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Athanasiou - was it worth it?

October 20, 2017, 7:46 PM ET [34 Comments]
Bob Duff
Detroit Red Wings Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
When the inevitable early-season groin pull happens, will Andreas Athanasiou have any regrets?

When he sits down and does the math and comes to the realization of how much money he’s cost himself, will Athanasiou entertain any second thoughts?

The saga of the Detroit Red Wings and their protracted contract negotiations with holdout forward Athanasiou, a restricted free agent, came to an end Friday when it was announced that he’d agreed to a one-year pact valued at $1.387 million.

Detroit’s original offer to Athanasiou was a two-year deal worth $1.9 million per season. That’s $513,000 he left on the table this season. And his contract will be prorated, meaning the seven games he’s missed already this season will be deducted from his overall pay. There’s another $118,402 he won’t be getting.

That’s $631,402 all together. Last season, for the entire 82-game campaign, Athanasiou took home $628,333.

And now he gets to do it all over again next summer, and this time, arbitration will resolve the dispute if the two sides can’t come to an agreement.

Now, no one is suggesting Athanasiou shouldn’t have utilized the opportunity presented to him in the offseason to try and get paid. But when he didn’t cash in, as the season approached, he would have been much wiser to cash in his chips and take what the Wings had on the table.

Instead, Athanasiou is rolling the dice that he will enjoy an explosive 2017-18 NHL season, even though he’s missed all of training camp, as well as the preseason and the first seven games of regular-season play.

History shows us this sort of strategy is not generally a recipe for success.

“Obviously there’s conditioning (issues),” Detroit general manager Ken Holland said. “Battle drills, people leaning on you, people trying to hold you off. He went to Europe to skate (with Lugano of the Swiss League) and certainly I’m sure he’s in decent shape but as we’ve seen with people who are injured, they got to go through a process of practicing every day to get into game shape.

“He’s missed all of training camp. We’re still talking another week or so to get his paperwork to allow him to work in the United States. Three weeks of training camp, three weeks of the season, you start talking about being six weeks behind.”

Exactly what this tong war was about is a question that will be put to Athanasiou once he arrives in town, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be a question of increased ice time, because both Holland and Detroit coach Jeff Blashill laid out to Athanasiou, who averaged 13:28 per game on the ice last season, the role they envisioned him filling this season and it was significant.

“We see him as a top-nine forward,” Holland said. “He’s going to be on one of the power-play units, he’s going to be on one of the penalty-killing units.

“It’s hard in the National Hockey League to guarantee ice time. This is on an everyday basis, trying to win.”

There can also be no guarantees regarding Athanasiou, because they Wings won’t know what they have in terms of conditioning until he gets on the ice.

“We talked about integrating him into the team,” Holland said. “You’re not all the sudden on the power play and the penalty kill and playing 14-15-16 (minutes). It’s going to have to be a bit of a process to get him to the level of conditioning where he needs to be at. You’ve got to be fair to him. I think it’s going to take a little bit of time.

“Hopefully he can hit the ground running. He’s a young player, very talented player, had a real impact on our team last year and a half. Certainly a player at 23 years of age, you project he should improve. How good are young players going to be, you never know until you watch the process play itself out. But when he’s up and running, we think he’s a player who’s going to make our team better.”

Cap Trap
Before the Wings can officially sign Athanasiou, he must get his immigration paperwork in order and pass a physical. And then the team must take a scalpel to the roster.

By placing forward Johan Franzen (concussion) on long-term injured reserve prior to the season, Detroit’s salary cap dropped to $72 million.

“Once you go into LTI, you’re dollar in, dollar out,” Holland explained. “The way LTI works, when you go into an LTI situation, for lack of better words, the league takes a snapshot that day of what your cap is. That in effect is your cap the rest of the year.”

Holland will be required to pare enough room from the roster to fit Athanasiou’s entire salary. There are a couple of obvious ways to do that. They could assign forward David Booth ($700,000), who has already cleared waivers, to AHL Grand Rapids, and then either put forward/defenseman Luke Witkowski ($750,000) or forward Martin Frk ($650,000) on waivers in order to send then to Grand Rapids.

The are myriad problems presented by this solution. The odds of both Witkowski and Frk clearing waivers would be slim. Witkowski is the only toughness on the roster and his versatility makes him a depth asset. And this would mean the team would be left with no extra forwards on the NHL roster, leaving Athanasiou to play every night right from the get-go.

The more logical choice would seem to be find a way to move center Riley Sheahan ($2.075 million). There has been interest in him from other NHL teams going back to last season, and his departure would supply the team some salary cap wiggle room.

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