The Detroit Red Wings currently have $12.09 million in salary cap space after the team acquired goaltender John Gibson from the Anaheim Ducks and acquired free agent left-winger James van Riemsdyk recently. According to general manager Steve Yzerman, the team will likely stand pat right now despite having this amount of cap space. The fact that most NHL teams have a glut of cap space means that players will earn more money, not to say that this is a bad thing.
Yzerman said that he feels this team can ‘take a step.’ His comments during a press conference today make it seem as though this next step will need to come from within the Red Wings’ locker room. That is not to say that Yzerman did not investigate whether free agents were willing to come to the Red Wings team.
Detroit was unable to add the superstar scorer it needed in free agency. This is because that type of player was just not available in this crop of free agents. That is not to say that the Red Wings did not improve with the addition of Gibson and van Riemsdyk. With that in mind, where will the improvements of the Red Wings’ roster come from?
“We were certainly open to it,” Yzerman said. “The guys that we were hoping to talk to signed before free agency with their club, or got traded in the case of Mitch Marner, we didn’t even get an opportunity to talk to these guys.” Marner was traded to the Vegas Golden Knights for Nicolas Roy in a sign-and-trade deal.
Todd McLellan will go into this season preparing for his first full season as head coach of the Red Wings. The Red Wings played well for McLellan after former head coach Derek Lalonde was fired on December 26th, and had a record of 26-18-4 under McLellan in 2025. One young Red Wing that emerged when McLellan took over as head coach was defenseman Albert Johansson, who played in 61 games during his rookie season. Johansson, who was drafted 60th overall by the Red Wings in 2019, made his way to the second pair of the Red Wings’ defense. Johansson recently signed a two-year contract extension with the Red Wings.
That is not to say that Detroit is not trying to win in this “window.” The captain of the Red Wings, Dylan Larkin, is 28 years old and has played his entire career with the team. When asked about Larkin’s aging, Yzerman said, “Brad Marchand, at 37, just signed a six-year contract, so I got Dylan (Larkin) for another 15 years, I figure.” Yzerman and Larkin did not see eye to eye on the team standing pat at the previous trade deadline. Maybe these comments show that the “rift” between the two is in the past.
ITR 49: For Real This Time – Inside The Rink
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