Count the days down, it’s nearly hockey season. Less than a month from now — Sept. 19, to be exact — the Detroit Red Wings will start their training camp. As the time ticks down, some questions about this season’s team remain unanswered.
Here are three burning questions ahead of Red Wings training camp.
Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
Will the Red Wings sign their RFAs before training camp starts?
This offseason’s biggest story, the restricted free agency of forward Lucas Raymond and defenseman Moritz Seider, has yet to get an ending. As of publication, both are still unsigned RFAs. Detroit’s management and the two RFAs have yet to iron out new contracts, and the same goes for forward Jonatan Berggren.
It’d take a real stretch of the facts to say this is beneficial for the Red Wings, though it’s important for them to get these contracts right. Raymond and Seider are the two most important players to this team that aren’t named Dylan Larkin. The fact that it’s taken until now and beyond to re-sign them is a fault of Detroit. And it’ll be doubly so if the Red Wings can’t get them under contract between now and Sept. 19.
We’ve seen free agency holdouts before in the NHL. Columbus Blue Jackets forward Ryan Johansen (recently in the headlines for a different type of contract dispute) took deep into the 2014 training camp to settle on a four-year bridge deal. In 2018, Toronto Maple Leafs star William Nylander held out until the RFA deadline to ink a new contract, jumping into action midseason. After settling their disputes, Johansen finished with a 71-point career year in 2014-15, while Nylander finished with a statistical worst 0.5 point-per-game pace in his abridged 2018-19 campaign.
These are just examples, and there’s no word whether such holdouts to and/or through training camp are on the table for Seider, Raymond or even Berggren. What’s apparent is that — especially with Seider and Raymond — the Red Wings are a better team with them, and potentially playing games without them would be disastrous. Whether or not both sides can finally come to an agreement is one of the most pressing issues on Detroit’s to-do list.
