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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Re-signing Patrick Kane needs to be Steve Yzerman’s top priority
Even the most passionate Detroit Red Wings fan had to be taking the “cautiously optimistic” approach regarding the Patrick Kane signing. On one hand, Steve Yzerman landed one of the best wingers in NHL history, but that winger was also 35 years old and coming off of a hip resurfacing procedure.
There was a better chance of this being one of Yzerman’s more ill-fated moves despite the low price tag and contract length. Then Kane started playing again and became nearly a point-per-game player, with 42 points and 18 goals in the 43 contests he’s played since he debuted with Detroit as of April 4th.
Say what you will about Kane in foresight, whether you were for him coming to the Motor City or not, but nobody saw him returning to form like this. He’s enjoying a better season than he had last year and if Kane had been ready to roll in October, he’d have easily surpassed his 2022-23 points total.
No, Yzerman doesn’t need to sign Kane to a long-term deal, but it would be wise to bring him back for another season, if not two years, for what has been one of the bigger surprises and feel-good stories in the NHL. Maybe Kane doesn’t play as well as he did this season in 2024-25, but he will fare well enough to remain a positive asset in Detroit.
David Perron more than deserves to call Detroit his home next season
I debated about including David Perron on this list, but right now, Yzerman needs players who have experience to know what it takes to win Stanley Cups in town. Patrick Kane is one of those players, but so is Perron, who was with the St. Louis Blues in 2019 when they won it all.
Next season, the overall older Red Wings should be aging in reverse, but that shouldn’t mean refraining from keeping a pair of trusty, productive veterans in Kane and Perron. We know what Kane will bring, and while Perron won’t be as effective, he’s still a productive middle-six forward who has 38 points and 15 goals in 69 contests at the time of this writing.
Perron would also understand that his days as a top-six forward are waning, and he could factor in on the lower lines at this point in his career. He remains a physical player who will give the Red Wings triple digits in hits, and he is still a threat to take pucks away from opponents.
Perron can still record a plethora of power play minutes, and for the second year in a row, that total crept over the 200-minute milestone. He’s also done a good job helping Detroit’s pedestrian goalies at 5-on-5 with a 91.7 on-ice save percentage, offering a solid blend of defense to go with his productivity in the offensive zone.
Christian Fischer will add fuel to the lower lines
Nobody will help the Red Wings return to and stay in the playoffs quite like the lower-liners, and Christian Fischer is just one name in that group who has been responsible for this team’s step forward. He only has a little over 11 minutes of ice time this season, but his hard-hitting mindset and ability to occasionally pitch into the scoring realm continue to make him a valuable player.
Like Perron, Fischer has also given relief to Detroit’s goaltenders at 5-on-5 with a 92.4 on-ice save percentage. He’s also been on the ice in that same situation with 30 goals for and 30 allowed, which is not bad for a player with limited ice time and subpar goaltenders behind him.
He’s seen over 55 minutes on Detroit’s penalty kill this year and has put up a respectable performance, as the team has allowed just six goals when he’s out there on the short-handed unit. It’s also worth discussing Fischer’s even strength numbers, where he’s been on the ice for 32 goals and just 31 against.
Compare those numbers to his current xGF of 26.8 and xGA of 32.9 at even strength, and it strongly indicates his actual productivity paints a more accurate picture than his possession quality.
Shayne Gostisbehere’s scoring prowess should earn him another deal
Shayne Gostisbehere has routinely shown off his two-way mentality since he arrived in the NHL on a full-time basis with the Philadelphia Flyers in the 2015-16 season. That year, he put up 46 points and took second place for the Calder Trophy. Now in his 30s, Gostisbehere continues to record sound scoring numbers at a respectable pace, with 49 points so far in 74 contests across 19:01 of ice time.
It would be a mistake to underestimate Gostisbehere as an offense-first defenseman, as he’s still a major contributor in the defensive zone. He’s not the most physical player, with just 27 hits on the year, but he’s still nearing a block-per-game with 67. And like a few players on this list, his on-ice save percentage is hovering near the 92 percent mark at 91.9 at 5-on-5.
Shifting gears back to offense, his ability to perform well on the power play is yet another reason Gostisbehere must remain in town for at least another few seasons. In his 250-plus minutes on the man advantage, Gostisbehere has been on the ice for 39 goals, good for a 15.7 on-ice shooting percentage. Overall, he remains a sound player on both ends of the ice, with the ability to take over games on special teams.
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(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)