Breaking: Red Wings Deal Veleno to Chicago for Smith and Mrazek

After facilitating a trade between the Kraken and Lightning earlier in the week, the Detroit Red Wings announced another deal ahead of the Trade Deadline on Friday afternoon.  The Red Wings are sending out Joe Veleno to the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for forward Craig Smith and goaltender Petr Mrazek, the latter a former Red Wing coming home.

Detroit selected Veleno with the 30th pick in the 2018 Draft (Ken Holland's final draft as general manager before Steve Yzerman's takeover).  Veleno has gone on to play 288 games as a Red Wing.  He's shown himself to be capable of playing a top six role in small doses, though never quite produced at a level to suggest he should remain their full time.  He's also not quite proven himself to thrive in a shutdown fourth line role.  This season, he has five goals and five assists in 56 games.  When you put it all together, Veleno never quite found a way to graduate from expendable status, and evidently, Yzerman determined he could fetch a return worth parting from him.

Bookmark The Hockey News Detroit Red Wings team site to stay connected to the latest news, game-day coverage, and player features. 

In Smith, the Red Wings acquire a 35-year-old depth winger whose $1 million contract will expire at the end of the season and who had enjoyed solid production in a fourth line role as a Blackhawk: nine goals and seven assists in 40 games played.  Smith effectively projects as a Christian Fischer replacement for the Red Wings, and he could also slot into the role Carter Mazur was called up to occupy (fourth line sparkplug) before his injury Thursday night.

In that regard, this trade doesn't exactly look like spectacular asset management from Detroit (giving up a useful if unspectacular, but most importantly cheap, young forward under team control to replace an older depth forward whom it just lost for free via waivers).

However, when we get to Mrazek, we seem to arrive at the heart of the trade from a Red Wings perspective.  Detroit's goaltending is trending in a not-so-good direction, and Thursday night's performance from Alex Lyon hit that theme.  It seems Yzerman decided he wanted to take a swing on a different option in net.  Notably, Mrazek is not a 'pure rental.'  He carries an AAV of $4.25 million through the end of next season.

Mrazek is not having a good season by the boxcar statistics, but it's difficult to assess just how much of that he's responsible behind a porous Chicago defense.  Mrazek has a 10–19–2 record with an .890 save percentage and 3.46 goals against average.  Yzerman presumably believes those numbers can climb in a better defensive environment.

As noted above, Mrazek also began his career in Detroit.  The Red Wings drafted him in the fifth round in 2010, and he played 166 games for the team between 2012 and 2018.

The next question for Detroit to answer is whether it will now make another to deal to move Lyon out before the 3 PM deadline.

Never miss a story by adding us to your Google News favorites.