4 pending unrestricted free agents the Red Wings must bring back for 2024-25
The Detroit Red Wings should focus on promoting their young core, but it doesn’t mean they need to let all their unrestricted free agents walk.
There are a couple of things the Detroit Red Wings should and will be doing next season, one of which is to finally get some of their top prospects into full-time roles. For a team with seven pending unrestricted free agents in the current lineup, it may be easy to find potential spots for some of these prospects.
But this doesn’t mean the Red Wings need to let all their unrestricted free agents walk, and it also doesn’t mean general manager Steve Yzerman can’t look outside the organization to bring in talent from elsewhere. Instead, there must be a happy medium here between keeping the right players, signing another solid skater or goaltender if needed, and bringing up the correct prospects.
A few unrestricted free agents must stay with the Red Wings
While Yzerman must strongly consider keeping four unrestricted free agents who will be unveiled in the following slides, there are quite a few players, free agents or not, who shouldn’t remain with the Red Wings regardless.
Players like Justin Holl and Ville Husso are a pair of players who won’t be pending free agents who should find themselves going elsewhere via trade despite their modified no-trade clauses. This would leave even more room for Yzerman to keep those more productive pending free agents with the club and to call up a few of those promising prospects into full-time roles, all of which will take the famed “Yzerplan” to the next level.
From there, the Red Wings would have a bright immediate future, something this current season has definitely given them even with most of the prospects still in Grand Rapids and in other leagues. So which unrestricted free agents must stay in Detroit for at least 2024-25, and for a few of them, beyond?
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