The Detroit Red Wings appear set to make their 2016-17 season even more difficult.
Center Pavel Datsyuk stated Sunday he intends to leave the NHL at the end of the postseason and head back to Russia for family reasons, according to Mitch Albom from the Detroit Free Press. It leaves the club in a tricky spot, as his $7.5-million cap hit will remain on the books.
Related: Datsyuk 'done playing in NHL' after postseason
While Datsyuk is open to having his rights traded to a cash-strapped team in need of reaching the NHL's cap floor, his agent, Dan Milstein, indicated the Red Wings won't use that option, presumably out of respect for the player's legacy.
Albom writes:
(Datsyuk) also said that if the Wings wanted to trade his rights to another team as a salary cap dump, he would accept that, understanding that it was strictly business (Milstein said the Wings have told him that would not happen).
Datsyuk's cap hit is the highest on the team, and general manager Ken Holland will have to re-sign restricted free agents Petr Mrazek, Danny Dekeyser, Alexey Marchenko, Teemu Pulkkinen, and Riley Sheahan this summer, not to mention the unrestricted free agents on the roster.
That kind of dead cap space is problematic for teams like Detroit, already near or at the ceiling. Trying to replace a player like Datsyuk on top of that would be near impossible.
The only other option is trading the contract (think Chris Pronger to Arizona), which would be curious not to at least explore.
