What options in the trade market might Detroit consider on defense and in net?

This piece is the second half of an attempt to consider potential trade targets for the Detroit Red Wings. In Part I, I explored options up front. In Part II, I’m taking a look at options in net and on the blue line. 

As we noted in Part I, goaltending is an area of interest for Detroit, even if you were satisfied with Ville Husso’s first season with the Wings, given that he is the only goalie in the organization on an NHL contract.

Meanwhile, while the Wings have been slowly and surely reinforcing the D corps that left them among the worst teams in the NHL since 2017 or so, that process isn’t over, and Detroit is realistically at least a defenseman or two away from boasting the kind of blue line necessary to compete for a Stanley Cup.

Given the scarcity of quality options on the free agent market and the Wings' robust collection of tradable assets, we're going to focus on players (potentially) to be had via trade.

In considering options for this list, I used names that have been credibly reported as available via the end-of-season rumor mill.  In other words, it would be great if Detroit could trade a couple of second rounders for Cale Makar.  Given that Colorado would presumably hang up the phone the moment he heard another executive express interest in Makar, you won't find him on the list below.

Without further ado, to the trade targets!

Connor Hellebuyck

Fresh off posting a .920 SV% and 2.49 goals against average in sixty-four games played, Hellebuyck is the class of the offseason goalie market. He won the Vezina in ‘19-20 and hasn’t had a SV% below .910 in his last five seasons. With the Jets apparently on the precipice of begrudgingly accepting a rebuild, Hellebuyck is now available with one year remaining on his contract at a $6.17 million cap hit. For a player with a credible claim to being the league’s best goaltender, it’s a bargain.

There will surely be many suitors for Hellebuyck should the Jets determine they must move on from him, so, even if he asks out, he won’t come cheap. A player of Hellebuyck's quality can't be had without a painful return.  However, the thirty-year old goaltender grew up in Oakland County before his collegiate days at UMass-Lowell. As such, Detroit may be an attractive option not just for a trade but for an extension.

Any time you are offering significant term to a goaltender, it is a major risk from a book-keeping perspective. Goaltending is as fickle as anything in hockey, and given Hellebuyck’s age, his desired contract will be far from risk-free. Still, his track record of success and the potential impact of adding elite goaltending makes it difficult to argue against that gamble, should it come Yzerman’s way.

John Gibson

The other major goaltending option on the trade market appears to be John Gibson of the Anaheim Ducks. There is a corollary to our discussion of Clayton Keller from Part I when it comes to the twenty-nine-year-old netminder. Like Keller, Gibson has spent (just about) his entire career playing for a franchise for whom mediocrity would be a significant step up. As such, it can be difficult to separate his performances out from his environment. Has Gibson’s game suffered with the passage of time, or has the weight of his meager surroundings kept him from achieving (or perhaps maintaining) his potential?

For a three season stretch between 2015 and 2018, Gibson was among the league’s best goaltenders, posting save percentages of .920, .924, and .926. In his last four seasons, Gibson has hovered around .900, running up an .899, .904. .903, and .904.

When those figure are paired with a contract worth $6.4 per year against the salary cap through 2026-27, it becomes difficult to justify rolling the dice on Gibson. Yes, he was imperious at his apex, but that apex is an increasingly distant memory. I think it’s entirely possible that Gibson could return to his mid-2010s form in a new environment (or at least approach it), but because of his contract, the risk of him failing to do so is too great. In my estimation, barring massive retention from the Ducks, I don’t think that gamble is worth taking.

Colton Parayko

Now thirty years old, Colton Parayko’s career hasn’t taken off in quite the way he might have expected after winning the 2019 Stanley Cup with St. Louis. At 6’6”, 230 pounds, Parayko has the prototypical size Steve Yzerman seems to prize in his defensemen, and, even at a few years’ remove, it wasn't so long ago that Parayko was either the best or second best defenseman on a Stanley Cup winning side (depending on your assessment of Alex Pietrangelo).

Given his advanced age (by modern NHL standards), we now have a solid sense of what Parayko can provide and, by the numbers, it’s not the prettiest. Parayko has not carried a greater than 50% xG at even strength since his Cup-winning season. Granted, that has come in the context of the Blues’ transition from physical, defensive juggernaut to a more open, rush-happy brand of hockey over the last several seasons. With twenty-seven points last season and a career high of thirty-five, he isn’t much of a scorer either.

However, Parayko did log the sixth most 5-on-5 minutes of any skater in the league in 2022-23, so, at the very least, he can eat serious ice time to reasonable success. His size can also help him manage life on the wrong end of an aging curve. Still, a $6.5 million-a-year ticket running through the ‘29-30 season would be a lot for any team to take on.

At the end of the day, there is some reason to believe there could be a fit between Parayko and Detroit. We’ve seen Yzerman target defensemen before who were, by no means, analytics darlings. Nonetheless, given the length of Parayko’s current deal, I would be surprised to see Detroit turn to him this summer.

Samuel Girard

To me, Samuel Girard is one of the most interesting players in the NHL today. On July 31st, 2019, Girard inked a seven-year $35 million contract. It was the kind of deal that has come into vogue for talented young players, who accept a longer term deal than had been standard for restricted free agents but for a generous AAV pay raise. 

For a player, it offers an early opportunity for a hefty free agent bag. From a team’s perspective, you are locking in a player for more than they might have earned so far but for a duration of a time by the end of which they will almost assuredly outpace the deal.

In Girard’s case, it hasn’t quite worked out. Injuries have cost the young blue liner significant games every season since he signed the deal, and, though the Avs won a Cup in that span, their exceptional defensive depth has left Girard something of a redundancy.

Stylistically, Girard is a delight to watch: Almost a Quinn Hughes-lite in the way he dances away from opposing forecheckers with graceful edgework before sending crisp tape-to-tape passes up ice. Girard is, at his core, a rambler, a creator, and a rover from the back end, and, in this regard, he can provide Detroit with something it otherwise lacks.

Colorado needs to move salary on defense and down the wings to try to reinforce its presently insufficient depth at center, and Girard, fresh off career highs in assists (31) and points (37) is a natural candidate. Thanks to the presence of Cale Makar, he is another prime candidate for an increase in points with more premium power play ice time. His contract isn’t insignificant (or really even a bargain at this point), but Girard is an intriguing option for Yzerman to consider.

Alec Martinez

Like Colorado, the Vegas Golden Knights will (once again) be looking to shed salary this summer, and defenseman Alec Martinez may have to be part of that process.

Martinez is a two-time Stanley Cup champion, including scoring OT series clinchers in the 2014 Western Conference and Stanley Cup Finals. His career high in points is just thirty-nine (which came all the way back in ‘16-17), but he has always produced steady underlying numbers at even strength.

Beyond his overtime heroics, the Rochester Hills-born defender has earned a reputation for strong postseason performances. This playoffs for Vegas, the Knights have earned a staggering 68.8% of the goal share with Martinez on the ice.

In October, Martinez will enter the final year of a three-year deal he signed with Vegas in the summer of 2021, worth $5.25 million against the cap. There is precedent for the Knights being forced to give away useful and talented players for all but nothing due to cap constraints.  

For Detroit, this could be an excellent opportunity to acquire an experience player without tethering yourself to a long-term contract. In this regard, should Yzerman get the chance to acquire Martinez, it would appear to make quite a bit of sense.

Erik Karlsson

That Erik Karlsson has played his way into a place where he and his eight-year, $11.5 million AAV contract (signed in the summer of 2019) are even a consideration for teams with playoff aspirations is nothing short of miraculous.  Within a year of signing the deal, Karlsson appeared to have past beyond the “elite” subsection of his career thanks to the toll of time and injury, and the aging Sharks' window for contention looked firmly shut.

Last year, however, a rejuvenated Karlsson bounced back, though San Jose couldn't say the same.  He set a career high with 101 points. To accomplish this feat, the speedy Swede did seem to revert to what his doubters accused him of even in his prime: Sacrificing any semblance of defense for an all-out-attack approach. In a peculiar way, he is the rare player who might benefit from scoring less in a new home, where he would presumably be playing in more competitive games than the San Jose Sharks of recent years could muster.

Still, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Karlsson makes much sense in Detroit. If there is a team that could justify the risk of acquiring him, I think it would have to be one that believes it is an Erik Karlsson away from being a legitimate Cup favorite. Unfortunately, I don’t think even the most bullish outlook on the state of the Wings’ rebuild would argue that Detroit fits that description. So, even if he has a credible case to being the best post-Nicklas Lidstrom defenseman in the NHL, Erik Karlsson probably doesn't make sense for Steve Yzerman and co.