Simon Edvinsson reported to Detroit Red Wings training camp without a contract, skating on a professional tryout agreement because he wanted to be ready for the season alongside his teammates. The preseason has now finished and he still doesn’t have a deal. According to The Athletic’s Max Bultman, that’s entirely of Detroit’s own making.
Bultman’s argument is that the club had four separate opportunities across the preseason to get Edvinsson properly ramped up in a low-stakes environment, and let all of them pass. With roughly a week until games start counting, he writes that the Red Wings will now have a key player starting the year on his back foot, describing it as the kind of unforced disadvantage the franchise can’t afford but keeps creating for itself.
Why hasn’t Simon Edvinsson signed a contract?
The root of it, in Bultman’s view, is a summer of indecision. Detroit waited until days before camp to name Shawn Horcoff interim general manager, which meant nobody had the authority to open a major negotiation for the second half of the offseason. That delay traced back to how long the club took to move on from Steve Yzerman, a call Bultman notes most franchises make in April.
He also argues the wait has cost Detroit money. Edvinsson could have been extended before Zeev Buium signed for $9.38 million a season with fewer NHL games played, and before Cale Makar reset the entire market at over $20 million. With the cap projected to climb toward $127.5 million by 2028-29, Bultman’s point is that a $10 million or $11 million commitment to Edvinsson would look ordinary within a couple of years, using Owen Power‘s $8.35 million deal from three years ago as the template for how quickly those numbers age.
What has drawn the most criticism is where Detroit appears to be heading instead. Elliotte Friedman reported that the club’s preference is a bridge deal rather than a long-term extension, and that Edvinsson’s camp isn’t enthusiastic about it.
“I haven’t heard a lot except that I’ve heard that Detroit’s preference is bridge,” Friedman said, adding that he wasn’t sure Edvinsson is “crazy about a bridge” and that rival teams are starting to circle and ask what the Red Wings intend to do.
Detroit slammed
Bultman doesn’t hide what he thinks of that approach.
“It’s unfathomable how that could be the case for a team currently more than $20 million under the cap, and with most of its other core players (sans Alex DeBrincat) locked up for the intermediate future,” he writes. “There is no squeeze on the horizon in Detroit.”
He also argues the damage would be locked in immediately.
“If a bridge does come to pass, it’ll look like a mistake for Detroit from the moment it’s signed, because of the missed opportunity to sign him for longer,” Bultman writes, adding that a $10 million or $11 million average annual value shouldn’t frighten anyone given where the cap is heading. “He and Moritz Seider would still not combine to make what Makar will make a year from now.”
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Edvinsson, the sixth overall pick in 2021, is coming off a season with nine goals and 25 points in 72 games while averaging over 22 minutes a night. He is one of only two notable restricted free agents left in the league, and he isn’t the only unresolved situation in Detroit. Dylan Larkin‘s trade request is still outstanding, and DeBrincat, the team’s leading scorer, can reach free agency next July.
Bultman’s verdict on the whole thing is blunt.
“It all screams of more short-term thinking, for an organization that has been kicking the can down the road all summer long – and appears to be worse for it in every single way,” he writes.
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