On the Detroit Red Wings …
Ansar Khan of MLive: (mailbag) The Red Wings will wait until training starts and the preseason is under way before they make any trades. Once Andres Athanasiou is re-sign and if everyone is healthy, they will be over the cap. Rather than trade someone like Mike Green, Riley Sheahan or Darren Helm, they are more likely to waive someone.
If they are out of the playoffs at the deadline, then they might look to trade Green. Helm has four years left on his contract and $14.75 million, so he wouldn’t be easy to move given his injury issues unless they retained salary.
The Red Wings could get some temporarily salary relief if Ryan Sproul isn’t ready to start the season. If/when he is ready, they could look to trade him. If he can’t be moved they could waive him.
The Wings could use more scoring but have no cap space. Could see them wanting to sign Thomas Vanek over Jaromir Jagr.
Highly unlikely the Red Wings would be able to land John Tavares if he hit the open market next summer.
On the Buffalo Sabres …
Chris Nichols of FanRag Sports: Darren Dreger on WGR 550 and said that there isn’t a lot of trade buzz around Buffalo Sabres Evander Kane at the moment.
“That’s not to say that Botterill isn’t getting calls,” clarified Dreger. “I don’t know that he is or he isn’t. The party line has been that it’s a team that’s in the win-now mode – that may consider themselves a Stanley Cup contender, perhaps an older team – that would and has showed the most interest in Evander Kane.
“But I think that those general managers with those few clubs would also want to see how he starts the year. Let’s see how his offseason went. It sounds like, in the limited research that I’ve done, that he’s worked pretty hard and he’s motivated going into the contract year.
“So my sense is that he’s going to be a contributing player pretty early for Buffalo. And if that is the case, and he’s not moved before then, then maybe his stock rises a little bit.
“But I think that we’re going to talk a lot about Evander Kane in the early part of the season specific to some of the trade interest.”
