What might the contracts look like for Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider?
I reached out to a cap expert to get his take on the most pressing piece of business for the Red Wings right now.
It’s August 27.
Two of the Detroit Red Wings most important players also remain unsigned with roughly three weeks to go before training camp opens in Traverse City on Sept. 19.
Based on reporting of others, and what I’ve heard myself, both the players and the team believe that Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond will have new deals before training camp.
There have been reports that Raymond and the Wings are farther apart, which is certainly feasible, but I’ve also heard it’s not as large of a gap as other headlines might indicate.
One thing I do know is that things are being played close to the vest by Detroit, which is common practice for Steve Yzerman.
To get an unbiased opinion on this, I reached out to my pal Kyle Stich, who works with AFP Analytics a company that provides insights to agents and other clients on player values when it comes to contract negations.
AFP has NHL agents as clients, but neither Seider nor Raymond are on that list, so he was able to more freely talk about the market for both players.
The market for this point at Seider, according to Stich, is probably just over the deal that Brock Faber recently signed with the Minnesota Wild. Stich projected a seven or eight-year deal with an AAV of $8.6 million.
Personally I’ve heard that Seider would like an eight-year deal, so let’s assume that’s more likely at this point.
Raymond is the trickier one, because the player could be looking for a short-term deal to try and bet on himself and get paid more down the road.
On a long-term deal, Stich projects Raymond’s deal at eight years, in the $7.75 to $8 million range.
Both of these projected deals would fit in the Red Wings cap picture, even with an RFA deal for Jonatan Berggren coming soon. Detroit as of today has $17.6 million in cap space and that includes Ville Husso, who has really fallen out of favor and carries at $4.75 million cap hit that expires next summer.