George Sipple

Detroit Free Press

Detroit Red Wings defenseman Kyle Quincey said he’d love to come to an agreement with general manager Ken Holland on a new contract. Otherwise, Quincey will try to find a new home as an unrestricted free agent July 1.

“If Kenny offers me something, I’d love to come back,” Quincey said during the annual locker room cleanout at Joe Louis Arena.

“I’m not dwelling on it. It’s nothing new. We’ve been in this line of work for a lot of years. We know how it works.”

After having off-season surgery to remove bone spurs from one ankle, Quincey had surgery on his other ankle in November. He finished with four goals and seven assists for 11 points in 47 regular-season games and added one assist in four playoff games.

“Battling injuries to start off, had a really good start through a lot of pain,” Quincey said. “I thought I got back in the swing of things very quickly. I was playing my best hockey at the end of the year, when we needed it the most.”

Quincey, 30, was a healthy scratch for Game 3 of the first-round playoff series with Tampa Bay, even though it can be argued that other players, such as Jonathan Ericsson, deserved to be benched instead.

“I don’t really want to talk about that,” Quincey said of being scratched. “Nothing really positive is going to come out of that. I’m not going to go through that again.”

Quincey said the Wings know what he can do for the club.

“I’m assuming they’re not going to put me on the power play again and me try to put up 40, 50 points,” Quincey said. “I know my role. That’s kind of what I focused on. I’ve been playing the same way for this team since I came back here.”

Quincey set career highs in assists (34) and points (38) when he played for the Kings in 2008-09. He scored a career-high six goals and had 23 assists for 29 points in 79 games the next season for the Avalanche.

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Over the past three seasons, he has chipped in 11 goals and 31 assists for 42 points for the Wings.

Quincey said he won over first-year coach Jeff Blashill during the season.

“Going into the season, I had a meeting with Blash right away and it wasn’t what I really wanted to hear,” Quincey said. “But I feel like I changed his mind with my play and moved up in his eyes.”

Quincey said he wanted to come back with Danny DeKeyser and be a shutdown pairing. Quincey said that how things ended.

“For me, that’s a huge win in my book,” Quincey said. “For the most part, I think we did a good job. We shut down some very good lines. That’s really important for teams to do well, a good shutdown D pair.”

Quincey said he hopes teams view him as someone that’s hard to play against.

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Quincey was switched to playing on the right side as a defenseman under former Wings coach Mike Babcock.

“I can obviously play both sides comfortably,” Quincey said. “It was a challenge that I ran with. A lot of pride in that.

Quincey would like to continue playing with DeKeyser.

“Danny’s a great player, so it’s very easy to play with him,” he said. “I would rather play with a good defenseman that makes my job easier, yeah.”

Contact George Sipple: gsipple@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @georgesipple. Check out our Red Wings Xtra app on Apple and Android!