DETROIT — When the Detroit Red Wings returned home for their first practice of the season at Little Caesars Arena Tuesday, there was a friendly face awaiting them: their newly-made $59.85 million man, Moritz Seider.
For the past three years, Seider has been Detroit’s constant. He’s never missed a game in three NHL seasons. He’s led all Red Wings skaters in ice time in each of them. So after missing the team’s annual jaunt to Traverse City to begin camp, he was naturally “ready to get going” right away. Even knowing — or perhaps, especially knowing — that with the big new contract will come a whole new set of expectations.
“I think there were a lot of people who thought that I was a reach (in the draft), and I had a chance proving them wrong,” Seider said. “And obviously there are other guys that think this contract is not right, so I’m ready to prove them wrong again.”
Seider’s arc did, indeed, start as an underdog story. His selection at No. 6 in the 2019 NHL Draft — as Steve Yzerman’s first pick as Red Wings GM, no less — was the shock of the draft.
And he’s right: plenty doubted that choice — at least, until he arrived in the NHL, took the league by storm by winning the Calder Trophy, and established himself as one of the game’s top young defenders.
His new salary reflects that standing. At $8.55 million annually, he now makes more than Minnesota’s Brock Faber ($8.5 million AAV), Buffalo’s Owen Power ($8.35 million AAV) and Ottawa’s Jake Sanderson ($8.05 million AAV).
IT’S MO-TOWN, BABY 🙌
The #RedWings have signed Moritz Seider to a seven-year contract with an AAV of $8,550,000. pic.twitter.com/WuZRSGRC3z
— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) September 19, 2024
It’s a big number. But over the next seven years, the Red Wings are counting on him living up to it.
Certainly, the salary cap continuing to rise (as it is expected to) is a big part of that. The cap went up by over $4 million from last season to this season and could jump by a similar number next offseason. When you consider how much the cap could move over the seven-year life of Seider’s new deal, it’s conceivable that $8.55 million in Year 7 could be comparable to more like $7 million on the current cap.
But that’s just talking about the later years of the deal, and as anyone who lived through the last five years of hockey knows, the cap does not always go up as much as expected.
In the more immediate term, then, Seider will need to take some steps forward in his game to deliver value on that deal.
So, what does Seider think is next for him?
When I asked him that question Tuesday, he pointed to being more consistent. He wants to “eliminate off nights as much as possible,” and of course, he wants to contribute more at both ends, specifically noting he hopes the offense comes through a little bit more. He wants to help the Red Wings get both of their special teams units into the NHL’s top 10 — which might be closer than you’d think, with the power play finishing ninth last season and the penalty kill 14th.
All of those things, of course, are part of the equation. Seider’s 42 points in each of the last two seasons are a perfectly good number for an NHL blueliner already — he finished 33rd among defensemen last season — and especially so for one who didn’t quarterback his team’s top power-play unit.
But Seider is now the league’s 13th-highest-paid defenseman on an annual basis, and when a team shells out this kind of money, they naturally want a significant amount of offense to follow. That doesn’t necessarily mean scoring at a top-15 rate, but getting back into the low 50s (he finished with exactly 50 as a rookie) would put him there.
What I see as the real determinant, though, has to do less with the raw point totals and more with the way Seider can — and now, must — help the Red Wings control games in the coming years.
It’s well known at this point that Seider took the NHL’s toughest minutes last season. We’re talking an off-the-charts level of difficulty relative to his peers. And it’s a major mitigating factor when talking about Seider’s underlying play-driving numbers, which last year dipped down to just a 43.26 percent expected goals share when he was on the ice at five-on-five, according to Evolving-Hockey.
When you know a player is facing the hardest competition in the league, of course, it’s easy to understand why that number is what it is. None of the top-10 defensemen in strongest offensive opponents last season (as of March 28, when The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn covered Seider’s situation in-depth) finished with an expected goals share above 50 percent. Certainly, there are other factors at work there, such as the quality of teammates of rebuilding teams like Montreal and Chicago for players such as Kaiden Guhle and Alex Vlasic. But it stands out.
Of the 10 defensemen with the next-toughest, nine of them managed to clear the 50 percent mark. That list includes Sanderson, Noah Hanifin, Gustav Forsling, Aaron Ekblad, Noah Dobson and Brett Pesce.
And while, yes, Seider still played tougher minutes than all of them, those are realistically the kind of results that can make his deal a success for the Red Wings. Because as tough as that workload was for Seider last season, it’s not going anywhere.
“I don’t foresee that changing,” head coach Derek Lalonde said. “Where we are as a team, how valuable he is, how he can handle top lines — I think part of our continued growth with (team) points and wins over the last two years, why it’s headed in the right direction, is because of that part of the game and being able to handle matchups. So, I don’t think that’s going to change, as long as he’s here with the Red Wings.”
The key, then, is to find a way to consistently win those tough minutes, not just take on the challenge.
There is no single be-all and end-all measure to accomplishing that, and it is worth noting the Red Wings’ actual goals share with Seider on the ice last season was above 47 percent — much closer to breaking even. But whichever metric you prefer — or even if you prefer no metric at all — there’s another step for Seider to take to truly drive play in those tough minutes.
“I think his defensive game can continue to grow,” Lalonde said. “Even with him, he’s had some lapses in some of his play. I think he can improve his skating. Which is very exciting: I think he’s still very raw. … I think there’s a lot of room for growth.”
And with the new contract, there will be a lot of eyes on Seider to deliver on that.
“I want to get better every year,” Seider said. “And I think there’s definitely a lot more that hopefully I can show in the future.”
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
