The next general manager of the Detroit Red Wings is walking into a mess with a deadline attached to it.
Before he can settle in at Little Caesar's Arena, he’s already staring at three separate problems left behind by an offseason that never seemed to get out of its own way. One involves Simon Edvinsson and a ticking contract clock.
Another centers on Alex DeBrincat’s stalled extension. And the biggest headache of all may be Dylan Larkin, whose future still points toward Minnesota.
Edvinsson is the most urgent name on the board. He has reportedly said he’ll report to camp whether a new deal gets done or not, which at least keeps the peace in the short term.
But the calendar matters here. September 15 is the cutoff to sign a player to an eight-year contract.
If that date passes, the maximum term for Edvinsson drops to seven years under the new CBA rules. That means one less year of control and, likely, less money on the table.
The timing is brutal because Edvinsson is exactly the kind of player you want locked up early. He’s 23, has shown top-pair potential, and already has two full NHL seasons plus part of a third behind him.
The source of the frustration is obvious: Zeev Buium just landed an eight-year deal with the Vancouver Canucks at $9.38 million AAV, despite having only 76 NHL games and 26 points. If that’s the kind of number a 20-year-old can get before truly proving himself, Edvinsson’s résumé should put him in line for at least that and probably more.
DeBrincat’s situation isn’t nearly as time-sensitive, but it still lands on the new GM’s desk as unfinished business. The good news is simple: DeBrincat has said, “Seven words without ambiguity. Exactly what you want to hear from a guy coming off 41 goals and 85 points to lead the Wings in 2025-26.”
That’s the easy part. The hard part is that wanting to stay and actually getting the deal done are two different things.
His extension is still on hold, which means the incoming GM inherits another negotiation that hasn’t moved the way Detroit would want. It’s not the same kind of emergency as Edvinsson’s deadline, but it’s still another unresolved issue stacked on top of the first one.
Larkin is the one that hangs over everything.
According to the source reporting, his preferred destination remains Minnesota, tied to his Team USA connections with Quinn Hughes, Matt Boldy and Brock Faber. But there’s a catch: Hughes himself has not committed to his own future in Minnesota. If Hughes doesn’t stay, the draw for Larkin could disappear too.
That leaves Detroit in a tough spot. The new GM can’t control what happens in another building, but he still has to live with the fallout.
Larkin hasn’t broadened his list of options, so there isn’t a clean fallback if Minnesota stops making sense. Maybe a Hughes holdout expands Larkin’s choices.
Maybe it smooths things over and sends him on what the source describes as a redemption tour. Either way, the situation is stuck until someone blinks first.
That’s the reality waiting for Detroit’s next GM: a defenseman on the clock, a winger waiting on an extension, and a captain whose future depends on decisions being made somewhere else.
And underneath all of it is the actual job - building the roster, evaluating a hockey operations staff he didn’t hire, and figuring out whether Todd McClellan’s system fits the team he’s inheriting. Those are the big-picture tasks people usually associate with a GM. In Detroit, they’re not even first on the list.
The Red Wings haven’t made the playoffs in ten years. The next man in charge won’t get a grace period. He gets the problems first.
In Other News...
Red Wings Remember A Former First Rounder For Far More Than Hockey
Brent Peterson was remembered this week as much for what he meant away from the ice as for his place in Red Wings history. Detroit drafted him in the first round in 1978, and he went on to play parts of four seasons with the club before continuing his NHL career with the Sabres, Canucks and Whalers, building the kind of steady hockey resume that kept him around the game for years.
Peterson later moved into coaching and was working as an assistant with the Predators when his life took a different turn after a Parkinsons diagnosis. He spent the rest of it pushing to help others facing the same disease, and the foundation he launched with his wife became a major part of that effort, a reminder that some of the most lasting legacies in sports have little to do with goals, assists or draft position. [Read more 🡒]
Red Wings Just Turned Dylan Larkin Into An Offseason Question
The Red Wings made a notable change to the heart of their leadership structure this week by moving Dylan Larkin out of the captaincy, a decision that lands squarely in the middle of an already unsettled offseason. For a franchise that has leaned on Larkin as the face of the room and the standard-bearer on the ice, the announcement adds another layer to a summer defined by transition and uncertainty.
Larkin said he will be at training camp and acknowledged recent conversations with team leadership, but he did not directly address the captaincy switch. The bigger question now is where this goes from here, because the organization has made clear that any further discussion about his future will wait until a new hockey operations leader and general manager are in place, leaving a key piece of Detroits identity hanging as the next front-office regime takes shape. [Read more 🡒]
Red Wings Contract Limbo With Simon Edvinsson Just Got More Uncomfortable
Simon Edvinssons contract situation has settled into the kind of awkward holding pattern that can hang over a team in late summer. With the Red Wings still without a general manager, talks have not moved forward, leaving the young defenseman in a strange spot as training camp approaches and the organization tries to sort out one of its most important roster pieces.
Edvinsson is prepared to keep showing up and let the process play out, even if the paperwork is not finished by camp time. For Detroit, that is hardly ideal. A player with his role and upside should be concentrating on camp, not waiting on front-office mechanics, and the longer this drags on, the more it adds to the sense that the Red Wings are carrying another unresolved issue into the season. [Read more 🡒]