Confirmed with Link: Austin Watson joins Red Wings for training camp PTO

[Our Lady Peace]

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[lilidk]

Why? Nevermind he is from Michigan.........

That's will explain a lot, also anyone else perhaps defansman from Michigan that we going to trade for

 

[SirKillalot]

Depth signing, don't mind it. There will be some injuries so regardless good to have for the time he will be with the organization. And if we end up losing him on waivers at some point its not the end of the world either. Could also potentially be someone we trade to a contender for a middle round pick.

 

[Coach Reggie Dunlop]

Depth signing, don't mind it. There will be some injuries so regardless good to have for the time he will be with the organization. And if we end up losing him on waivers at some point its not the end of the world either. Could also potentially be someone we trade to a contender for a middle round pick.

He was on a PTO, if someone wanted him he would have been signed outright. We aren’t trading him for anything.

 

[redwings8831]

 

[jaster]

Huh. Interesting. I guess waiving Holl was just to give themselves flexibility over the next month, maybe buy some time.

I know a lot of you hate the 11 and 7 lineup, but buckle up, I think there's gonna be a lot of it.

 

[sepster]

Huh. Interesting. I guess waiving Holl was just to give themselves flexibility over the next month, maybe buy some time.

I know a lot of you hate the 11 and 7 lineup, but buckle up, I think there's gonna be a lot of it.

 

[SantosHalper]

Great move . Looking forward to see the games against the Sens.

 

[Gniwder]

Huh. Interesting. I guess waiving Holl was just to give themselves flexibility over the next month, maybe buy some time.

I know a lot of you hate the 11 and 7 lineup, but buckle up, I think there's gonna be a lot of it.

Can Holl practice with the team if he isn't on the roster? If so, they should do the same with Husso. I know players practice with the team before they come off of IR/LTIR, but this seems like cap circumvention. Non-roster practice squad, lol.

 

[jaster]

Can Holl practice with the team if he isn't on the roster? If so, they should do the same with Husso. I know players practice with the team before they come off of IR/LTIR, but this seems like cap circumvention. Non-roster practice squad, lol.

Sounds like he's sticking with the team as one of the 23, but I think the deadline to submit rosters is later today, so at this moment, it doesn't matter if he's practicing or not. Sounds like they are going to send Watson down though.

 

[Gniwder]

Sounds like he's sticking with the team as one of the 23, but I think the deadline to submit rosters is later today, so at this moment, it doesn't matter if he's practicing or not. Sounds like they are going to send Watson down though.

Sounds to me like Holl is a "paper move" to sign Watson.

 

[redwings8831]

 

[Inspiration]

Sounds to me like Holl is a "paper move" to sign Watson.

It's more than just to sign Watson. It also allows them to bank cap space to reduce Kane's bonus overage to the 2025/2026 season.

 

[newfy]

Fair points I suppose. It just seems like we’ve HAD those guys a lot in the past. Witkowski, Mcalrath, Tootoo, and even Kostin last year. None of the guys seemed to have an impact on having a better team and in fact, I feel like they all made us worse. It’s why we let all of them go.

I've seen these names brought up in the past and they're extremely irrelevant to this conversation. Mcilrath played 23 games over 2 seasons with a bunch of injuries. He didn't have any impact at all whatsoever, he was an AHLer who got called up.

People even bring up Too too saying he made the team worse. You know who else sucked? Guys like Joakim Andersson and Cory Emmerton. They got to be as bad at hockey or worse than Too too but no one talks about them because they made 0 impact and provided absolutely nothing. Tootoo at least did something that was different from a bunch of Vanilla players on the bottom lines.

Watson is a legit 500 NHL game guy who has spent lots of time puking and playing a regular shift. He's not an enforcer, he's a gritty fourth liners that hits like a truck and will fight aynone when his wires cross. But he can be trusted defensively and penalty killing which none of these other guys could do.

Last season with Tampa he didn't do much but the 2 years before that he averaged a double digit goal pace per 82 games as well.

 

[sepster]

Tootoo didn't have a chance to make an impact because Babcock refused to play him in favor of those plugs, Andersson and Emmerton. Same with Mike Commodore. That guy was such a world class asshole.

 

[Henkka]

It's more than just to sign Watson. It also allows them to bank cap space to reduce Kane's bonus overage to the 2025/2026 season.

It's pretty much this.

And it's not about Kane bonuses, it's about building the cap space as big as possible towards the trade deadline, to acquire a legit Top4 defenceman.

Our biggest weakness.

It's nothing about Kasper or waiving Holl or Watson or what so ever.

This was always the plan, but people have forget it.

We need the Top4 defenceman. And the cap space is the key.

 

[SirKillalot]

He was on a PTO, if someone wanted him he would have been signed outright. We aren’t trading him for anything.

If he is signed and play a bunch until then and do well in his role, of course there will be some teams open to add him to their playoff push. Depth guys as always a shot.

Tootoo didn't have a chance to make an impact because Babcock refused to play him in favor of those plugs, Andersson and Emmerton. Same with Mike Commodore.

Commodore sucked though. Wasn't a need to sign him at all. Him talking in the media about being better than he was at that time is just bull. He seems like quite the tool now as well.

 

[sepster]

Whatever Commodore is now, or what he talks about, is irrelevant to the idea that he was signed as a bottom-pairing D-man brought in to bring size and toughness to a team that had little of it. He absolutely could have rotated on the 3rd pair with Kindl and Ericsson at the time.

The point is that both Tootoo and Commodore were brought in to fill a specific need that the team lacked, and Babcock made it a point to screw them over as badly as he could.

 

[ShelbyZ]

To be fair to poor Joakim Andersson and Cory Emmerton, they weren't really in the way of Jordin Tootoo. They were warm bodies that plugged holes at the #3-5 center spots (which Tootoo didn't play) since the Wings didn't have the cap space to bring in an even halfway decent replacement for Kris Draper, and Darren Helm was perpetually injured at that point.

The issue with Tootoo was that despite coming off a season where he was a fixture in the Preds middle 6 and produced 30 points (which the Wings rewarded him for...), Babcock looked at him like he was the next Aaron Downey or Brad May and used (or didn't use) him accordingly.

In his 2nd year, he got waived and sent to GR so they'd have the roster space to keep guys like Dan Cleary and Mikael Samuelsson on the roster.