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Teammates believe Datsyuk's mind already made up |
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Pavel Datsyuk has already returned to his homeland. The Detroit Red Wings center is in Russia, preparing to play for his country in the world championship.
While he’s said publicly that he won’t make a final decision on whether to return to the Red Wings for the last season of his contract until after the conclusion of the tournament, in reality, most in the organization are accepting of the reality that they’ve seen the last of Datsyuk as a teammate.
“That's a decision, you're not going to change his decision,” Detroit left-winger Justin Abdelkader said. “He has in his heart what he's going to do.
“All we can do is, obviously, thank him for what he's done for this organization for each player.”
Defenseman Niklas Kronwall was another Wing who seemed resigned to a future without Datsyuk.
“Yeah it kind of feels like he’s made up his mind but at the same time there’s a part of you that wants to keep the hope alive,” Kronwall said. “I say let’s keep hoping until we hear something.”
Datsyuk continues to insist that isn’t the case at all - that his mind is not 100 per cent made up as to his future plans.
“I don't want to make a fast decision,” Datsyuk said. “I need more time. I go to world championship, play there and of course during world championship, I'll be thinking about it more.”
Detroit general manager Ken Holland acknowledged that Datsyuk’s decision is the linchpin to his planning for the 2016-17 NHL season.
“I have to find out about Pavel Datsyuk,” Holland said. “That’s going to be priority number one.”
At the same time, Holland isn’t about to pressure Datsyuk. He is in no hurry to get an answer from Datsyuk but he has a deadline in mind when he absolutely must know to allow him to go forward with plans for next season – one blueprint that would include Datsyuk and one obviously, about how to progress minus his Russian star.
“If he’s coming back then I know we have Pav and if he’s not coming back obviously I have to go through the process of his cap space,” Holland said. “I’ve read all the articles. I’ve had conversations in the past with Pav, but I have to sit down with him here in the next … I don’t think we really need to know until the first of June.
“If he gave me an answer tomorrow what am I going to do with it so it’s not like I need to know an answer here now. He’s probably got a good month to make a final decision.”
Datsyuk’s final year of his deal with the Wings would pay him $7.5 million and deliver a $5.5 million salary cap hit. If he opts to stay in Russia, Holland will likely deal that to another NHL team needing money to reach the cap floor, and in fact an NHL source suggested that the Wings already had a tentative move hammered out with another team to do exactly that should the need arise.
However, that leads to another dilemma for the Wings – what if Datsyuk decides in June that he’s going to go home, Detroit deals his contract away and then in August, he has a change of heart?
This is an issue that gives Holland sleepless nights.
“That I don’t know,” Holland said. “When I signed Pav to this contract, I think he thought – I believe he thought – and I thought, he was going to play three years. Now with a year to go in the contract and he’s against the cap, he has desires to go home.
“I don’t know how I could know that. I don’t even know if he knew it. I don’t even think that Pav would have known the rules. That’s not his job to know the rules. He’s got agents that represent him.
“I can’t manage with a crystal ball. I can only make decisions today based upon the information that I’ve got. If I wake up three months from now and the information’s totally different, I don’t know how – I can’t operate like that.
“Certainly those are questions that I’m going to ask Pav. But if all of a sudden he has an about face in September and says ‘boy I don’t like it over here. I’m going to go to the National Hockey League’ and we’ve traded his rights, I’ll have to deal with it. I’ll have to live with it.
“I can’t have it both ways. We’ve got to make decisions based on the information we have at the time.”
He’s Going Home
While Datsyuk went back to Russia to play, teammate Luke Glendening left Team USA’s pre-tournament camp in Finland after a lingering injury issue from the playoffs wouldn’t enable him to play.
Glendening was dealing with foot and ankle woes after blocking a shot late in the regular season but played through the pain during the playoffs.
This would have been the first time in his career that Glendening had represented his country in international hockey.
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