Whether Steve Yzerman stepped away from the Detroit Red Wings general manager role on his own, or if he was forced out of it does not really matter. It is irrelevant to the reality that something needed to change here.<\/p>\n
The team is on a 10-year playoff drought, seven under Yzerman’s watch, with some absolutely appalling late-season meltdowns to blame for it. Even worse, his longest-tenured player and team captain, Dylan Larkin, requested a trade this offseason.<\/p>\n
Does that request still stand with a new GM? <\/p>\n
Whether it does or does not, and whether the Red Wings trade him or play hardball with him, this is still a team desperately needing something to give it a spark. <\/p>\n
Especially given the fact they still have $19.5 million in unused salary cap space and only restricted free agent defenseman Simon Edvinsson left to re-sign.<\/p>\n
Potentially moving Larkin out would likely open up more salary cap space.<\/p>\n
How do you possibly sell your fans on going into the season with that much unused salary cap space, coming off that end of the regular season, and combined with potentially trading your captain that no longer wants to play for you?<\/p>\n
The new general manager, whoever it might be, is going to be walking into chaos and facing a fan base with an understandably short temper. <\/p>\n
The Dallas Stars are one of the teams reportedly on Larkin’s list of approved trade spots. The Stars have a contract situation with Jason Robertson that doesn’t seem to be ending. Is there something there that could make everybody happy? Would Robertson sign with the Red Wings long-term? Even if it is not something that bold, the Red Wings need something because this playoff drought is not going to end with the same roster that has failed to end it the past few seasons. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whether Steve Yzerman stepped away from the Detroit Red Wings general manager role on his own, or if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-777747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}