Holland on his future
Nick Cotsonika of NHL.com: Detroit Red Wings GM Ken Holland has a year left on his contract and is aware there are rumors about his future. He adds “we’ll see what the summer brings.”
Holland later added:
“I’ve got to make sure that I do what’s right. I don’t know what the future’s going to bring. I don’t want to overstay. You never want to overstay.”
Holland on their free agents and trade options
Nick Cotsonika of NHL.com: The Detroit Red Wings will be sellers at the trade deadline and have six pending unrestricted free agents that they could move: Jimmy Howard, Niklas Kronwall, Nick Jensen, Luke Witkowski, Gustav Nyquist and Thomas Vanek.
The Wings will consider the offers and compare whether it makes more sense to re-sign them.
“It’s a matter of working the phones and seeing what people think of our players,” Holland said. “Do they want our players? If I can get a player signed and nobody’s prepared to pay a big price, then I’m obviously going to re-sign those players. But certainly if somebody’s prepared to pay, I don’t want to say a big price, but a price that we feel we can’t pass up, then we’ll look at going in that direction.”
They also have some players still under contract that they could move, but they don’t have to worry about salary cap space.
Holland notes that with the extra salary cap space next year they could be in on the free agent market.
Holland said he’s not shopping or calling teams about defenseman Kronwall. Kronwall has spent his entire 15-year career with the Red Wings. That is not saying Kronwall won’t be moved but it’s “highly unlikely.”
The GM is talking with the agents of Howard, Jensen, Nyquist and Vanek, and gets the sense they’d like to stay. Holland would like to sign some.
On if trading a player who has term left on his contract.
“If somebody’s interested in one of our older players, we’ve got to have that conversation. I don’t need cap space. So it’s about trying to in ’19-20 have a better team than we’ve got in ’18-19.”
The performance of head coach Jeff Blashill will likely earn him another contract and he’ll be sitting down with Holland in the next little while.