The Detroit Red Wings have missed the Stanley Cup playoffs for the ninth season in a row. Special teams was the one aspect of the game that held the team back throughout the 2024-25 season. Going into his seventh season as general manager of the team, the pressure is on general manager Steve Yzerman to finally get the Red Wings back to the playoffs. Is adding one free agent the right long-term move for the Red Wings?
The NHL’s salary cap will rise to $88 million for the 2025-26 season. This is the first time that the salary cap will rise since the 2019-20 season, when the COVID-19 pandemic saw teams play in empty buildings. The Red Wings are projected to have $21 million in salary cap space to use for the 2025-26 season. This news came out after Detroit’s loss in its final game of the 2024-25 season to the Toronto Maple Leafs. This is a game that the Red Wings would lose in overtime by a score of 4-3. The Red Wings finished the 2024-25 season with a record of 39-35-8, good for sixth place in the Atlantic Division.
According to PuckPedia, “Detroit is the only team with an overage that did not use LTIR during the season. They had $2.888 million in bonuses earned, offset by $2.02 million in cap space, resulting in an $871K overage. Patrick Kane earned $1.75 million of his $2.5 million in age-35+ bonuses (games played, but not playoffs). Simon Edvinsson earned 3 “A” bonus categories while Marco Kasper ($500K) hit two.”
One player that will be an unrestricted free agent after the 2024-25 season ends is right-winger Mitch Marner, now of the Toronto Maple Leafs. At 27 years old, Marner scored 27 goals and added 73 assists in 80 games played for the Maple Leafs during the 2024-25 season. Signing a player such as Marner away from a divisional opponent would be a boon for Yzerman. This hinges on the success of the Maple Leafs in the Stanley Cup playoffs this season. In Marner’s time with the Maple Leafs, the team has only won one playoff series.
Lucas Raymond was the leading point-getter on the Red Wings with 80 points in 82 games played. Raymond had the most points of any player in the league under the age of 23. Some players that Yzerman has acquired as general manager of the Red Wings have worked out, while others have not. One example of this is fellow right-winger Vladimir Tarasenko, whom Yzerman signed as a free agent to a two-year, $9.5 million contract on July 3, 2024. In 80 games played during the 204-25 season, Tarasenko scored 11 goals and added 22 assists.
Both Raymond and Marner were drafted fourth overall in their respective drafts. Raymond was drafted with the fourth overall pick in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft, while Marner was drafted by the Maple Leafs with the fourth overall pick in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft. In that time, both players have been a major part of their teams’ offense. While Marner has nearly cracked 100 points twice before during his career, Raymond’s 80 points this season is a career high.
During locker clean-out day, the captain of the Red Wings, Dylan Larkin, voiced his perceived criticism of Yzerman, saying, “We didn’t gain any momentum at the trade deadline. Guys were kind of down about it.” Larkin has led the Red Wings through the franchise’s rebuild after being drafted with the 15th overall pick in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft. The Waterford, Michigan, native was named captain of the Red Wings after Henrik Zetterberg was forced to retire after the 2017-18 season due to a back injury.
Larkin had a coming-out party at the Four Nations Faceoff, playing in a third-line role for Team USA. In the four games at the tournament, Larkin scored a goal and added one assist. The rosters of all four teams at the Four Nations were loaded with talent. At the time of the tournament, the thinking was that if Larkin had more talented players surrounding him, he would have more success. Adding a player like Marner to the Red Wings’ roster would solve this problem.
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