Dylan Larkin and Tyler Bertuzzi are set to hit free agency after next season, but Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman doesn't intend for them to get there.
Yzerman said Monday as he recapped Detroit's moves at the trade deadline that he plans to extend the Wings' two leading scorers this season sometime before next summer.
"My hope is sometime between now and 18 months from now to sign them to extensions," Yzerman said. "We can’t do anything before July this year, but yeah, my plan would be to sign them to extensions. They’re good players, they’re good people, they like playing here and they’ve played very well for us. So I certainly hope to do that and that’s what we’ll try to do."
Larkin, 25, and Bertuzzi, 27, are both enjoying career seasons, and Larkin has rebounded in a big way after slumping in 2020-21.
The Wings' captain has 59 points in 57 games and his 27 goals are tied for seventh in the NHL among centers. He has re-established himself as a rising star and a clear No. 1 center in a league where it's impossible to contend without one.
Bertuzzi has 49 points in 51 games and is scoring at a 40-goal pace over a full season. His 24 goals to date are already a career high.
Clearly, Yzerman sees both players as pillars of the Red Wings' future. He'll have to pay them accordingly on their next deals, but that's a good problem to have. Larkin's current cap hit is $6.1 million and Bertuzzi's is $4.75 million.
There was a report last week that Yzerman was open to trading Bertuzzi at the deadline and that Bertuzzi was open to a move himself -- not that it would have been easy to sell him to a contender as an unvaccinated player who would be at the risk of missing playoff games in Canada. But Bertuzzi shot that down a day later, confirming that Detroit is "where I want to be."
Asked Monday if he got any serious trade inquiries on players under contract, Yzerman said, "No, not really. Superficially, briefly."
"You have conversations going up to the deadline, you have conversations prior to the draft and periodically through the season. You talk about your teams back and forth. Really nothing beyond that. So, no, there’s nothing regarding any of our signed players or restricted free agents that was ever even close to what you would consider an idea," he said.
Yzerman said the deadline "went for the most part as expected" for the Wings, with the club trading three pending unrestricted free agents in Nick Leddy, Vladislav Namestnikov and Troy Stecher for players and draft picks. He did say Detroit "discussed a contract extension" with Leddy, but the two sides "weren't really able to agree on anything."
In the end, Yzerman was happy to get back a second-round pick -- and two young NHLers -- for a player for whom he had traded a second-rounder last summer.
"At least we tried," Yzerman said. "And it was good we were able to recoup the second-round pick we gave up."
On the status of Jeff Blashill, whose contract expires after this season and whose future has grown murky during a prolonged stretch of poor play for the Wings, Yzerman mostly deflected questions about it to a later date.
But he didn't exactly endorse Detroit's head coach the way he has in such settings in the past.
"This has been an up and down year for us," Yzerman said. "We’ve had a lot of progress, and the last six weeks of the season have been disappointing for all of us. So Jeff and I will sit down at some point and talk about our team and where we’re going and what we need to do."