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It came with little surprise that the Detroit Red Wings took a step Wednesday afternoon that will likely result in the club utilizing its final compliance buyout. The target is Jordin Tootoo, who has one left on a deal worth $1.9 million.
Tootoo, placed on unconditional waivers has until noon Thursday to clear. Once he clears, the Red Wings will use the buyout, making the 31-year-old forward an unrestricted free agent.
Surprised? Not at all. This day seemed inevitable ever since Tootoo was demoted to Grand Rapids in mid-November and cleared waivers in order to do so. The Red Wings had high hopes for Tootoo to be a fixture in their bottom six up front when they signed him on free agency frenzy day in July of 2012. Unfortunately for Tootoo and GM Ken Holland, that hope did not come to fruition. In the end, Tootoo played 53 regular season games as a Red Wing over two seasons, scoring 3 goals, 6 assists and 83 penalty minutes.
When bought out, Detroit will owe him two-thirds ($1.33 million) of his remaining deal spread out over the next two seasons. The upside for the Red Wings is his contract will no longer count against the salary cap.
So where does that leave the Wings looking ahead to July 1st?
Capgeek highlighted the status of the Red Wing situation once the compliance buyout of Tootoo is complete:
#RedWings whittle cap payroll down to $53M — including estimated $3M bonus overage — with Tootoo buyout/18 signed. http://t.co/V4aRZBcXGo
— CapGeek (@capgeek) June 18, 2014With $18 million in estimated cap space available (after including the approximate $3 million in bonuses from the previous seasons carried over) and assuming a $71.1 million upper limit, the Red Wings will need approximately $9 million to re-sign restricted free agents Danny DeKeyser, Tomas Tatar, Riley Sheahan and bring back unrestricted free agent goaltender Jonas Gustavsson.
That would leave approximately $9 million to re-sign Daniel Alfredsson, find a replacement for Alfredsson if he decides to retire, along with attempting to sign a 2nd pairing veteran rearguard. Whether an Alfredsson replacement and d-man are found by free agency or trade remains to be seen. Given Ken Holland's track record, he appears gunshy when it comes to making a trade and seems to prefer free agency to attempt to improve his hockey club.
Red Wing fans undoubtedly hope this year's free agent signing provides better value than the 2012 signings of Tootoo and Mikael Samuelsson
The period for teams to begin courting potential unrestricted free agents begins next week on June 25th.
mark.spizzirri@hockeybuzz.com
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