It’s easy to put a sizable blame for the Red Wings woes on Vladimir Tarasenko. When you look at some of the final numbers, Tarasenko ranked as one of the worst on the team, especially since he was supposed to bring in at least 20 goals this season.
The result? He ended up with 11 goals and 33 points, complete with a minus-13 rating. They were bad stats all around, and you can’t blame Wings fans for wanting to see Steve Yzerman find a way to move him elsewhere. Tarasenko was a failed experiment who, from Day 1, never looked comfortable in the Wings lineup.
But there’s another forward out there who could’ve contributed to the team’s woes more. No, there wasn’t as much emphasis on them to produce in the same way Tarasenko had, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t let the team down to at least the same degree. This player came in last season and gave the Wings some decent early returns, before falling off completely this past year.
One forward who may have disappointed more than Vladimir Tarasenko
Looking at J.T. Compher’s numbers, they weren’t inspiring in the slightest. And while he’s not the producer Tarasenko was, he finished his first season in Detroit with 19 goals and 48 points. For a minute, it looked like the Wings found another reliable scorer, and surely, Compher would snag something similar this season in Year 2, right?
As we now know, that wasn’t the case. Instead of improving, Compher struggled, amassing just 11 goals and 32 points in 76 games. Once again, he had a tough time winning faceoffs, something that was the case in 2023-24. But when there’s such a drop-off in production this past season, it means Compher’s value plummeted.
So, if you’re the Wings and you want to move Tarasenko, do you do something similar with Compher? You can, but I’m sure if you follow the Wings closely, you can see the obvious problem. He’s signed to a $5.1 million cap hit with a modified no-trade clause through 2027-28. That’s going to be a hard contract to move unless there’s a team out there that thinks it can get something more out of Compher.
J.T. Compher might be here to stay for a while
Of course, everybody has a bad season every now and again, and it’s not like Compher was putting up between 45-50 points per year to begin with. His 52-point season in Colorado back in 2022-23 showed he could offer more than just modest production, something we’d seen from Compher in the years leading up to that season.
In this case, you could move Compher into playing more middle-six minutes while the Red Wings move more youngsters into the top six or if they acquire someone who can skate more minutes. But case in point, Compher’s 2024-25 season may’ve been a return to normalcy, and that’s disappointing when you consider what he did through his first season in Hockeytown.