The Detroit Red Wings’ search for help down the middle just got a little harder.
On the same day the Nashville Predators landed center Mavrik Bourque and defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin from the Dallas Stars for a pair of second round picks, a possible option the Red Wings had been monitoring came off the board. Detroit had been circling the Stars for a while with hopes that Dallas might eventually make a move for soon-to-be-former captain Dylan Larkin, and Bourque had been viewed as a piece that could have helped grease the wheels. Now he’s out of the picture.
That leaves the Red Wings with fewer appealing center options as the market continues to shrink. And from Detroit’s perspective, this was the kind of deal that should have been easy to justify.
The team owns three second round picks over the next four seasons, and it has enough cap space to absorb Lyubushkin’s contract. Bourque, a 24-year-old center, looked like a relatively low-cost swing on a player still climbing into his own.
He finished last season with 20 goals and 21 assists for 41 points in 82 games. Those numbers don’t scream star power, but they do point to a player with room to grow and the ability to handle more responsibility. That’s exactly the kind of profile that makes a trade like this attractive.
Now the Red Wings are back to searching for answers, and the list isn’t exactly overflowing. The only other center on the market that sounds especially enticing is Elias Pettersson of the Vancouver Canucks, though his contract brings plenty of risk. Pettersson is set to make $11.6M a year for the next five years, and both the acquisition cost and Detroit’s willingness to pay it remain unclear.
So the burden shifts back to Steve Yzerman and the front office. The idea of entering next season with J.T. Compher or Andrew Copp as the first-line center is hard to defend for a team that has preached patience for so long.
There is still time, of course. Larkin has not been traded, and the offseason still has plenty of runway left.
If Detroit does move him and picks up assets in return, those pieces could be flipped again in a pursuit of a younger center. Seattle is not on Larkin’s list, but the Red Wings could use any return to chase one of Shane Wright or Matty Beniers.
Beniers, a former Calder-winning forward, has not yet returned to the level he reached as a rookie. Wright, meanwhile, has not really been given the chance to break out into the player many expected him to become.
Either way, there are still intriguing names out there. The question now is whether Yzerman can actually turn this into a deal.
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He would not be coming in as a headline-grabbing splash, but the appeal is obvious for a club trying to deepen its lineup and tighten up the edges of its game. The catch is that a player with that kind of recent track record should draw plenty of attention if he reaches the market, which could turn a sensible fit into a competitive chase for Detroit. [Read more 🡒]