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    • Why the Detroit Red Wings traded Olli Määttä to Utah for the draft pick
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    Why the Detroit Red Wings traded Olli Määttä to Utah for the draft pick

    Caradoc Wyn Posted on

    In more than two seasons with the Detroit Red Wings, Olli Määttä established himself as a stable third-pair defenseman who played a simple game.

    His strengths were also the catalyst for his departure: having eight defensemen in the long run is really unsustainable for an NHL team, and so the Wings trimmed their roster as the opening month of the season neared its end, and Määttä was traded the Utah Hockey Club for a third-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft.

    For a player who has nearly 700 games under his belt and is at the peak of his career at age 30, that doesn’t sound like much of a return. But the Wings were in a roster and salary cap bind, and other teams knew it.

    The Wings started the season with eight defenders: Määttä, Moritz Seider, Simon Edvinsson, Ben Chiarot, Jeff Petry, Justin Holl, Albert Johansson and newcomer Erik Gustafsson. Holl was released and assigned to the minors, but that only lasted a few days as Petry suffered an upper-body injury in the opener. Petry, Seider and Holl are the only defenders on the team who shoot properly.

    Johansson is a rookie who is no longer exempt, so the Wings must keep him on the roster. The Wings, a 2019 draft pick, have spent five years developing Johansson and need to find out what he’s made of.

    Määttä has 177 points and a plus-75 rating in 691 career NHL games. He’s also in the final season of the two-year, $6 million extension he signed in February 2023, further increasing his appeal in a trade: That’s a good cap hit for a reliable fifth or sixth D- Man.

    The trade gives the Wings about $3.5 million in salary cap space and opens up a spot on the roster. They face the possibility that forward Tyler Motte, out since Oct. 17 with an upper-body injury, could be ready to play this weekend. Rookie Marco Kasper was urgently called up when Motte was injured because the Wings then fell below 12 healthy forwards, but Kasper played so well that he deserved to stay. Trading Määttä opens the squad room to defuse this situation.

    Contact Helene St. James at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames. Read more about the Detroit Red Wings and subscribe to our Red Wings newsletter. Her most recent book, The Franchise: Detroit Red Wings, A Curated History of the Red Wings, was published in October 2024. Her books On the Clock: Behind the Scenes with the Detroit Red Wings at the NHL Draft and The Big 50 : The Men and Moments that made the Detroit Red Wings” is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Triumph Books. Personalized copies are available via your email.

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    Caradoc Wyn
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