I think im changing my mind on Aa. maybe we try another year and see how he performs. I dont love faulk but if he finds his game agian he is pretty good. I just would rather see hronek hicketts and cholo play alot. If we can answer a few questions back there on the blue line it will help the direction going forward

Zetterberg, while not the superstar he once was, is still a rather formidable player in my opinion. He’s not missed a game in 3 years, only 5 in the last 4 years. I know he’s had back issues but is there reason to believe he is actually done and not able to fulfill his part of a signed contract? FWIW, he has been my favorite Redwing as a Blackhawks fan.

I don’t disagree with your cholowski and hicketts assessments. But Faulk is a very good defenseman. Worth AA in my opinion even though as we all know we haven’t seen the best of AA at all.



I will be sad when he does go. But lots of rumors out of Detroit say he might be done. Blash in a recent interview (I wanna say yesterday) said that he’s not sure and talked about what he saw Z went through last year to be able to play, said he didn’t practice entire second half of the season because he couldn’t do it with his back.

Wow! As a Hawks fan, the Hossa’s bombshell from last summer took about everybody (outside of the room) by total shock. When those guys signed their cap circumventing contracts within the previous CBA, Z is at least on record saying there really wasn’t any intention on playing out the full term. I am not doubting legitimate health concerns from both of these two warriors. LTIR is still a viable “loophole” when the league deems it so. Thanks for that info, John.

One thing you do need to keep in mind is that the Wings will not be able to get full cap relief in a scenario where Franzen, Kronwall and Zetterberg are all on LTIR. In order to get the relief the team has to use the relief immediately. In other words, they have to spend what they save. For example, for them to get the full relief from Franzen's cap hit they have to spend $3,954,545 above the cap ceiling prior to the start of the season (since Franzen will be placed on what is essentially season long LTIR). If they are only $2.5M over the cap at the time he is placed onto LTIR they only would get $2.5M in cap relief and the rest of Franzen's cap hit (~$1.4M) would remain on the books for season as basically dead cap money. This is, I suspect, part of the reason Ken Holland has been willing to spend the last few seasons despite the team declining. Without spending the money initially and getting the cap relief they would have to ice a roster with ~$4M less in available cap space than the rest of the league.

Why this all matters in terms of your plan and why the Wings cannot LTIR Kronwall, Zetterberg and Franzen and receive the full relief is because teams can only spend up to 10% over the established salary cap ceiling during the offseason. this means the absolute most cap relief a team can receive for the up coming season from LTIR is $7.95M...which is $6.8M less than the combined total of those three players cap hits and which is about $800k more than the remaining cap space you have left in your scenario.