What will the Detroit Red Wings defense pairings look like next season?

Edvinsson/Petry worked really well together at the end of the season

Yes, Jeff Petry is still on the team. He is still on the opening night roster, and he will likely still be on the second pair. Whether you like it or not, Petry worked well with Simon Edvinsson towards the end of the season. Now, this is likely due to Edvinsson being able to cover for Petry better than Ben Chiarot was able to. This allowed Petry to activate more often, and he even improved defensively. Maybe even saved the season a time or two.

It's also likely that having a much younger and inexperienced player next to him made him realize that he needed to tighten things up and play more responsibly. But he wasn't nearly as bad as Red Wings fans would have you believe. Sure, defensively for most of the season, he wasn't what many would consider a "shutdown defenseman," but he was never once in his career billed as that. He was always billed as a "puck-moving defenseman with tremendous mobility" who "protects the puck well and makes good use of his body."

Simon Edvinsson, on the other hand, is a different story. He was brought up late last season due to Jake Walman being in and out of the lineup and was immediately trusted with time on the penalty kill. He also went against other teams' top lines (though not nearly as much as Seider), and he looked good. This shouldn't come as a surprise, as Edvinsson should have been on the Red Wings to start the 2023-24 season.

During his 16-game stint, he quickly proved to everybody that he belonged on the Red Wings all season. He was so incredibly calm and smooth under pressure that anybody could mistake him for a ten-year vet of the NHL. He didn't look out of place at all and didn't play like he had just been throwing in the middle of an NHL team's playoff push where every game counts.

Määttä/Gustafsson to round out the defense

Barring a trade involving Olli Määttä, which is very much still on the table. The odds are that he will be a mainstay on the third pair as the stabilizing presence for his usually more offensive-minded partner. Since joining the Red Wings in the 2022-23 season, Määttä has been partners with Filip Hronek and Shayne Gostisbehere, two of the most offensive-minded defensemen in the entire league.

This upcoming season, he will likely follow the same trend and be partnered up with Erik Gustafsson, another offensive-minded defenseman who will need a stable presence next to him. Määttä seems to be good at elevating whoever he's partnered with. Whether it's because he doesn't have a lot of offensive capabilities and his partners do or since they know that Määttä is such a stable defenseman that they can activate more often without worrying if they'll be covered or not.