Bottom line was, Seider was spending half of his shifts, recovering from Walman’s blind, 3 ft passes to his imaginary friend. Yet Lalonde kept giving him chance after chance, playing important minutes, before they finally gave up on him in early March.
Teams scout other teams, and he was that bad since December. Jake Walman played his way off the Detroit Red Wings, and into a salary dump.
It’s crazy how much people don’t watch a player. He had a great year in 22-23’ but literally fell off a cliff this past season, after getting paid. He was atrocious and Lalonde kept putting him out there, hoping he’d snap out of it.
As I said back 2 months ago…. When Walman came back from his injury, and was moved off of Seider’s left side, that decision came from up above. Edvinsson took his place in the Top 4 during his injury, but remember, he was a healthy scratch right before the injury too.
Walman was fully cleared on April 1st. Then Lalonde sat Maatta one game for Walman on the bottom pairing, and that was it. He was bad again, and it was apparent Maatta was gonna help them much more than Walman.
He was stapled to the press box for the last few weeks after that.
He was nowhere in their plans going forward. People just kept pretending it was something to do with an injury, because they like him personally. He himself, mentioned something in a recent podcast. That he’s gonna have to be better and wants to remain in Detroit. The podcast guys didn’t even catch it really, and just kept going on about his celebrations.
The writing was on the wall. They want to move Holl, Walman and Maatta and add two top dmen to play with the two kids. Then have Chiarot/Petry and Johansson filling out the D-Core.
If Matt Roy coming home is one of them, he’ll slide in with Edvinsson. The second one will have to have more offense to his game. Is Shea Theodore available? Or will they do Montour, and add a lefty to play with Seider.
Gostisbehere is likely still in the picture as well. He did play very well down the stretch for them.
One thing was for certain though. They wanted to clear Walman, Maatta and Holl off the books.
One down, possibly two to go.