Detroit Red Wings' Henrik Zetterberg unlikely to play out contract

The Detroit Red Wings may only get a year or two more from captain Henrik Zetterberg.

In an interview with Swedish media, Zetterberg said he “will probably not play” through the end of his contract, which runs until 20-21.

Zetterberg, 36, cited a longing for his native Sweden as part of his reasoning. But he also acknowledges what everyone knew when he signed the 12-year, $73 million contract in 2009: There was a reason it was heavily front-loaded.

"The only reason we signed such a long contract back in 2009 was because of the cap," Zetterberg said in the interview, which the Free Press had translated from Zetterberg's native Swedish. "It's pretty obvious, you try to fool the system. In reality, I think I have two years left. I don't think I will play through the 2020/2021 season."

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Much like Nicklas Lidstrom and Tomas Holmstrom before him, Zetterberg plans to move home once he retires from the Wings.

"If you'd asked me seven years ago, I probably would have said I'd like to stay in Detroit, but now I'm pretty certain I'll move back home," Zetterberg said. "After 15 years Detroit is also home, I have a lot of friends there, but I miss Sweden more and more."

Wings general manager Ken Holland was not available for comment.

As I recently wrote, while Zetterberg's salary cap hit is $6.1 million, his actual salary in 2017-18 is $7 million. For 2018-19, the salary drops to $3.35 million. In the final two years of the deal, it’s down to $1 million per season.

The collective bargaining agreement has since addressed the front-loading loophole by instituting punishments for cap-circumventing teams. The cap recapture penalty tracks the cap benefit in front-loaded contracts (when a player's salary is more than the average annual value) and, in the event of a player not playing out his contract, uses that number to punish teams, balanced out over the remaining time on the contract.

For example: If Zetterberg retires in two years, the cap recapture penalty would be roughly $5.1 million each of the two remaining years on the contract.

The Wings just went through a messy situation in 2016 when Pavel Datsyuk left with a year to go on his contract. Datsyuk wasn't a long-term contract so there was no recapture issue; however, because his last contract took effect after he turned 35, the full charge of the annual average value counted against the Wings' salary cap. They ended up trading the contract to the Arizona Coyotes in order to gain relief.

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Contact Helene St. James: hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames.

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