NHL Trade Deadline: Detroit Red Wings Outlook, Fits, Trade Candidates
By Trin Potratz
NHL Trade Deadline: Taking an early look at the Detroit Red Wings ahead of the March 1st deadline, exploring potential trade candidates and hypothetical deals.
With the NHL trade deadline approaching on March 1st, we will be looking at all 30 clubs with in-depth trade deadline strategy. The analysis includes potential fits for incoming players, hypothetical deals for outgoing trade candidates, and much more!
To get things started, we’ll be taking a look at the previously consistent Detroit Red Wings, who may struggle to extend that quarter-century playoff streak. They currently sit 6th in the Atlantic Division with a record of 22-21-9 (53 points) heading into Monday night’s action.
DETROIT RED WINGS
Thomas Vanek is going to be a hot commodity for any team that wants to add some scoring to their team for the playoffs. He should fetch a similar return to Martin Hanzal even though the latter is a center. A revelation since coming over to Detroit in the offseason, Vanek has 12 goals (32 points) in 40 games so far.
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The NHL is becoming a young man’s game and the Red Wings may finally have to face that fact. Anthanasiou, Mantha, Larkin and Ouellet are going to be the leaders of this team going forward, so it’s time to let him have the ice.
The Red Wings still have Martin Frk, Tomas Nosek, Joe Hicketts, Evgeny Svechnikov and Dennis Cholowski in the pipeline so they’ll be just fine in the future.
Also look for the Red Wings to be interested in the Senators‘ Curtis Lazar. The Wings have been able to help young prospects rediscover their talents a la Daniel Cleary. I wrote about Lazar possibly being a bust, and that he may be available.
Pending Unrestricted Free Agents:
Thomas Vanek, Steve Ott, Brendan Smith, Drew Miller
Pending Restricted Free Agents:
Tomas Tatar, Tomas Jurco, Andreas Athanasiou, Xavier Ouellet, Nick Jensen
Next: Hypothetical Deals for Lightning G Ben Bishop
POSSIBLE TRANSACTIONS
to LAK: LW Thomas Vanek
to DET: RW Matt Luff, 2017 2nd round pick, 2018 2nd round pick
to OTT: D Brendan Smith, RW Tomas Jurco
to DET: RW Curtis Lazar, 2017 3rd round pick
to CAR: D Mike Green
to DET: D Ryan Murphy, RW Sergey Tolchinsky, 2017 2nd round pick