Three Trades the Detroit Red Wings Wish Were April Fools Jokes
By Tyler Kotila
On this April Fools Day, take a look at three real trades the Detroit Red Wings have made over the past 15 years since 2004 that everyone wishes were indeed April Fools Day jokes. Take a look at these three deals and why the Detroit Red Wings can only wish they would have just been rumors and not real trades.
After scouring through a trade log, there were a lot of meaningless trades that the Detroit Red Wings have made, where the Red Wings would ship a prospect for a prospect, and then neither of those two players panned out.
Looking into some of the more recent trades it is hard to judge since the draft picks have not all been made, and the players have not fully developed yet. But between 2004-2019, I found three specific trades that caught my eye that are deals to be forgotten.
The Detroit Red Wings have pulled off some good trades, some bad trades, and some trades that cannot be gauged yet because of their more recent backgrounds. Like, as a Red Wings fan you may not like the Gustav Nyquist deal and wish the Red Wings did not make that trade, however, acquiring a second-round pick leaves the potential for the next great Red Wings star to be picked so that deal was not considered for this. The criteria for deciding the three trades to include was all based on, who the Red Wings acquired, what was given up in return, and of course a little bit of personal bias from myself.
The Red Wings have made a lot of trades that actually surprised me, more for the draft picks and who those draft picks turned out to be. For example, being able to draft Dennis Cholowski on a pick that came from the Pavel Datsyuk trade seems like a pretty solid deal that benefitted the Red Wings since Datsyuk is not in the NHL anymore, though he could be eyeing a comeback.
Looking through the transactions over the years, there has been a few separate deals where the draft picks the Red Wings acquired turned out to be some pretty good players or players whom the Red Wings actually ended up moving later in their careers.
This season, the Red Wings have traded Nyquist to the Sharks, and then they acquired Madison Bowey and a second round pick from the Washington Capitals for Nick Jensen. These trades on the surface seem like good deals and look like they will work out to fare well for the Red Wings especially if they were to resign Nyquist this upcoming offseason.
However, these trades have not been indeed completed to gauge because of the picks being thrown around, so they may seem like good trades now and hopefully will seem like great trades if GM Ken Holland can draft good players, or they could seem like terrible trades. The Nyquist trade is a trade to watch, if the player the Red Wings draft with that second round pick is a bust, then trading Nyquist away when he was having a career year.