As August approaches, the Detroit Red Wings roster will probably not change much between now and the start of the season in October.
There is still room for general manager Steve Yzerman to pull off a huge trade, and there will be much debate in training camp over if prospects like Nate Danielson will make the opening night roster. Yet, the contracts and members of the Detroit roster will likely stay mostly the same.
With that in mind, let’s look at the three best and three worst contracts on the Red Wings for the 2025-26 season.
Best Contracts
#1. Marco Kasper- Two years remaining at $886,666 AAV
In his first full National Hockey League (NHL) season, Kasper started slowly, but became one of the highest performing players on the Red Wings by the end of the year. The breakout was helped by coach Todd McLellan giving Kasper more responsibility after the dismissal of Derek Lalonde.
Kasper finished his rookie campaign with 19 goals and 18 assists. His 37 points were sixth on the Wings. Kasper carried the momentum from his finish to the season into the IIHF World Championships, posting four goals and three assists in eight games for Austria.
Already a stalwart on Detroit’s top two-lines, Kasper has shown the potential to be a top-line center and perhaps one of the best two-way players in the NHL.
Considering the Red Wings are paying him under $1 million for the next two years before he becomes a restricted free agent, Kasper’s contract is easily the best value on Detroit’s roster.
#2. Lucas Raymond- Seven years remaining at $8.075 million AAV
It may seem strange that the third-largest contract on the Red Wings is also the second-best value, but Raymond has been worth every penny so far, and it will only get better.
Despite slowing down in the latter part of last season, Raymond still led the Wings in points with 80. His 53 assists were the most in his career, while his 27 goals were the second most (31 in 2023-24).
Raymond was also strong in international play, suiting up for Sweden in the Four Nations Face-Off and the IIHF World Championship. He had three points in three games at Four Nations and 11 points in 10 games at the World Championship.
While $8 million is a hefty amount, it is actually significantly less than other forwards who are at or below Raymond’s production. Elias Pettersson, Jonathan Huberdeau, Tyler Seguin, Sebastian Aho, and Mathew Barzal are each making over $9 million this season.
Raymond’s performance is already ahead of some of these players, and he will only continue to grow as he is much younger than them at 23 years old.
With the salary cap going up, the Red Wings have a blossoming NHL superstar locked up at a more than affordable cost for the next seven years, making it one of the best contracts in the entire league.
#3. Moritz Seider- Six years remaining at $8.5 million AAV
Yzerman deserves all the criticism he receives for his recent trades and free agent signings. However, he also deserves praise for his drafting and his ability to sign homegrown talent long-term at a fair price. This is the case with Raymond and with Seider.
As bad as the Detroit defense has been the past few seasons, it would have been even worse without the Herculaen efforts of Seider.
Playing in every Red Wings game since his debut in 2021-22, the 24-year-old averages between 23 and 25 minutes per game, consistently amongst the highest in the league. He is asked to defend the opposition’s best lines, provide offense, drive the power play, lead the penalty kill, and deliver physicality with massive hits or post-whistle scrums.
It is reasonable to argue that no player in the NHL is asked to do more or is as valuable to his team as Seider is to the Red Wings.
Although he provides so much, Yzerman was able to ink Seider to a great deal. Similar to Raymond, $8.5 million is a large sum, but Seider is more than worth it because of what he already brings, how he is still so young, and how the salary cap will increase.
Additionally, lesser and/or aging defensemen like Erik Karlsson, Drew Doughty, Seth Jones, Darnell Nurse, Brock Faber, and Owen Power are each making more or about the same as Seider.
Seider will continue to grow into one of the best defensemen in the NHL, and the Red Wings are blessed to have his services for at least the next six years at a more than reasonable cost.
Honorable Mentions: Dylan Larkin (six years at $8.7 million AAV), Patrick Kane (one year at $3 million AAV), Simon Edvinsson (one year at $894,167 AAV)
Worst Contracts
#1. J.T. Compher- Three years remaining at $5.1 million AAV
When Compher signed his five-year deal with the Red Wings in 2023, he was 28-years-old and the hope was that he would play well in the first few years of the deal to make a potential drop-off at the end of the deal due to age worth it.
Compher's $5.1 million price always seemed steep, but there was reason to believe he would be a strong contributor on the Red Wings. He had established himself as one of the stronger two-way players in the NHL and won a Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche in 2022.
Unfortunately, if his first two seasons in Detroit were supposed to be his best, then Compher’s contract is going to somehow end up looking even worse than it already does.
In 2023-24, Compher did not perform to his contract, but was not an abysmal player. He had a respectable 19 goals and 48 points in 77 games to go along with strong defensive play.
Then, the bottom fell out in 2024-25. Compher had just 11 goals and 32 points across 76 games. He went months where he was virtually invisible on the ice, which is especially concerning for one of Detroit’s highest-paid players. To make matters worse, his defense also took a step back.
There is a chance that Compher can rebound in his age-30 season, but players typically do not have a career resurgence in their 30s. It is far more likely that Compher’s best days are behind him, and his albatross contract will go down as one of the worst in Red Wings history.
#2. Andrew Copp- Two years remaining at $5.625 million AAV
Much of the analysis around Compher’s contract also holds true for Copp. Copp signed a five-year deal in 2022 following the best season of his career. Across 72 games with the Winnipeg Jets and New York Rangers, he had 21 goals and 53 points.
Yzerman and the Detroit front office hoped that Copp would continue producing at that level in his first couple of seasons with the Wings to compensate for a potential drop-off at the end of the contract.
Disappointingly, like with Compher, Copp has not even sniffed his pre-Detroit numbers and that brings concern to what the final years of the deal may bring.
Copp’s point totals have decreased year-over-year, going from 42 in 2022-23, to 33 in 2023-24, to 23 in 2024-25. He has also battled injuries that have caused him to play banged up or miss time completely.
There are two reasons that Copp’s contract is not as bad as Compher’s. First, he simply has one less year left, meaning the Red Wings will be able to rid themselves of it sooner.
Secondly, even if his offensive production has been minimal at best, Copp is still a strong defensive forward and, by all accounts, one of the prominent leaders in the Detroit dressing room. His season-ending injury last year was pointed to as one of the reasons for the Wings’ late-season collapse because his guiding voice was sorely missed.
Despite Copp’s positive traits, it is still difficult to comprehend how Detroit has over $10 million and term committed to him and Compher. You can only imagine how much better the Red Wings' current outlook would be if that money were given to multiple more impactful players.
#3. Justin Holl- One year remaining at $3.4 million AAV
There is an argument that this third spot should belong to Michael Rasmussen or even Ben Chiarot, but both players have positives they bring on-and-off the ice despite their decently sized contracts. The same cannot be said for Holl.
Following a highly criticized tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Yzerman still believed for some reason that Holl was the answer to Detroit’s defensive woes. The GM handed the defenseman a three-year, $3.4 million AAV deal in 2023. Almost immediately, the deal was a disaster.
Although he was one of the highest-paid defensemen on the roster, Holl was a consistent healthy scratch in his first season in the Winged Wheel due to constant mistakes on both ends of the ice. He played in just 38 games and had five points.
Due to the departures of Shayne Gostisbehere, Jake Walman, and Olli Maatta, there was an opening for Holl on the 2024-25 roster, and he actually performed better to start the year. Then, the poor performance returned. In addition to bad defensive play, Holl only had eight points in 73 games.
It looked like Holl would leave Detroit this offseason, but he remains on the team and appears to be a part of the Wings’ defensive core at least to start this year.
The lone bright spot with Holl’s contract is that this is the final year, so the Wings are nearly finished with what has been an extremely disappointing deal.
Honorable Mentions: Michael Rasmussen (three years at $3.2 million AAV), Ben Chiarot (one year at $4.75 million AAV), Erik Gustafsson (one year at $2 million AAV)
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