If you want to know where Simon Edvinsson ends up, stop staring at San Jose and watch Boston. Detroit shouldn't trade him at all, and it isn't close.
The crowd has talked itself into the Sharks because the fit reads clean on paper: a pile of forward prospects, a thin blue line, a young defenseman to plug into it. Fine. Except San Jose just handed Macklin Celebrini a five-year, $94 million extension carrying a record $18.8 million cap hit that kicks in for 2027-28, and the bill doesn't stop there. Will Smith is next in line, with more second contracts for Misa, Chernyshov and Stenberg stacking up behind him. That's a team about to get stress-tested by its own kids. Giving up the young talent or picks it would take to pry Edvinsson loose, while all of that is coming due, is the kind of move that looks great in a trade-machine mockup and terrible in a real cap meeting.
Boston is the team that keeps getting named by the same insider. The Bruins have reportedly called Detroit. They're retooling, they're off to a strong start, and they want a top-four left shot to slot next to their core. That's a precise description of Edvinsson. Boston's prospect pool looks thinner than San Jose's, so it might not win a straight bidding war. But a team that actually needs the player, has made the call, and isn't about to get buried by its own future payroll is a more realistic buyer than a team with a gorgeous need and no room to act on it.
None of that should matter, though. There shouldn't be a market for Edvinsson to begin with.
He's a 23-year-old the Red Wings drafted sixth overall in 2021 and developed themselves. He's the team's second-best defenseman behind Moritz Seider. His entry-level deal expired after last season, and the two sides have spent an entire offseason and the start of the schedule failing to close a gap that's reportedly down to the annual cap hit. Detroit has said it'll give him whatever term he wants. His camp is asking something in the $10 to $11 million range on a long-term deal. The team wants a three-to-four-year bridge. That's the whole fight.
While that fight drags on, interim GM Shawn Horcoff has said he has "zero" interest in trading Edvinsson, then kept trade talks going with as many as ten teams. Those two things don't square. Detroit sent Edvinsson home. He's back in Sweden skating with Frolunda, a cost-controlled top-four defender turned into a non-person over a couple million dollars a year.
This mess is on Detroit's front office. Edvinsson showed up to camp without a contract, in good faith. Yzerman stepped down in July, the club still hasn't named a permanent GM, Dylan Larkin wants out too, and into that vacuum Horcoff is playing leverage games with a 23-year-old the franchise can clearly afford. Detroit is sitting at 3-3-3, last in the Atlantic with nine points through its first nine games, and has the league's longest active playoff drought. This isn't an organization with young, cheap, top-four defensemen to spare.
There's a real clock here, too. Because he's a restricted free agent, the Red Wings have to sign him or trade him before Dec. 1 to keep him eligible to play in the NHL this season. That deadline should be pushing Detroit to close this deal. Instead, it's running him through ten more phone calls just to see what's out there. That's how you talk yourself into selling low on a player you'd kill to have back in two years. Pay him.
