Why Red Wings’ Quiet Offseason Was the Right Call Long Term
Plenty of ink has been spilled since the NHL’s Free Agency arrived on July 1 about the uncharacteristically quiet offseason for Steve Yzerman and the Detroit Red Wings. Through the first few days of free agency, the team hadn’t added any significant assets, and had lost an important leader and depth scorer in David Perron, not to mention the brutal Jake Walman trade that baffled hockey fans the world over.
This was a Red Wings team that missed out on the playoffs by a tiebreaker of all things, a team that theoretically should have been aggressive this summer in raising their long term ceiling so they could become consistent contenders rather than a coin flip to make the playoffs, and instead it looked like they decided to bring back mostly the same group next year.
Fans were getting riled up, and rightfully so as the team dealt a fan favorite in Walman for less than nothing and then proceeded to do nothing with the cap space that move offered them. The signing of Vladimir Tarasenko helped to soften the blow a bit, adding another competent top-six winger to a team in desperate need of offense, but Tarasenko’s days as a star player in this league have passed so that didn’t smooth feathers all that much.
