Red Wings move on from Mantha at trade deadline
`We want good players,' GM Yzerman said after completing fourth deal in four days
Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman showed on Monday that the road to building a winner isn't always straight one.
Two months before the season started, Yzerman signed power forward Anthony Mantha to a four-year contract extension worth US$22.8 million.
Just over six months later, Yzerman and the Red Wings cut ties with the 26-year-old Mantha by trading the former first-round pick to the Washington Capitals in a deal that just beat the NHL trade deadline.
“We want good players,” Yzerman said after the deal. “We want a good team.”
In return, the rebuilding Red Wings got a replacement for Mantha in forward Jakub Vrana, who is a former first-round pick like Mantha and not performing up to expectations offensively after back-to-back 20-goal seasons. The deal also sends former Windsor Spitfires forward Richard Panik to Detroit along with the Capitals' first-round pick in this year's NHL Draft and the team's second-round pick in the 2022 NHL Draft.
“We thought it was a good fit,” Yzerman said of the deal, which had been days in the making. “We get a player that goes into our lineup that can play a similar role and still accomplish our goal and that's to add to the pipeline.”
The 6-foot-5, 234-pound Mantha, who was Detroit's first-round pick in 2013, has struggled offensively this season with 11 goals and 21 points in 42 games along with 17 penalty minutes and was a minus-14.
The 6-foot, 197-pound Vrana, who is 25, has 11 goals and 25 points in 39 games this season.
“We traded a good, young hockey player for a good, young hockey player, a veteran hockey player and a couple of draft picks,” Yzerman said. “Anthony's a good player and Jakub Vrana's a good player. It's fair to say both were underperforming, but we look for Jakub to play a bigger role (with the Red Wings) and thrive in that.”
The two teams also had to balance a tricky salary cap. Mantha is a $5.7 million hit this season and the next three seasons while the 30-year-old Panik, who has appeared in more than 500 games, is in the second year of a four-year contract with a cap hit of $2.75 million per season through 2022-23. Vrana will become a restricted free agent after this season after earning $3.35 million this season.
“The hardest part is when you're making a trade player for player is figuring out the cap space,” Yzerman said. “That was a challenge in this one as well.”
Monday's move was the fourth trade in four days for Yzerman leading up to Monday's deadline.
“I think I accomplished everything that I could that made sense for us,” Yzerman said. “Would I like to have done more? Maybe, but you do what you can do and I'm pleased with the trades we did make.”
On Sunday, the Red Wings acquired centre Hayden Verbeek and Ottawa's fifth-round pick in this year's NHL Draft from the Montreal Canadiens for veteran defenceman Jon Merrill. The 23-year-old Verbeek, who was signed as an undrafted free agent by Montreal in 2018, played two seasons of minor hockey with the Sun County Panthers.
The brother of former Spitfire Ryan Verbeen and the nephew of former Red Wings player and current assistant general manager Pat Verbeek, the young centre has yet to make his NHL debut and has been assigned to Detroit's American Hockey League farm tea in Grand Rapids.
On Saturday, Detroit acquired a fourth-round pick in this year's NHL Draft in a three-way trade involving Tampa Bay and Columbus.
The Red Wings acquired defenceman David Savard from Columbus and then sent him and defenceman Brian Lashoff to Tampa Bay for a fourth-round pick. Detroit retained a portion of Savard's contract to make the deal possible for salary cap reasons, with Tampa sending its first-round pick in 2021 and a third-round pick in 2022 to Columbus to complete the deal.
The Savard trade followed a Friday deal by Detroit that sent veteran defenceman Patrik Nemeth to the Colorado Avalanche for a fourth-round draft pick in 2022.