Showing Up Isn't the Same as Staying
Simon Edvinsson will be at training camp. That much is settled. What isn't settled—what grows more complicated by the week—is what it will cost to keep him there beyond this season, and who exactly is going to negotiate that number.
The Zeev Buium extension changed the math in ways Detroit cannot ignore. When an insider flags that Buium's deal creates a "lucrative benchmark" for Edvinsson's own contract, that isn't speculation—that's how restricted free agent markets work. Comparable deals become floors. Agents cite them in the first sentence of every negotiation. Whatever figure the incoming Red Wings GM had loosely penciled in for Edvinsson, the Buium contract just erased it and wrote in something larger.
And here is where the box score argues against the optimism. Last season, Edvinsson logged 22.1 minutes a night across 43 games—more ice time than anyone on Detroit's blue line except Moritz Seider, who played nearly every game and averaged 25 minutes. That workload tells you what the organization already believes about Edvinsson's ceiling. They were leaning on him heavily even before they had a plan to pay him. Seider, who posted 33 points and a plus-13 in 49 games, is already recognized among the league's top ten defensemen. The expectation is that Edvinsson eventually occupies similar territory. That kind of upside commands a price that reflects the destination, not the current stop.
The problem isn't just the dollar figure. It's the timeline. The eight-year extension window is closing, and Detroit still doesn't have a general manager. The Edvinsson situation has a slightly softer deadline—he's an RFA, so he isn't walking out the door the way an unrestricted free agent might—but "softer" is not "absent." Every week the GM seat stays empty is a week the incoming executive can't formally engage in the kind of serious negotiation that a Buium-benchmarked deal requires. Edvinsson showing up to camp is a good-faith gesture. It is not a signed contract.
My read is that Detroit is actually in a stranger position than it looks. The good news—Edvinsson reporting, DeBrincat publicly declaring he wants to stay, Larkin and Raymond already recognized among the league's elite—creates a narrative of stability that the organizational structure doesn't yet support. The Red Wings have the talent to build around. What they lack is anyone with the authority to actually build. The incoming GM will inherit a blue line anchored by Seider and shaped by Edvinsson's development, which is a genuinely enviable foundation. But that GM will also inherit a market that just got more expensive, a deadline that doesn't pause for searches, and a locker room full of players who have been waiting months for someone to tell them what comes next. Showing up to camp resolves the immediate optics. It does not resolve the contract. Those are two very different things, and right now Detroit is celebrating the easier one.