Confirmed with Link: Walman and a 2nd Round Pick traded to SJ

OldnotDeadWings

Registered User
Sep 18, 2013
625
778
Walman lost his first-pair role and was a healthy scratch late in the season, do people think other GMs didn't notice? That no pro scouts with a positive evaluation of Walman went to their boss and recommended he look into it, that in their view Walman could help them? If GMs thought the same way that many fans here seem to think about Walman's ability, wouldn't at least one of them have approached SY during the 10 weeks from the end of the regular season to Draft week to find out what it would take to acquire him? SY is gonna say, "Nah, I'd rather give YOU a second-rounder Biff. How does that sound?" Do fans think there is some kind of mandatory trade protocol, that the GM who would like to add a player has to wait for an invitation to make an offer? If SY screwed up his evaluation of Walman, then so did every other GM in the league who whiffed on a chance to improve his defense for nothing more than FC or even gain a late-round pick.

The scenario of suddenly needing more Cap space to add a player makes no sense either when SY had the entire off-season to go over the Cap. He could have traded Maatta almost any time if necessary. Could he have retained on Walman and got something? Maybe, but two years' retention might get in the way of being able to move other guys during those two years. It's not just the potential Cap dumps involved, it's the guys with trade value that might need 10-20 per cent retained to fit into the other team's Cap, or to improve the value of the return.

As much as some fans might want to think Walman had value -- and of course he had some -- he didn't have enough for the two-year pricetag and the strings attached. If the dressing room is done with him, a string becomes a hangman's noose. One of those strings may be the cause of Walman being a healthy scratch now. One of them might have been why the Blues gave up on him in the first place. It doesn't really matter, something in addition to Walman not being as good as fan perception probably played a part in both wanting to get rid of him and what IMO was a total lack of interest from other teams. Ottawa and St. Louis paid the same Draft pick this summer to move similarly-priced players they didn't want, but I guess that's just a coincidence rather than one of the established costs of doing business.
 

PullHard

Jul 18, 2007
28,573
2,810
Are we going to react as equally negatively against Walman now that he’s been scratched? How does this work
 

odin1981

There can be only 1!
Mar 8, 2013
5,290
1,114
Canton Mi
For better or worse, Yzerman is big on personality and once he doesn't like you, you're out the door. Walman did something that made Yzerman dislike him. A few guys on the team- Larkin- seem to have probably felt similarly to Stevie Y. At least a few bits of evidence point to it being related to Walman struggling to come back from injury and the team feeling that he could have tried harder, wasn't as injured as he made out to be, and/or didn't work through the pain well enough when in the lineup. Perhaps he had too much fun on vacation in Tampa too. Perhaps there's something totally unrelated that we never even got word of- the proverbial zamboni trough piss.

My personal opinion is that this was ridiculously stupid regardless. We had a ton of bad defenseman to get rid of, and we chose one of the good ones. We moved him at a time when he had no value and in an apparent panic. If we did this that fast because we can't tolerate having someone we don't like on the team dress for us, I think that's a little immature, but I do understand how important team buy-in can be. If someday we're in the playoffs and we're watching every guy give every ounce of their being to will the team to victory, that will be a nice consequence of this mentality.

The more worrying notion is that perhaps this was done to free up cap space in a desperate gamble to acquire Jacob Trouba. He's another washed up echo of his former self that we should know would be an immediate disaster on our blue line in anything more than a third pairing role (like every defenseman we sign/trade for). That notion terrifies me most of all as it indicates this "bring in bad defenseman" strategy isn't the "there's no sense paying assets to bring in good defenseman before the kids are ready, so we'll acquire stop gaps from the bargain bin" strategy that we delude ourselves into believing it is. Trying to bring in Trouba implies that Steve Yzerman watches Jeff Petry, Ben Chiarot, Justin Holl, and Jacob Trouba play defense and says to himself "oh yeah, I want more of that on my team." If so, this team is doomed unless our prospects just turn out to be so good that we never acquire pro scouted defenseman in the Yzerman era. It doesn't matter how much buy-in you get from garbage players. They're going to give you garbage results.

Regardless, the final result is that we have a terrible defense having lost our second best defender. Edvinsson has fortunately managed to succeed being thrust immediately into a top pairing role with some of the hardest minutes in the league. Unfortunately, Petry and Chiarot on the second pairing together have not faired nearly as well.

The only problem is the bad d men have absolutely no value. No one wants them. The only realistic way of unloading one of them is at the trade deadline if one team gets creamed by injuries and needs a 6/7 for emergency purposes so that limits it to bad ones on 1 year remaining.
 

Geezer WC

Standing room
Jan 29, 2022
382
257
Walman lost his first-pair role and was a healthy scratch late in the season, do people think other GMs didn't notice? That no pro scouts with a positive evaluation of Walman went to their boss and recommended he look into it, that in their view Walman could help them? If GMs thought the same way that many fans here seem to think about Walman's ability, wouldn't at least one of them have approached SY during the 10 weeks from the end of the regular season to Draft

Well then, Why did Yzerman re-up the guy?












SY is gonna say, "Nah, I'd rather give YOU a second-rounder Biff. How does that sound?" Do fans think there is some kind of mandatory trade protocol, that the GM who would like to add a player has to wait for an invitation to make an offer? If SY screwed up his evaluation of Walman, then so did every other GM in the league who whiffed on a chance to improve his defense for nothing more than FC or even gain a late-round pick.

The scenario of suddenly needing more Cap space to add a player makes no sense either when SY had the entire off-season to go over the Cap. He could have traded Maatta almost any time if necessary. Could he have retained on Walman and got something? Maybe, but two years' retention might get in the way of being able to move other guys during those two years. It's not just the potential Cap dumps involved, it's the guys with trade value that might need 10-20 per cent retained to fit into the other team's Cap, or to improve the value of the return.

As much as some fans might want to think Walman had value -- and of course he had some -- he didn' probably played a part in both
 

Gniwder

Registered User
Oct 12, 2009
15,260
8,409
Bellingham, WA
Well then, Why did Yzerman re-up the guy?
People can hide personality issues especially when they're looking at a huge payday. For $1M/year, I can pretend to be a nice guy for a year or two. (Stop laughing, I swear I can.) Once I get that guaranteed $10.2M like Walman did, all bets are off. At that point, I'm set for life and I'll say whatever the hell I feel like saying.

My guess here is that Stevie was honest with Grier which is why the second was attached. Whatever the issue is with Walman, it's bad enough to get healthy scratched only a month into the season. $3.4M x 2 left on his contract. I suppose that's worth a second.

Whether or not Walman gets his shit together, he needed a change of scenery. I'm OK with this trade now.
 

Henkka

Registered User
Jan 31, 2004
32,409
13,453
Tampere, Finland
Letting go of Ghost wasn't necessarily bad. Now replacing him with Gustafsson was the mistake.

I don't know.

Our power-play is already better (26,5% at current season) without Ghost. Last season it was 23,1%. He was great individual there, but others are now completing.

Ghost was -16 on last year and Gustafsson is at pace for -22.

So they are pretty much the same player 5-on-5. Biggest defensive liability in a sheltered role. For every 27 ES points Ghost scored, there was 43 goals scored against him.

Mostly, Gustafsson has become irrelevant, as Ghost would have been, and the benefit goes to Albert Johansson, who is playing.
 

OldnotDeadWings

Registered User
Sep 18, 2013
625
778
Well then, Why did Yzerman re-up the guy?

To add to what Gniwder said in the post above, the Wings re-signed him out of necessity to keep him away from Free Agency that summer. Even though he'd played just 57 games for them to that point, he looked like he was worth taking a chance on. If they hadn't worked out that deal, he might have been moved at the TDL about a week later along with a bunch of other guys.
 
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SirKillalot

Registered User
Feb 27, 2008
6,172
514
Norway
The team is allowed to be 10% over the cap before the season. That freed up cap space went to Gus/Tank. It would have been cheaper to keep Walman and Sprong.
It depends what Yzerman wanted or was trying to do.
Maybe he was trying to add several high paid players in addition to the renewal of Seider and Raymond. We don't know.
If one wanted immediate capspace to do something then the trade should happen at the same time the other move gets done

Course teams would have pulled a trade prior to free agency. I don't know the contracts given out but I'm sure at least one gm would have rather had walman for 2 yrs at 3 mill than give someone 4-5 yrs
Not exactly how things always work. Of course its great if they do. But, GM's also give each other deadlines and make decisions with what you got there and then.

I guess we will know the real truth some years from now. Apparently Walman said he wanted to stay in Detroit and felt at home there, which to me doesn't make sense if he was locker room issue.
 

ridilon

Registered User
Sep 14, 2017
364
215
Wal - 13 G 1-8-9 +2
Be Here - 11G 4-5-9 +4

I'd rather have 3.2 MM for Gost & Walman than the 3.4 for Holl and 2 for Gust.
If we're giving away a pick to take a bad D-Man, then give them a bad D-Man. Give SJ a 3rd and 6th.
We have the cap to cover the extra 1.2MM.

The ability of the Wings to properly ID pro talent and secure it has become an issue. This summer the DRW are positioned well to get whatever they need in FA. No huge pending RFA contracts. 18MM in space to bring in Fischer/Motte replacements. Let Kane go. But I do not have confidence they will target and sign someone legit. Tavares? Doubt he'll come here and he'll still command 10MM. Ekblad or Provorov? I don't believe the front office team will get the proper players without a change. Unless Danielson or Kasper become that #2 centerman, we'll never see one in Larkin's career.
 

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