The Detroit Red Wings will contend in 2024-25, and there’s no doubt about it unless the injury bug bites them. But ironically, this team doesn’t possess much of a cap hit…yet, anyway. Here’s the kicker: Only 20 of the projected 23 players are currently signed, with Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider yet to ink their respective contract extensions, which will bring that number to 22.
So, when figuring out what the average player will make in 2024-25, I had to conduct some research. And I came across an incredible piece by Adam Proteau of The Hockey Writers, who listed the contracts of Owen Power and Brock Faber, as projection points for Seider.
Power and Faber are at $8.35 million and $8.5 million, respectively, averaging to roughly $8.425 million, so we’ll put Seider in that range. This means we’ll take Detroit’s projected cap hit of $70,351,806 per Puck Pedia, and add $8.42 million to it. The number will certainly be different once we find out what Seider will be making, but it serves as a good baseline.
Alright, onto Lucas Raymond, but Proteau, unfortunately, doesn't make any comparisons here. That said, he did mention, “at least $7 million or $8 million,” so why not roll with $7.5 million for this projection?
The average Red Wings player will make X amount in 2024-25
Let’s take $8.425 million plus $7.5 million, and we’ll get $15,925,000, which we can add to $70,351,806, which gives us $86,276,806, and divide that by 22 players. Note that there will be a 23rd player in the lineup, but for this projection, let’s just take the guys who we know will be in there first.
So, dividing $86,276,806 by 22, we get a rather high $3.92 million for the average player. Now, suppose the Red Wings sign or bring someone up from the AHL for $800,000 - my guess is that this final player will be making six figures. Add that to our $86,276,806, and we’ll get $87,076,806, which gives us $3.785.
Therefore, we can conclude that for 2024-25, the average Red Wings player will make between $3.785 and $3.92 million, and since I like to use middling numbers here, let’s find out the average to make the ultimate guess for opening night. Averaging the two numbers, we get $3.852 million per player.