
“I guess I would leave it to you to judge for yourself — there’s a lot of them out there, how many of them are proving value to the team?” Yzerman said. “And then you look at, ‘OK, how much more would they get if they were unrestricted free agents?’ The term and the dollar has got to work for both parties. And you have to pay a player enough that he’s willing to lock up to give you eight years, but also it can be dangerous if you’re paying at extreme premium for potential. Because a lot of times it can be difficult, and if you don’t have a cap issue or any concerns, then you don’t worry about it as much. But those deals make you have cap issues as well.
“I’m certainly open to it. The term, the dollar amount, has got to work for both parties, and that can be a challenge at times.”
That’s a lot to chew on.
To be sure, some of the most valuable contracts in the league today are deals that were signed for young, star players right out of ELC. Hughes’ $8 million cap hit jumps to the front of mind, for a player who had 99 points in year 1 of that contract, and will remain at that cap number through 2030 — by which time the salary cap should be significantly higher. He’s going to be a massive value to the Devils for the entirety of the contract. The same will likely be true for Stützle, who despite a quieter season in 2023-24 has already hit the 90-point threshold at just 22 years old.
And there are, relatedly, examples of players like Rasmus Dahlin and Elias Pettersson, who signed short-term bridge deals, only to become exorbitantly expensive at their conclusion. Dahlin will make $11 million next year, after completing a three-year, $6 million AAV bridge. Pettersson will earn $11.6 million, after bridging for three years at $7.35 million.
But there are counterpoints, too.
Caufield is a great player, by any measure, but to Yzerman’s point about how much certain players might get as unrestricted free agents, his salary already is just $25,000 per year lower than Detroit’s Alex DeBrincat, who has nearly identical numbers but signed his deal with only one more year before unrestricted free agency, compared to Caufield who had four more RFA years remaining when he signed. The salary cap’s impending rise likely means Montreal won’t regret the contract, by any means, but is it adding significant surplus value to what Caufield might have signed after a two- or three-year bridge?
Or, to go back to Ottawa, what about Josh Norris, who signed for eight years at $7.95 million per year in July 2022? Norris has battled injuries, but two years in, that contract has not aged well, and would be lower if he were signing it today.
You can do this with all kinds of contracts, in both directions, all day. And frankly, that may be how Yzerman and his staff will spend a healthy portion of their coming weeks and months. Because these contracts, are going to set the stage for Detroit’s cap picture for the coming years.
Right now, Detroit has 13 players under contract for next season, at a projected cap charge of $58,632,640, out of a projected $87 million cap, per CapFriendly. If Raymond and Seider go long, it’s conceivable their combined cap hits could approach $17 million, leaving Detroit just $11 million for eight remaining roster spots. If that number were, say, $5 million lower, it creates a bit more flexibility to add (or retain) a needle-mover.
The Red Wings can, and presumably will, try to free up some money this summer, particularly on what looks like an over-crowded blue line. But either way, the scenario in which both Seider and Raymond sign long term doesn’t leave much space to upgrade without subtracting.
Maybe that would be OK — Detroit has prospects in Grand Rapids who look like they could soon be ready for NHL time, if they aren’t already. But it does put a lot of pressure on those players, and those contracts, to live up to their value.
It should be noted, it’s not as though bridge scenarios would save Detroit from having to shell out substantial raises in the short term. Raymond’s numbers this season were higher than any season Anaheim’s Trevor Zegras had before he signed a three-year bridge worth $5.75 million per year this summer. Seider has much more track record than Noah Dobson did when he signed for three years at $4 million per season in 2022, and his overall body of work is probably more comparable to what Dahlin’s was when he signed for three years at a $6 million AAV in 2021.
But, what the Red Wings will basically need to decide is: What are the odds Seider will experience the same kind of offensive jump Dahlin has, going from a 40-50 point defenseman in his early years, to putting up 73 points last season before signing his extension. If Detroit thinks that kind of jump is coming, then locking Seider up long-term now (even at an $8 million or more cap hit) could save some money long term.
If the Red Wings think Seider’s offensive numbers could simply settle into the 40-50 point range he’s been in thus far, though, then the number they would be signing him for at the bridge’s conclusion may not be much higher than it would be for a long-term deal now. Noah Hanifin, for example, is a big-minute defenseman who posted 47 points this season between Calgary and Vegas, and just signed an eight-year extension, as a pending UFA, for $7.35 million — less than Power and Sanderson will make as defensemen still in their RFA years, producing less.
It’s the same kind of conversation with Raymond, whose end-of-year performance certainly gave the Red Wings a lot to think about. Raymond finished the year with 72 points in 82 games, and while his 31 goals came with a 19 percent shooting percentage, he looked like a player whose impact is only going to continue to rise.
“He certainly showed, moreso down the stretch, his game-breaking ability,” Yzerman said. “Scoring big goals, key goals, we watched him do that in junior and whatnot prior to being drafted. Just down the stretch, all the key goals that he scored, I don’t think that’s an aberration. I think he’s going to continue to do that.”
Could that mean an explosion into a 90-point player, perhaps even approaching Pettersson’s territory on a contract in two or three years? No one can know right now.
But that’s the line the Red Wings have to walk as they go through these key negotiations, not wanting to overpay for potential, but also wanting to lock in when they can.
“It goes for any player, really — Mo Seider as well,” Yzerman said. “Those are the discussions we have, and the projections you have, and figure it out. … We’re going to figure something out here with all these guys. And I don’t know what the term and the dollar amount (will be), but I have an idea of, whether it’s a shorter-term deal or a longer-term deal, we know the ranges.”
Where the final contracts ultimately land, though, will have significant stakes on the Red Wings — both for this offseason, and many more to come.
(Top photo of Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider: Rick Osentoski / USA Today)
