{"id":45191,"date":"2025-07-07T05:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T05:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/45191\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T05:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T05:25:12","slug":"5-teams-in-need-of-a-game-changing-trade-after-missing-out-in-2025-nhl-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/45191\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Teams In Need Of A Game-Changing Trade After Missing Out in 2025 NHL Free Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Detroit Red Wings missed the playoffs last season for the ninth straight year<\/a>. Not even the lousy rosters of the notorious \u201cDead Things\u201d era from 1970-71 to 1982-83 had a postseason skid lasting that long.<\/p>\n

Steve Yzerman was the foundation player on which the Red Wings resurrected themselves into a league powerhouse and a four-time Stanley Cup champion, three of those under Yzerman’s captaincy. However, he’s been the general manager for six of the past nine seasons of futility.<\/p>\n

Red Wings fans were patient during Yzerman’s early years of rebuilding, based on his accomplishments in a Wings jersey and his efforts building the Tampa Bay Lightning into an eventual Stanley Cup champion. However, that patience is wearing thin as the postseason drought drags on.<\/p>\n

Yzerman faces criticism for a lack of urgency, including from team captain Dylan Larkin. Among those urgent needs<\/a> is the addition of a top-four defenseman.<\/p>\n

The Red Wings possess an excellent young No. 1 defenseman in Moritz Seider. Promising Simon Edvisson showed potential in his first full NHL campaign last season, netting 31 points in 78 games. However, they need an experienced top-four blueliner<\/a> to take some pressure off those youngsters.<\/p>\n

So far, however, Yzerman’s only addition<\/a> to his defense corps is Jacob Bernard-Docker, who is now on his third team in this calendar year. To be fair, there weren’t many enticing free-agent options, but the Wings GM must still address this glaring problem.<\/p>\n

The Red Wings have over $12 million in salary cap space<\/a> with 23 active roster players under contract this season. Yzerman could weaponize that cap space by targeting teams looking to shed salary to become cap-compliant before the start of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Red Wings missed the playoffs last season for the ninth straight year. Not even the lousy…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":45192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-45191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114810291741439421","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}