Detroit Red Wings made right decision with Simon Edvinsson’s contract

The Detroit Red Wings opted to send down Simon Edvinsson after his nine games in the NHL. He spent most of his season in the AHL after coming to North America from Sweden. He did a good job and eventually earned his call-up.

Edvinsson would put on the Detroit Red Wings uniform for nine games before being returned to the Griffins to finish out the 2022-23 season. He scored two goals for the Red Wings, getting that first goal and first point out of the way in his career after making his NHL debut.

By keeping Edvinsson at nine games in the NHL in 2022-23, his contract can “slide” a year. This means that instead of a three-year entry-level deal, as is traditional, he can slide it a year down the line, making it a four-year entry-level deal.

It’s something teams often do to keep Edvinsson off the NHL books on a big contract extension for an extra year. Sometimes it comes back to bite teams and can be an issue, but the Red Wings were smart in this case.

Detroit Red Wings made the right choice with Simon Edvinsson.

When it comes to the Red Wings faithful, a much bigger crowd (than anticipated) wanted the team to burn the year and keep him in Detroit. Several people inboxed us here at Octopus Thrower to let us know they wanted Edvinsson’s entry-level contract to kick in this year, crossing into that 10-game threshold.

It’s just not the right move. The Red Wings were not competing when Edvinsson came up. If they were going to burn the year, he should have started in Detroit or been a new-year call-up when the Red Wings crossed into the 2023 calendar year.

They made the right choice not burning his year for 10+ throw-away games at the end of this season that he would have logged. Sean Shapiro pieced together an article on “Shap Shots,” where he dives into this pretty in-depth.

Frankly, tip the cap to Sean; it was a well-thought-out argument. He’s suggesting that the Red Wings made a mistake in not burning Edvinsson’s year because they will possibly have to pay him even more now on his contract extension, which at that time may be an issue with cap space.

He also suggests that it benefits the player, giving him a chance to earn more money or possibly walk away and get more money elsewhere. He provides several examples, and it’s a well-constructed argument.

I see the point, and there’s more than enough reason to think about it. But speaking solely in terms of my opinion, we differ. It’s just hard for me to see this being a real issue down the line. Sure, contract extensions for Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond, Marco Kasper, etc., will not be cheap.

But even factoring in Edvinsson and assuming other money is tied up in free agents, the Red Wings should still be able to find room to get it done with Edvinsson. The cap issue is something to worry about down the line.

If the Red Wings wanted to burn the year and save money down the line, I feel like Steve Yzerman is smart enough to have had that plan in place. Meaning they would have tried to get some more value out of Edvinsson at the NHL level and give him more time to try it out earlier in the season.

But, to each their own. It will be interesting to see how things shake out with Edvinsson down the line, but keeping him in Detroit for nine games and keeping him on his entry-level deal as it slides up a year was the right move.