The trade deadline is over for another season, and the Detroit Red Wings once again used it to stockpile for the future.
General manager Steve Yzerman dealt two players who previously featured to be key parts of the rebuild, a forward who clearly had fallen out of favor with the organization, and a role player who made a good impression in his relatively short time with the team.
Yzerman added Jakub Vrana and Oskar Sundqvist to the list of departures via trade on Friday, following deals involving Tyler Bertuzzi and Filip Hronek earlier in the week.
The Wings (28-24-9) have 21 games remaining, starting with Saturday’s matinee at the New York Islanders. While Ben Chiarot noted after Thursday’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Seattle Kraken that the Wings “are not dead in the water,” they have sunk to being five points out of a wild card spot, with five teams — including the Islanders — in front of them.
On Thursday, the Wings looked like a team dealing with the emotional toll of being sellers, having watched their general manager pluck players from the locker room.
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Yzerman made four trades in three days. On Wednesday, he acquired a conditional 2023 first-round pick and a 2023 second-round pick from the Vancouver Canucks for 25-year-old defenseman Filip Hronek and a 2023 fourth-round pick. Hronek was having a career year, but the Canucks offer was too good to pass on.
On Thursday, Yzerman acquired a protected 2024 first-round pick and a 2025 fifth-round pick from the Boston Bruins for 28-year-old forward Tyler Bertuzzi; the Wings had to retain 50% of Bertuzzi’s salary, but he is in the last year of his contract. The deal became necessary when negotiations with Bertuzzi, who is in the last year of his contract, did not yield common ground.
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On Friday, Yzerman acquired next to nothing — a seventh-round pick and a minor-leaguer — and retained 50% of what is left on Jakub Vrana’s salary ($5.25 million salary cap hit through 2023-24) to send the 27-year-old forward to the St. Louis Blues. Just before the 3 p.m. deadline, he acquired a fourth-round pick in the 2023 draft from the Minnesota Wild for Oskar Sundqvist. Sunqvist came to the Wings at last year’s trade deadline, and was a good role player and penalty killer, as well as net-front guy on the power play.
Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames.
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Her latest book, “On the Clock: Behind the Scenes with the Detroit Red Wings at the NHL Draft,” is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Triumph Books. Personalized copies available via her e-mail.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Red Wings trade four players by deadline for draft picks
