There are a number of practical reasons for Detroit to let Shayne Gostisbehere walk as a UFA this summer, but what would the Red Wings lose if they do indeed let him leave this summer?

Shayne Gostisbehere—signed to a one-year, $4.125 million contract last summer, which will officially send him to unrestricted free agency on July 1st—provided one of the most memorable moments of the Red Wings season.  

Needing a victory to extend its playoff hopes and trailing by a goal, Gostisbehere leapt into the Jumpman pose to keep a would-be Montreal clearance in the offensive zone before landing softly and immediately into a pass for David Perron.  About 15 seconds later, Lucas Raymond scored to tie the game.  Raymond scored again in overtime, and Detroit had lived to fight one-day longer.

Gostisbehere's leap was a moment of undeniable impact, a real-time reminder of the precarity of the Red Wings playoff margins and the lengths to which they would go to maximize them.  But 24 hours later, between an even more improbable Red Wing comeback with even less time to spare and Detroit's playoff fortunes officially turning sour thanks to an empty-net goal in a tied game, it soon got lost in the end-of-season shuffle.

For most of the season, Gostisbehere felt something of a hired gun—a veteran specialist signed to a one-year deal for a specific task, whose tenure with the Red Wings never seemed too far from its expiration date, but he was also highly effective in that role as power play quarterback.

Gostisbehere scored 10 goals and provided 46 assists in 81 games with Detroit this season, his most productive year since his age-24 campaign in Philadelphia back in 2017-18 (13 goals and 52 assists in 78 games).  He factored in on just under half of the Red Wings power play goals this season (29 of 63, or 46.0%) as Detroit climbed from a 21.1% conversion rate a year ago to 23.1% last season.  That's no monumental leap, but it is progress, and Gostisbehere was the 13th highest scoring defenseman in the NHL this season.

With that in mind, is it possible that Gostisbehere does in fact have a part to play in Detroit's long-term future?

Practical Obstacles to Re-Signing Gostisbehere

Before going any further, it's worth pointing out that there are straightforward practical reasons why the easiest answer to the previous sentence's question is a simple 'no.'

Most notably, there is the Red Wings' abundance of proven options on the blue line already under contract for next season.  As GM Steve Yzerman said last Friday, "Currently, including Simon [Edvinsson] who ended the season with us, we had seven under contract and with Shayne Gostisbehere as a pending UFA, so our D corps will probably be for the most part in tact. I can't say there won't be changes on it."

Yzerman also suggested 23-year-old defense prospect Albert Johansson may well be ready for NHL minutes in 2024-25, so, even without re-signing Gostisbehere, it seems likely Detroit will want to move out a defenseman or two over the summer.

When you combine that crowd with the reality of Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond's forthcoming raises, there certainly isn't a surplus of cap space left over for Gostisbehere.

What Does Gostisbehere Bring?

At this point, it's fair to wonder whether it's worth even considering a possible future in Detroit for Gostisbehere, but when Yzerman was asked directly about that topic Friday, he answered in the affirmative.

"Yeah, absolutely," the GM said, in response to a question about whether he'd consider retaining Gostisbehere. "He's very good on the power play and a little bit different on our corps—an offensive guy more. What'd he end up with 50-something, 60ish points? [It was 56]. Mo was right there behind him, but a different player that adds to the depth of our defensive corps. You need to have good defenders, but you also gotta have some defense that can generate offense and play at the power play. He was good at that. That's something I would like to consider, strongly consider, and contract aside, it's making this all fit, finding the players"

There has to be at least some element of simply keeping options open on Yzerman's behalf here, but this is also more than a boilerplate extolment of a player destined to be out the door regardless.  At the risk of reading too closely, Yzerman's correction that he will not just "consider" but "strongly consider" feels like a marker of more than passing interest, and the idea that Gostisbehere provides something unique to the Detroit defense corps compounds that sense.

Gostisbehere is clearly a limited player; after all, there's a reason he's bounced around a bit since his initial breakthrough with the Flyers.  Nonetheless, he's also a player who does his job well as a PP quarterback, which is an important and rare enough specialty to remain in demand amongst competitive teams despite those limitations.

The consensus view of Gostisbehere's game is that he is a defensive liability whose upside has more or less everything to do with his scoring touch, especially on the power play.  However, as the below charts from Micah Blake McCurdy of HockeyViz.com show, the numbers don't exactly paint that same picture.

First, you can see the difference in the Red Wings' chance creation with (left) and without (right) Gostisbehere at five-on-five.  The headline figure is the same; in both charts, Detroit comes in at 2.28 expected goals-per-60 minutes, 12% below league average.  However, you can also see that the Red Wings do a better (if still less than ideal) job of driving offense toward the slot with him on the ice than without him.

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Then, you can see the difference in the Red Wings defensively with and without Gostisbehere, where there is a more significant distinction.  In terms of chances against, Detroit was a much stouter defensive team with Gostisbehere on the ice (2.48 xG against/60) than without him (2.74 xGA/60).  

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Here, it's essential to point that quality of competition has a significant hand in explaining this discrepancy. The Red Wings assigned Moritz Seider and the top pair minutes of unprecedented difficulty; that means Gostisbehere (a stalwart of Detroit's third pair) inevitably played much easier minutes. However, the fact remains that Gostisbehere didn't give back his offensive contributions in chances the other direction; instead, Gostisbehere was stingy defensively, even if he didn't have nearly as difficult a task to handle as someone like Seider, Jake Walman, or even Ben Chiarot and Jeff Petry.

One other area that stands out about Gostisbehere's game is his comfort playing on either side.  He's a left shot, but he spent the majority of his five-on-five minutes on the right, playing primarily with Olli Maatta (653:13 together).  That versatility is another point in his favor.

Alternatives to Gostisbehere

The easiest path to concluding with certainty that Detroit is better off letting Gostisbehere walk as a free agent this summer involves identifying a plug-and-play replacement for him as power play quarterback, and there the Red Wings have options.  Seider, Walman, and Petry all saw time on the man advantage this year, with Seider serving as the primary defenseman on the team's second PP unit.  

When asked about Seider as a power play quarterback at his end-of-season presser, Lalonde said ,"I think that's gonna take a life of itself.  He's done a great job with that situation.  He's grown and developed in that situation.  That'll take some time.  That's a tough position, and everything else we ask of our D—five-on-five, tough position that we ask of them on the penalty kill.  I think that's still a work-in-progress.  Very, very capable though."  In other words, Lalonde is confident that's a role that can and will suit Seider in time, but it's also an area where he's still developing.

Meanwhile, Simon Edvinsson only played 22 seconds on the power play this season at the NHL level, but as Yzerman pointed out at his post-trade deadline presser, it's a discipline he trained in during his time in Grand Rapids this year.

“He’s really an excellent defender,” Yzerman said of Edvinsson at the time. “He’s gotten more confidence, his closing of plays, his play in front of his own net, reading the play and when to box out and when to front and reading the play in front of him but knowing where everybody is behind him. … Probably our biggest thought was we want him to play a lot of minutes and touching the puck and playing on the power play. But as I watch, I think that's probably the most important thing for defenders to be able to play defense—he’s really improved in that area.”

That leaves the Red Wings with a minimum of two strong candidates to play the point on the power play next year if Gostisbehere walks, though neither of those players can match his extended track record of doing so at a high level in the NHL.

The Verdict?

The likeliest scenario to me remains that Gostisbehere walks as a free agent.  The crowd at the blue line, the prospective cap crunch, and the reasonable in-house replacement options all suggest that Gostisbehere has probably played his last game as a Red Wing.

Still, Yzerman did say, "If we can figure out a way to do it, he's a valuable player for how we're set up on the back end," which makes it difficult to entirely close the book on Gostisbehere's tenure in Detroit.

Yzerman also said that the Red Wings were "probably comfortable carrying eight defensemen" into next season, adding, "we were very lucky this year. Didn't have any significant, long-term injuries on the blue line, but generally, you talk about needing three goaltenders. D's a tough position to play—going back to get pucks, blocking shots. There's a lot of injuries."

That cracks the door for Gostisbehere to return just a little bit more, suggesting that even if Edvinsson and Johansson play NHL roles to open next season (the former a near certainty, the latter a strong likelihood given Yzerman's other comments), Detroit could still have a place for him if it moves out just one of its veteran D currently under contract for next season.  That would require some gymnastics, but it isn't prohibitively complicated.

The simple fact is that Gostisbehere is a player who does his job well.  It's something of a niche job, perhaps even a luxury item for a team that expects its cap margins to tighten with Seider and Raymond's new deals.  However, because of his baseline competence in areas that Yzerman repeatedly pointed out diverge from the general strengths of his team's blue line, it feels impossible to entirely rule out a return to Detroit for Gostisbehere.

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