It’s not as easy to move players in the NHL, since certain restrictions exist. Then, there’s the fact you can’t just cut somebody and forget about them. Still, it doesn’t mean there aren’t more than a few players the Red Wings would be better off without when they skate into the 2025-26 season in about four and a half months.
And yes, you read that right - four and a half months. As my old high school biology teacher once said (and so have millions of others), “Time flies when you’re having fun, let me tell you, sonny…” Or, at least he said something like that, and I’m 100 percent sure I’m paraphrasing.
He also made science class worth paying attention in as opposed to spending the period making hockey sequences, for the first and only time in my life. Anyway, let’s name four players who general manager Steve Yzerman must try to move elsewhere before the puck drops sometime before early and mid-October 2025.
Vladimir Tarasenko
The Vladimir Tarasenko experiment just crashed this season and nobody, neither Derek Lalonde nor Todd McLellan, knew how to salvage it. With 11 goals and 33 points in 2024-25, it was Tarasenko’s worst campaign.
And while everyone has an off-year every now and again, even some of the game’s best, there’s always a chance Tarasenko was just a bad system fit. With the Red Wings vying to end their long playoff drought, it wouldn’t hurt to move him to a team that could boast a better system and find a replacement.
Jonatan Berggren
A pending restricted free agent, Jonatan Berggren has got to be out of chances at this point. Another season with the Wings ended in disappointment, and Berggren showed he’s nothing more than a lower-liner who isn’t capable of putting up more than 30 points in a season.
That said, he was a decent depth scorer, converting 13.6 percent of his shots on goal, and good for a total of 12 on the year. Other than that, his 24-point outing in 75 games said it all, and Steve Yzerman would be better off to trade his signing rights elsewhere.
Justin Holl
Arguably one of the biggest free agent busts of the Steve Yzerman era, consistent inconsistency marred Justin Holl’s stint with the Red Wings. Last season, he was an overpaid and fringe sixth defenseman, appearing in 73 games but averaging a meager 14:48 of ice time per contest.
The lack of quality minutes showed how little trust the Red Wings had in Holl, and he did little to restore their confidence. Right now, if it meant trading him elsewhere and retaining some of his contract, I wouldn’t hesitate if I were Yzerman. Just get him out of Hockeytown so fans can forget he ever played here.
Erik Gustafsson
Another mistake, even if it wasn’t as costly. Erik Gustafsson could’ve brought some solid offense from the blue line. But his season ended with just 18 points in 60 games, underperforming and disappointing every bit as much as the players listed above him.
Of these four players, Gustafsson may be the easiest one to move, since he has no restrictions next to his name. Still, you’d have hoped things would’ve panned out, and that he’d be raring to go for another year with Axel Sandin-Pellikka potentially still developing in Grand Rapids.