Pre-Trade Deadline Thoughts

I love the NHL trade deadline. I talked about spectacle in my post about the Columbus Stadium Series game and the trade deadline – like the opening of free agency – is league-wide spectacle.

I’m frustrated to be missing most of it this time around, in addition to having had to sell my tickets to tonight’s game against Utah. I’ve been stuck in the hospital all week and don’t expect to be discharged until right about the moment of the trade deadline.

I don’t mention this for sympathy (especially on the heels of the sports world’s loss of Andy Isaac) – it’s relatively minor stuff and I’ve only been in this room so long because of some known complications and scheduling issues. I bring it up to explain why my coverage of one of my favorite events has changed up.

So I’m going to do a digest post right now covering the last couple days and then I’ll probably do the same after the deadline passes.

Carter Mazur

Two moves this week are kind of tied together so I’ll start with Carter Mazur’s call-up.

I love this idea. I love it in concert with the bigger role Elmer Soderblom has been given and the early-season call-up of Marco Kasper and the expanded role the Albert Johansson has played since Jeff Petry was lost to injury.

The Red Wings are still rebuilding. Even if they make the playoffs this year, they are not a finished product. In a rebuild, you have to play the kids at some point. Even if Mazur doesn’t stick (and, as I write this, he’s already left the game with an upper-body injury), it’s important to him to see what it’s like to play at the NHL level and for the Red Wings’ brass to be able to evaluate him in NHL game situations.

I don’t know if it’ll work (if Mazur even stays healthy). Simon Edvinsson, for example, did not look great during his call-up last year, but Edvinsson has blossomed this year and you won’t convince me that the lessons learned during that initial stint didn’t feed into that.

Christian Fischer

The Red Wings waived Christian Fischer on Wednesday and, somewhat surprisingly, he was claimed by the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Strictly speaking, this move wasn’t necessary to make room for Mazur’s call-up. Fischer could have been the team’s 14th forward tonight. And, of course, he’d have been the 13th forward tomorrow against the Capitals if Mazur can’t go, but there was no way to see Mazur’s injury coming.

By all accounts, Fischer is a great guy in the room who loved playing in Detroit. I was glad the Wings brought him back last summer. But with Soderblom sticking in the lineup and Mazur getting his chance, and with how much respect the team clearly had for the veteran, it made sense to give him a chance to get minutes elsewhere.

And maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that Columbus, who claimed former Griffin and Red Wing Zach Aston-Reese from Vegas and Dante Fabbro from Nashville via waivers early this season, went shopping there again.

Additionally, had the Wings kept Fischer, they would have just had to move someone (maybe even him) out in order to acquire a player via trade at the deadline. Obviously the Mazur injury changes the math now but this makes me think that GM Steve Yzerman is shopping.

Fischer was useful for the Wings last year. His role changed this year and he became less useful. I’m okay with the team moving on from him.

Yanni Gourde

I’ve been begging the Red Wings to weaponize their cap space better throughout the rebuild and they did a bit of that on Wednesday, acting as cap brokers as the Seattle Kraken sent Yanni Gourde to the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Wings get a fourth-round pick in this summer’s draft in return, replacing the one they used to pay Anaheim to take on Robby Fabbri last offseason.

It’s not a big, sexy deal but I’m here for it.

Jake Walman

This isn’t a Red Wings deal but it broke while I was writing this and I feel like I have to touch on it.

After Yzerman paid the San Jose Sharks a second-round pick last summer to take on Jake Walman, the Sharks moved him to the Edmonton Oilers in return for…  Well, as of this writing, we don’t really know. A first-round pick has been floated. A conditional pick and a prospect.

We’ll never know exactly why Yzerman moved Walman out and why he felt such urgency to do it. But the Sharks getting any asset for him just eight months after the Wings paid a second rounder to move him looks really bad. We’ll never know exactly what happened last summer and I don’t think I’ll ever not be frustrated by what happened.