There is not a lot to get excited about around the Red Wings these days. Sure Larkin, Athanasiou, and Mantha are giving us glimpses into the future of this team’s offense. Zetterberg, Nyquist, and Tatar continue to be their reliable selves. Petr Mrazek has made things very interesting in the crease. However, is their any reason to be optimistic about the current 7 man unit on defense? No. The answer is very clearly no. As it stands this is how the group looks.

Ericsson-Daley

Dekeyser-Green

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Kronwall-Jensen

Ouellet

Given that Ouellet is a healthy scratch most nights, the youngest player of this group is Nick Jensen. He’s 27….. Now don’t get me wrong, Jensen is a fine bottom four defenseman but it’s hard to get excited when the youngest guy is 27 and a likely career bottom pair guy. Here’s the thing though: it’s good that this group is old. This team is rebuilding, a rebuild is literally out with old in with the new. But, who are the new?

Filip Hronek has been absolutely on fire lately in Grand Rapids. He currently sits with 7 goals, 28 points in 42 games. As of this moment he’s second in AHL rookie scoring amongst D-men.

Vili Saarijarvi isn’t torching the AHL as of yet, but he doesn’t look out of place. He’s very much a project but his ceiling is as high as anyone in the system. He may also be the biggest boom or bust guy though.

Dennis Cholowski had a rough year in the NCAA last season so he opted out and is now playing for Portland in the WHL after a mid-season trade from Prince George. He is simply torching the WHL with 52 points in 52 games.

Joe Hicketts. Little Joey Hicketts. The guy we all thought should have made the team out of camp. The guy who would’ve made the team out of camp if it weren’t for an absolute log jam of mediocre defensemen on the roster. After a rough start in the A this year, he was rebounding nicely before a leg injury put him on the shelf. He should be back with GR next week.

Libor Sulak is a guy most casual Wings fans don’t know, but they should. This past summer the Red Wings signed the Czech export as a free agent out of Austria of all places. This season he is with the Pelicans of the SM-Liiga, Finland’s top league. At 27 points through 33 games, he has the best points-per-game average of any defenseman in the league. His .818 PPG puts him 18th among ALL skaters. It’s hard to find games and highlights from Liiga but from everything I’ve read, he’s been terrific in all ends of the ice. He’s by no means a lock but it looks like Detroit may have hit a home run with this long shot signing.

There are a lot of promising defensive prospects in the Wings’ system, these are just the select few I chose to focus on for the next five years.

There are a few factors I used when making this projection.

No player is re-signed after their current contract expires.

No defenseman is traded before their contract expires after this season.

One free agent signing will likely be needed before some of these guys are NHL ready. I’ll make a point near the end as to who it should be.

Where I have them listed on the page is not where I would play them necessarily. I’m just filling in roster spots.

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The first thing that becomes apparent is how quickly this roster will overturn. Outside of Danny Dekeyser, no defenseman has more than two years left on their contract, this is what creates an urgency to sign a free agent. This crew will be young. This is my projection but obviously there is a lot of flexibility here which is exactly what you need when rebuilding. I have made a lot of assumptions as to which prospects will make the team. I’ve made even bigger assumptions as to when they’ll be ready. That being said, I feel like I was generous with the amount of seasoning guys like Saarijarvi, Cholowski, and Sulak will need. I’d argue Sulak and Cholowski will be ready sooner but I wanted to err on the side of caution. The whole point of this article is to make crazy predictions that aren’t actually all that crazy. Except for one. That’s near the end.

The prospects that are graduated in this projection are the ones I personally felt were the most likely candidates, however if this isn’t the exact group you still have the likes of Sambrook, Lindstrom, Holway, and Kotkansalo in the system. All of whom are having decent to strong seasons.

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Now here’s where I have to do math. Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled about it either…….

First, the Red Wings’ need to put themselves in a position to have some flexibility with the cap. Their current cap situation is easily the worst in the league but some room will be made within the next few weeks, and by the end of the summer. If my predictions do not come to fruition, there is all of next season as well. Which is relevant, because at the end of NEXT year is when they’ll need to sign someone.

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Here are the contracts that are likely on their way out.

Mike Green is gone at the deadline, 100%, likely just for picks, 6 Million gone.

It’s basically a foregone conclusion that the Red Wings will not be bringing back Jimmy Howard AND Petr Mrazek next season. Let’s assume Petr is the one leaving since his is the lesser cap hit and the most likely to move anyway. 4 Million gone.

As reported, the salary cap is expected to rise to 78-82 million dollars. Let’s play it safe and say 78 million. That’s 3 more million to play with.

So with these three almost certain scenarios, the Red Wings have received 13 million in cap space, possibly up to 18 million if the cap goes to 82 and they move Howard instead. That being said, by the end of the 18-19 season Howard will be off the books anyway but I’m not going to use that projected cap space because, well, they need a goalie.

Now here’s where it gets really tricky. Larkin, Athanasiou, and Mantha are all due for new contracts this summer. Now I don’t see Athanasiou getting a massive pay bump, Larkin will, and Mantha should. Let’s say their raises eat up 12 mil. We are now back to 1 mil in cap space.

It’s no secret that the Wings’ are taking offers on some forwards. Tatar, Nyquist, and Helm have specifically been mentioned. I’m a pessimist so I’m betting none of them get moved this season/summer and that’s fine. Next year doesn’t matter, it’ll be basically the same forward group with maybe Michael Rasmussen or Dominic Turgeon pushing their way in. At the end of next season though Nyquist’s contract expires, and Helm should be moved since he’ll only have one year left. He’ll be usable to many teams and most teams can stomach one extra year. Between him and Nyquist alone that’s 8 million in cap space. Oh and Niklas Kronwall comes off the books after next season too. Add the 4.25 million to that add we now suddenly have 12.25 mil in cap space with minimal effort.

To this point the Red Wings GM (whoever that is) has only had to trade Helm to get this cap space. Literally no other moves aside from letting the expiring contracts walk and replacing them with ELC’s from guys like Turgeon and Rasmussen. We could also assume the cap will go up again but that will be cancelled out by said ELC’s so we won’t factor that in.

Now the fun question. You have at least 12.25 mil in cap space. Possibly as much as 18 mil. What do you do with it? Do you extend Nick Jensen to fill the void on defense? Do you keep Xavier Ouellet around? Do you rush a guy like Cholowski or Sulak? No. You sign Erik Karlsson.

You pay that man whatever the hell he wants, which will likely be in the 12 million range for 7 years. You do it and you don’t think twice. The Wings have a stable full of young, skilled, two way defenseman. They’re not as good as Karlsson but they play with the same mentality as Erik Karlsson so who better to bring in and show them the way? (And help contribute because you know, he’s ridiculous).

It’s very easy to sit here and say you should sign Erik Karlsson, 30 other teams will be saying the same thing. It’s a long shot Detroit is the one that wins the Erik Karlsson sweepstakes. All I’m saying is you try as hard as you can. You get Red Wings legends like Nick Lidstrom and Daniel Alfredsson to call him. You tell him he can own a part of the arena. Hell, rename it after him if you have to.

The thing is, not every team will have the cap space. Not every team will have the guts to give max dollars and term to a guy approaching 30. That will reduce the number of competitors and given that Drew Doughty and Oliver Ekman-Larsson might also be out there, it’s not that crazy to think Detroit could actually land one of them.

However, even if Detroit doesn’t land a big free agent defenseman and ends up settling for a Nick Jensen instead, the defense in 5 years will be dramatically improved and way more suited to the speed of the NHL currently. That’s the point of this article, the system is loaded and while we may be stuck with Abdelkader, Glendening, and Nielsen for a while up front, the Wings are not stuck on the blueline.

I know I’m making a lot of assumptions (that’s kind of the point of a projection….) but think about it, the only two “moves” I projected were trading Darren Helm and signing a free agent. The rest of the roster shuffle comes simply from letting contracts expire and promoting guys from Grand Rapids so it can’t be that crazy, can it?