Justin Abdelkader

[Hockey-78]

What's his status quo? How do the fans feel about him? How do I get a feeling you no longer need his $20+ mil. contract or is he a bargain?

[yave1964]

Not a fan. I guess he is okay as a bottom six guy preferably a 4th liner but the Wings continually try to get him to play above his weight class ever since he had a decent year playing alongside Datsyuk four years ago. I think the team envisions him as the new Darren Mccarty who can play up and down the lines as needed but I dont see it that way.

 

  He doesn't do anything particularly poorly which is the plus. He does absolutely nothing particularly well which is the negative. Just a body, overpaid a bit on way to long of a term deal, might as well get used to him out there because unless a team absolutely bumps its head nobody is going to touch that contract with a ten foot pole. At least he has cut down on the dumb penalties in recent years.

[SpikeDDS]

@Hockey-78

 

Not a big fan here either.

 

The Red Wings have a recent history of being too loyal to their own players, rewarding them with either too much $, too much term, or both in order to retain them. There is a noble side to this, of course. It is nice that a franchise shows that they will reward players for achievement. The trouble is that the bar for achievement is lower than it should be, which has resulted in several contracts which make obtaining talent difficult.

 

Helm. Abdelkader. Tatar (thankful that we were able to shed that one!). Nyquist. Dekeyser. I'm probably forgetting one or two others. Oh yeah, Dan Cleary, another example.

 

This only adds to guys like Kronwall and Ericcson who are on the ends of their too-long terms. Kronner may have actually earned his, but that doesn't mean it still doesn't hurt now.

 

Had Howard not turned his game around in the last 2 1/2 seasons, I might have added Howard to that list. I probably still can, but he is at least earning most of it now with his more recent play.

 

Another reason for so many of these is that we didn't have good alternative options for replacing them if they walked away a the time their contracts were up. We didn't have youth that were ready to play at the NHL level, and we couldn't afford to pay someone on the FA market with similar skill level.

 

Finally, and this goes back a few years, but still matters now, some of these contracts were the result of trying to maintain the playoff streak instead of cutting some losses and starting the rebuilding process, so we wouldn't be non-competitive for as many seasons as we will be.

 

So Abby's contract? Just one of many that make me <sigh> and say, oookaaayyy. As @yave1964 said, he's not bad. He's just not worth what we are paying him.

 

After the game Tuesday night, he was being lauded for "the perfect screen." Abby mentioned Tomas Holmstrom's name, saying he learned from watching Homer. Uh, maybe you watched him, but so did I, and Justin, you are not Homer. Delusions of grandeur if he thinks so. It was one screen. One. Homer did these in his sleep.