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The Detroit Red Wings acquired Jeff Petry from the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for Gustav Lindstrom and a conditional 2025 fourth round pick on Tuesday. Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman is widely respected around the league. He has a long history of making brilliant moves. The Petry trade is the latest brilliant move by Yzerman.
Yzerman worked under current Oilers general manager Ken Holland in Detroit from 2006-2010. He then became the general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2010, a position he held until 2018. The Lightning didn’t win a Stanley Cup until 2020, but Yzerman’s hands were all over the teams that won back to back Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021.
Seven of the 25 players that skated for the Lightning in the 2020 playoffs were drafted by Yzerman. Of those players, Andrei Vasilevkiy was the only one drafted in the first round. Ondrej Palat was his biggest draft steal. Palat was taken in the seventh round in 2011, a year that also brought Nikita Kucherov to the Lightning. Brayden Point (3rd round, 2014) and Anthony Cirelli (3rd round, 2015) have also proven to be fantastic mid-round picks. Tyler Johnson and Yanni Gourde were impactful players for the Lightning that were never drafted, but brought in by Yzerman.
Yzerman drafted several other notable players that have since been moved out of Tampa Bay including Jonathan Drouin, Vladislav Namestnikov, Radko Gudas, Brett Connolly, Tony DeAngelo, and Ross Colton. Yzerman drafted 67 players between 2010 and 2018. 38 of those 67 players have played in at least one NHL game.
The 2010 draft, which was held two months after he took the job, was his least fruitful draft. Only two of the eight players he selected that year played NHL games. Yzerman’s success rate in the draft jumps to 36 out of 59 players that have played at least one NHL game if we remove the 2010 draft.
Yzerman wasn’t afraid of big trades in Tampa Bay either. He acquired Mikael Sergachev from Montreal in exchange for Drouin, which turned out to be a massive win for the Lightning. Ryan McDonagh was a stud on the back end for the Lightning. Yzerman got him and JT Miller from the New York Rangers for Namestnikov, Brett Howden, Libor Hajek, and two first round picks at the 2018 trade deadline. We can’t forget about the Martin St. Louis trade. St. Louis was traded to the Rangers for Ryan Callahan and three draft picks at the 2014 trade deadline. Callahan was a member of the Lightning for three Conference Finals appearances and a Stanley Cup Finals appearance.
Yzerman was wildly successful at drafting with the Lightning, and he won a lot of important trades that eventually led to multiple Stanley Cup Championships. He didn’t get credit for those two Stanley Cups that the Lightning won, but he deserves a ton of credit.
His strategy has been different in Detroit. Moritz Seider (6th overall, 2019) and Lucas Raymond (4th overall, 2020) are Yzerman’s draft successes in Detroit thus far. He’s been more aggressive with trades and free agency at the helm in Detroit. Yzerman hasn’t been afraid to take risks with the Red Wings.
He’s moved on from notable young former Red Wings picks Anthony Mantha, Tyler Bertuzzi, Filip Zadina, Filip Hronek, and Andreas Athanasiou. He’s taken chances on notable players like Namestnikov, Nick Leddy, Oskar Sundqvist, Alex Nedelkjovic, and Jakub Vrana, all of whom have since left the organization.
Yzerman acquired Robby Fabbri for Jacob De la Rose late in 2019. Fabbri earned himself a three-year, $12 million contract for his efforts with the Red Wings, while De la Rose is now playing in Sweden. Obtaining the signing rights to Alex Nedelkjovic in exchange for the rights to Jonathan Bernier and third round pick in 2021 was a move that looked like a steal at the time, although Nedelkjovic signed with the Pittsburgh Penguins this summer.
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He made a similar move to get the rights to Ville Husso from the St. Louis Blues in exchange for a third round pick last summer. Yzerman turned struggling veteran Nick Leddy into Oskar Sundqvist and Jake Walman last summer. Sundqvist was later traded for a fourth round pick, but Walman has turned into an effective defender for the Red Wings.
The Petry deal is the latest smart trade from Yzerman. He managed to get Petry for 37.5% of his $6.25 million cap hit since Pittsburgh and Montreal are both retaining salary on Petry, as per CapFriendly. Yzerman made another smart trade earlier in the summer to acquire Klim Kostin from the Edmonton Oilers simply for taking Kailer Yamamoto off the Oilers’ books, which involved a buyout worth a measly $433,334. Oh yeah, he also pried Alex DeBrincat out of Ottawa.
Yzerman made a few splashes in the free agent market last summer by signing David Perron, Ben Chiarot, and Andrew Copp. He’s made several interesting signings this summer including JT Compher, Shayne Gostisbehere, Daniel Sprong, Christian Fischer, and Justin Holl.
It’s safe to say that Yzerman has been nothing short of aggressive in his pursuit of getting the once vaunted Red Wings back into playoff contention. He’s proven that he can build a team the patient way mostly through drafting and development, and now he’s showing that he can build a team mostly through trades and free agency as well. Most of Yzerman’s trades and signings leave fans of other teams wondering why their team’s GM couldn’t have done that. He hasn’t lost sight of the draft and develop model though… he’s drafted 51 players in his five drafts with Detroit.
Yzerman has had a busy summer. He added an impact scorer in DeBrincat. He added a lot of young depth to his forward group. He’s added Gostisbehere and Petry, who can both still contribute lots of offence from the back end. Time will tell if the 2023-24 version of the Red Wings can climb into a playoff spot in the tough Atlantic Division, but nobody can accuse Yzerman of sitting on his hands.
