That's A Wrap For The Wings

Season Over

The Detroit Press

The Detroit Red Wings are sitting towards the bottom of the standings currently behind the Dallas Stars and the Philadelphia Flyers, but unlike both of those teams the Red Wings desperately could use a top pick in this year’s draft to alter their franchise. The other two teams have many good pieces on their rosters or in their system.

The Red Wings are slowly building their franchise from the ground up. When newly appointed GM Francisco was brought in, he had nothing really to work with. He had a few veterans to try to ship out, but a lot of them just didn’t have the value. Team captain Larkin was asked if he wanted to stay on board but knowing it would be a few years until the Red Wings could be dominate again, he gave the go ahead to have the Red Wings facilitate a trade to a competitor.

A deal was struck with the NJ Devils shortly after, that sent over 3 solid prospects in Spencer Knight (which the team is hoping could be their franchise goalie) Alex Newhook (fingers crossed he can step into the shoes of Larkin soon) as well as prospect Carter Savioe.

Another smaller trade that can hopefully payoff was sending Tyson Jost to the Arizona Coyotes for young forward Bobby Brink. He’s a young exciting prospect who has already shown some flashes of offense.

The organization made a few other smaller trades sending out some veterans and gaining a few late round picks. The Wings currently have a total of 15 draft picks heading into this year’s draft. The Wings are hoping they can at least strike gold on a third of those.

Rumors

The Red Wings were rumored to have had a couple of offers in for Bertuzzi but nothing that made the organization jump the gun just yet. The Red Wings didn’t want to rush into anything especially with Bertuzzi signed for another 3 years after this season is over and at less than 1.7M is such a bargain with salaries going up.

This offseason rumors are the organization will try to ship out veterans like McDonagh, Lee and Fabbri.

Outlook

The Red Wings should hopefully get a high draft pick that will help with the rebuild faster. Everyone knows, that no organization in the TUFHL needs the top pick more than the Red Wings do and more so the city of Detroit.