One More Year

Wait, did you feel that? I did. It was a blast of air coming from the east, right around noon Central time. I could be crazy, but I’m pretty sure it was all of Red Wing nation exhaling now that it was official that Nicklas Lidstrom was coming back for one more season. Now that I’ve had 24 hours to celebrate and the last of the revelers have gone home, I thought I would share my thoughts on the signing.

Words can not express how important it was for Lids to come back. The Wings are not ready to deal with life without him, as we saw last year. Far too often the Wings defensemen played anywhere from mediocre to bad, and there never seemed to be any consistency as a unit. Lidstrom himself had a slow start to last year, and that left some wondering (including myself) whether the time had finally come that he was on the decline. Then, he scorched the league in the second half, and I realized that I should never question Lidstrom, because this would be like questioning whether the sun is going to rise tomorrow. I just don’t see anyone on the defense currently that is ready to step up and assume the role of “leader” just yet. Kronwall would have been my next guess as to who would do that, but he never looked right after his knee injury in November (thanks, George Laraque. BTW, how’s that career of yours going?) Brad Stuart really impressed me this year, but even though he’s gotten better, when he has a bad game (Game 7 vs Pens, Game 6 vs Coyotes), watch out, because he can fuck an entire team himself. Ericsson? HA HA HA HA HA. Sorry, he still might be a year or two away from getting on to one of the top 2 pairs, let alone leading the defense. No, we needed Lidstrom to come back.

I like the money involved. $6.2M. He’s still the highest paid player on the defense, although no longer on the team (behind Pavel Datsyuk). Clearly he took a hometown discount, and for that, I get down on my knees and…..thank him. Now, I admit my man-crush on Lidstrom is almost as big as my man-crush was on Stevie. But, I did not agree with some people on Twitter yesterday that the Wings should have just thrown whatever money Lidstrom wants at him to get him to stay. Unfortunately, in a cap world, teams have to be extremely careful about how they allot their given funds, and Lidstrom is now on the wrong side of 40 coming off essentially half a season. What if the Wings had given Lids $7.5M and “First-Half Lidstrom” showed up? I don’t think that will happen, but I’m not the one who has to make these decisions. I also did not agree with the people who said that he should only sign for $4-5M. Lidstrom is still by far the best defenseman on the team, not to mention the league. He is the anchor of this defense, and if he had left, I shudder to think how many 2 goal leads the Wings would blow next year. This isn’t like giving Kirk Maltby a league-minimum salary because of what he did in the past; this is about paying a player who is still vitally important to the future of the Wings. Ask yourself this: would you take a 17% pay cut doing the same job for the same company because doing so would ensure that they could bring in more talented people to help the company succeed? I was perfectly happy about the money, because the $1.3M they are saving on Lidstrom can be used to sign 2 of the RFAs they have.

So what does this mean going forward? Well, the Wings still have to get Homer re-signed, but now that Lidstrom’s deal is done, I do not anticipate a problem. Given the cut that Lids took, I expect Homer to sign for somewhere in the $1.5M range. Again, I love the guy, but there’s no way he gets over $2M at this point in his career. I guess they are going to go after Bertuzzi, but he should get exactly what he made last year. That would take the Wings to around $53M, and if the cap does go up to $58M like they keep saying, $5M will be more than adequate to sign their remaining RFAs and ice a competitive team. I’m excited that the Wings are still going for it, not that I would ever expect them to give up. For Lidstrom personally, I think this may be the first of potentially many offseasons where we wonder if he’s coming back. I could see him doing a Chelios-type thing where he keeps signing 1-year deals until he’s ready to retire. But, at the same time, I will probably spend most of this season trying to prepare myself that this could be Lids’ last season, which will make me appreciate what he does even more. I will state something I believe to be an absolute truth, like death and taxes: if the Wings do end up winning the Cup in 2011, Lidstrom will retire. Book it.