Trade talk around Simon Edvinsson is heating up, but Detroit’s message hasn’t changed: the Red Wings still want to sign him.
TSN’s Pierre LeBrun reported that as many as 10 teams have reached out to Detroit about the defenseman, with the Boston Bruins singled out as a possible landing spot. Earlier in the week, Frank Seravalli of Victory+ also named the Utah Mammoth and Seattle Kraken as teams showing interest.
Even with that chatter, LeBrun said interim general manager Shawn Horcoff has told teams the Red Wings still plan to extend Edvinsson. For now, any club hoping to pry him loose would need to overwhelm Detroit with an offer. LeBrun added that the Red Wings have already put long-, mid- and short-term proposals in front of Edvinsson and his camp, but there remains a significant gap in salary demands.
That gap may be tied to how Detroit has handled its top end in recent years. The Red Wings have tended to make sure their best players sit at the top of the salary ladder, and that could make them wary of giving Edvinsson a deal that tops Moritz Seider’s $8.55MM salary.
But that logic has limits. Seider’s contract was signed in a different cap environment, and a $10MM AAV for Edvinsson would still represent a slightly smaller slice of the current cap than Seider’s deal did when it was signed.
There’s also the simple fact that Seider is a rare case. His contract is one of the most team-friendly in the league for a player with his value, and Edvinsson shouldn’t be boxed in by what Detroit managed to do once with another player.
And even if the Red Wings prefer that salary structure, they are not in a spot where they can afford a standoff. They own the NHL’s longest active playoff drought at 10 years, and they can’t realistically let their second-best defenseman sit over a contract fight.
If a deal does get done, Edvinsson brings a profile that makes him attractive to all three of the teams named so far. At 6-foot-6, he’s still among the league’s faster skaters, according to NHL EDGE.
Over the last two seasons, he has put up 16 goals and 56 points in 150 games while posting a plus-24 rating, averaging 21:43 of ice time per night. He’s also piled up 292 blocked shots and 180 hits in that span, which is why he already looks like a young top-four two-way defenseman.
Boston would have a pretty clear path for him. Edvinsson could step into Nikita Zadorov’s role on the second pairing and let Zadorov slide into a more comfortable bottom-pair job.
The Bruins don’t exactly have a loaded prospect pool to make Detroit swoon, though they do have their own first-round pick this year and a condition-heavy first-rounder from the Toronto Maple Leafs. If Mason Lohrei were part of the discussion, that would get Detroit’s attention.
Utah and Seattle can offer something Boston can’t: a deeper stash of prospects. In Utah, Nate Schmidt has held up well in the top four, but Edvinsson would be a clear upgrade. In Seattle, Vince Dunn is in the final year of his contract and there’s no extension in sight, which could push the Kraken toward Edvinsson as a longer-term answer.
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The broader intrigue comes from how quickly talks around young talent can shift once another club enters the picture. There has been speculation that Wright could become a trade asset in a larger move, with Simon Edvinsson mentioned in the mix, even as Seattle has said it is not trading Edvinsson right now. For the Kraken, it is the kind of roster uncertainty that can follow a promising prospect around until the market settles. [Read more 🡒]
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Lane Lambert has also pushed the idea that face-offs are not just a centers stat line, but a five-man task with responsibilities for everyone on the ice once the puck is dropped. That lines up with the broader research suggesting face-offs can influence outcomes depending on the personnel and the way a team attacks the ensuing sequence, which is why this modest improvement feels worth watching even if the Kraken are still proving whether it can become a real pattern. [Read more 🡒]