Red Wings Acquire Defenseman Petry

The Detroit Red Wings traded for defenseman Jeff Petry on Tuesday.

UPDATE: The #RedWings today acquired defenseman Jeff Petry from the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for Gustav Lindstrom and a conditional 4th round pick in 2025. pic.twitter.com/S7VfVJpa8f

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) August 15, 2023

Gustav Lindstrom and a conditional fourth-round draft pick go to the Montreal Canadiens to complete the deal.

I’ll admit, I’m somewhat confused by this deal.  Petry is an improvement over Lindstrom and is paid as such.  With the Canadiens retaining salary, that makes the cap hit more palatable.  That’s good.

But Lindstrom was set to be Detroit’s seventh defenseman.  It seems safe to assume that Mortiz Seider and Jake Walman and Ben Chiarot and Olli Maatta and Shayne Gostisbehere and Justin Holl have the top six spots on the Red Wings’ defense locked down.  And, in that scenario, the younger, cheaper Lindstrom made a ton of sense.  It makes less sense to pay Petry (and pay assets to acquire Petry) if he’s just going to sit in the press box on a nightly basis.

It also puts one more roadblock in the path of Simon Edvinsson, as Petry is signed for two more seasons as opposed to Lindstrom’s single year.

So it’s an upgrade but it’s an upgrade at a place that it’s really hard to see mattering.

But it’s another “Michigan kid comes home” story, which is always nice.  Son of former Tiger Dan Petry and all that.  Detroit had interest in the younger Petry before, back in 2015.  The problem is that was eight years ago at this point.

Jersey number geekery: I predict that Petry gets the #26 he wore in Montreal and Pittsburgh, with Andrew Gibson (who wore #26 in this summer’s development camp) switching to the #28 Lindstrom leaves behind.