Revisiting the Datsyuk trade

[yave1964]

At the end of the 2015-16 NHL season Pavel Datsyuk announced that he was not going to honor his contract and instead was going to return to the KHL and play for St. Petersburg SKA in spite of having a year at 7.5 million to go on his deal with the Wings. Ken Holland was between a rock and a hard place up against the cap and needing to move on from Datsyuk's contract, he worked out a deal with the Coyotes that looked like this:

 

COYOTES RECEIVED 

Datsyuk's contract which got them to the cap floor

The 16th pick in the draft the Coyotes took defender Jakob Chychrun

 

RED WINGS RECEIVED

Cap relief by getting rid of Datsyuk's deal

The 20th pick in the draft with which the Wings took Dennis Cholowski

The 53rd pick in the draft with which the Wings took Filip Hronek

 

With apologies to Jakob Chychrun who has turned into a decent second pair stay at home defender with upside but health and lack of offense being a concern, the Wings clearly won this trade and not just by a little. Cholowski is now established as a puck mover who is raw but who is talented, Hronek was killing it at a point a game at Grand Rapids and has shown a nice hard shot from the right side as well as a snarl to his game.

 

  IMHO Chychrun right now is the more complete fo the three, a better defender but little offense but both Cholo and Hronek seem to have a higher ceiling. Trading the pick with which the 'Yotes took Chychrun even up for Cholo and Hronek would have been a coup, moving the Datsyuk contract was just icing on the cake. 

[rottenrefs]

Shucks. Quickly looking at this I thought it said, "Dubnyk" trade. I had hopes.

 

My apologies - please continue 

[SpikeDDS]

@yave1964

 

We liked this deal the moment it was announced. Of course the picks had to be solid, and they were.

 

Kenny Holland was on our poop lists at that time, but both of us recognized that that trade was GM magic. Kenny has done some good things since that move. It had been a long time prior to that move that he had done ANYTHING.

 

Note that this does not mean I’m not ready for Stevie Y to take the GM chair and for KH to be “promoted” to.VP of Somethingorother. But his more recent moves have made the waiting more bearable.