Detroit Gives Holmstrom Two More

The Detroit Red Wings have made themselves one hell of a deal on Friday morning, announcing that they have re-signed Swedish forward Tomas Holmstrom to a new 2-year contract extenstion worth $3.75 million in total.  The deal is said to pay Holmstrom $2.25 million for the 2011 season and $1.5 million in the 2012 season, rounding out to a cap hit of $1.875 million for both years.  Holmstrom was scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1st after finishing a 3-year deal which had a cap hit of $2.25 million per season.

In 2010, Holmstrom enjoyed a productive season, scoring 25 goals and 20 assists in 68 games for the Red Wings, which is fairly par for the course in his career during the regular season, although he has enjoyed a 30-goal season once in his career.  Holmstrom ranked 154th in pool scoring in 2010, 115th among forwards, so he still has plenty of merit left to be a good fantasy pick-up.

The knock on Holmstrom, however, is that his style of play does get him hurt more often than not, having played only one full 82-game season (1998-'99) and one season where he missed only one game (2005-'06) and this defintiely has to be taken into account when looking at him in the fantasy drafts.  The likelihood of him missing a lot of games is greater than him playing all 82 games, so you likely should discount his overall production that way.

This Holmstrom deal is definitely a bargain, even if you considered that he is an older winger (age 37) and he doesn't have a great deal of time left in his NHL career, but he still managed to score 25 goals in 68 games for the Red Wings and he's still a valuable member of the team come playoff time.  That being said, the Red Wings are in desperate need of some bargains, especially since they now have only 15 players signed onto their roster for approximately $50.8 million against the cap.  Of course, they should be looking to fill depth positions with Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Nicklas Lidstrom, Brian Rafalski and their goaltending sorted out already.