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Albert Johansson playing for team Sweden is a good opportunity to see one of the young defenseman that will be looking to be part of the future. Steve Yzerman has been busy since he took over as GM for the 2019-2020 season. We’ve seen nearly an entire roster’s worth of players depart as Yzerman looks to create a future cup contender.

We’ve discussed before that Matthias Brome is headed back to Europe. Brome was worth taking a chance on, and while it wasn’t a great year his rights can be retained via qualifier. Yzerman has also allowed long time players to leave in free agency (Ericsson, Howard), completed a buyout not many saw coming (Abdelkader), made trades (Green, Athanasiou, Mantha, De La Rose) and experimented with some free agents who didn’t stick (Brome, Perlini). It’s a lot more turnover than Detroit fans have seen in a very long time.

Honestly, it’s refreshing. There were always groans of displeasure at payers who seemed to be past their ability to contribute but kept being re signed under the old guard. There will come a point where the roster is more “fixed”, but the GMs flexibility and willingness to experiment has helped the team get younger and better. There’s been a lack of stability (especially on defense) but I expect that to get better as prospects rise up to the big club.

Below is a list of 16 players that have moved on (in one form or another). That will probably be added to as Helm, Glendening and Filppula are all on expired deals. Bernier may not be back either. There’s always the chance of another trade or buyout (Nielsen?). With 20+ free agents needed to be signed, we could see more departures as the summer wears on.

Players moved on:
Andreas Athanasiou
Gustav Nyquist
Jacob De La Rose
Christopher Ehn
Anthony Mantha
Justin Abdelkader
Brendan Perlini
Dmytro Timashov
Madison Bowey
Trevor Daley
Jonathan Ericsson
Cody Goloubef
Mike Green
Patrick Nemeth
Jimmy. Howard
Mathias Brome

How do you feel about what Yzerman has done? I’d compared it before to trimming the bad lettuce off of a salad. Do you see any trades coming? Let me know in the comments.


Check out my previous blogs:

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