Red Wings Lose Ryan for Season

Detroit head coach Jeff Blashill announced on Friday that forward Bobby Ryan will miss the remainder of the season.

Coach Blashill says Fabbri, Gagner, Nemeth are out tomorrow and that Bobby Ryan (upper body) is expected to be out for the remainder of the season.

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) April 9, 2021

Ryan had a setback in recovering from an upper-body injury that was originally though to be minor.  He may now require surgery.

With the Red Wings’ season all-but-lost, this hurts the franchise more by how it impacts their trade deadline strategy.  With just three days until the trade deadline, they’ve lost one of their more valuable trade pieces.

Ryan is a veteran presence who has put up 14 points in 33 games with Detroit, seemingly rebounding from several off years with the Ottawa Senators.  Additionally, he’s on a contract for just $1 million.  As the Red Wings could be expected to retain salary on any potential Ryan trade, he would have been able to slot into almost any contender’s lineup.

Instead, he’ll be on the shelf and Detroit won’t add whatever he would have brought in trade.

It feels, to me, a lot like the 2018 deadline, when Mike Green was Detroit’s top trade piece, only for him to get injured down the stretch and no market to develop.  Eventually, Green was signed for two more years, much of which he spent out, before being traded for the injured Kyle Brodziak and a conditional pick that ended up being a fourth-rounder in this year’s Entry Draft.  He retired last summer.

I’ve often compared the Red Wings’ rebuild to that of the New York Rangers, citing the main difference (aside from the Blueshirts’ ability to win the lottery) as New York having players to sell.  When their rebuild started in 2018, the Rangers were able to move Michael Grabner and Rick Nash and Ryan McDonagh.  Then the next year it was Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes.  With the draft picks they acquired, they were able to acquire Adam Fox and Jacob Trouba, making Brady Skjei expendable so he could be flipped for yet another first-rounder.

The Red Wings haven’t been able to do that. They have a lot of expiring contracts to offer up in the next few days, so I’m not willing to write that off as a possibility this season, yet.  But they did just lose a big potential piece.