The Red Wings did a good job filling their vacancies on defense without going out and over spending like a lot of other teams have done so far.
They went out and got nice inexpensive pieces in Ian White and Mike Commodore and re-signed Jonathan Ericsson to a three-year contract at $9.75 million dollars.
Now a lot of Red Wings fans may scoff at that the contract given to Ericsson given that he hasn’t quite lived up to the expectations that many Red Wings fans had for him. However there are two reason’s why Ericsson received the contract he did.
First, Ericsson’s value was raised after the bloated contracts that were given out to other defenseman on the market like Ed Jovonovski, Christian Ernhoff and James Wisniewski. Also and even though he isn’t a defenseman Ville Leino was tremendously overpaid based on having one good year in Philadelphia. With that said there is no reason to believe that Ericsson wouldn’t have received another deal worth the same amount that he signed with the Wings or more on the open market.
Second, the Wings still have high hopes for Ericsson given his size and the potential he showed the team his rookie season.
That now brings us to the back-up goaltending vacancy.
The Wings didn’t make any moves on a back-up goaltender as of yet while other teams again were handing out huge contracts to goaltenders who simply aren’t worth the money.
Red Wings GM Ken Holland announced Tuesday that the would address the back-up goaltending situation sometime this week via free agency or through a trade.
According to Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News, teams continue to call the Wings about possible trades.
I tend to believe that the Wings will still acquire that back-up goaltender via free agency and according to sources it is coming down to three potential candidates in Chris Osgood, former Wing Ty Conklin and Marty Turco.
Ken Holland recently stated that there are some concerns with Osgood’s health however the organization would be fine with Osgood if need be. Osgood also has tremendous knowledge of the Wings’ organization and a very good relationship with Jimmy Howard.
Ty Conklin is also somewhat familiar with the style of play the Wings after winning a career high 25 games with the Wings back in 2008-09 season. Conklin however struggled with the Blues last year (8-8-2, 3.22, .881).
Marty Turco is a free agent after completing a one-year contract with the Chicago Blackhawks last season. He was originally brought on as the starter after Chicago was unable to re-sign Antti however Turco seemed to struggle out of the gate eventually losing his job to Corey Crawford.
Either way this is Jimmy Howard’s team, yet with the way Mike Babcock tends to rest his goaltenders, the backup should still get a good amount of playing time.
Source: Detroit News