Taking a chance on Kaapo Kahkonen
Signing a goaltender like Kaapo Kahkonen and trusting him as a 1A doesn’t look like a solid option at first glance, and you can argue the Red Wings would be better off snagging a star goaltender in a big trade or even taking a chance on acquiring a player like Filip Gustavsson.
But in this piece, that big trade was for a blueliner, not a goaltender, so keeping up with the ‘unreasonable, but makes sense theme,’ adding someone like Kaapo Kahkonen to a goaltending tandem that would include Alex Lyon looks as though there are a pair of 1B netminders in Detroit, but they are also high-upside netminders.
You can argue why doing something like this would also make no sense, and I would agree with you to an extent. But adding a talent like Kahkonen, whom we now know can provide decent returns for even a very average hockey team, would pay dividends in 2024-25.
As mentioned when I talked about re-signing David Perron, bringing in a player like Kahkonen doesn’t need to be for anything much more than a reasonable salary and a one-year deal. We still got Sebastian Cossa, who should be raring to go in 2025-26, so Kahkonen is a cost-effective yet more than serviceable stopgap.
Now, the only question would be what to do with Ville Husso, and there should be no question to just move him for something cheap and admit that acquiring him 24 months ago was a bad decision on Steve Yzerman’s part. Sure, they could stick with a Husso-Lyon tandem, but that’s something that would be more than seemingly unreasonable.
(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)