Detroit Red Wings star forward appears to feel betrayed after being placed on waivers

Jakub Vrana has gone through a turbulent phase of his career lately. After an extremely successful start to his tenure in Detroit, he suffered injuries, and time spent in the NHL player's assistance program.

Now, after being waived by the team last week, NHL insider Frank Seravalli is reporting that the relationship between the Red Wings and Vrana feels «broken».


When the Red Wings had multiple players coming back from injury, they made the decision to keep Robby Fabbri and Tyler Bertuzzi on the roster in the place of Vrana. Now, Vrana is playing games in the minors, still on a two year contract worth $5.25M a year.


The Red Wings can bury only $1M of that contract in the minors, so they'll likely be looking to move Vrana in a trade in the coming weeks before the deadline.

Practically any team could ostensibly buy low on Vrana, but the deal would be complicated by the second year of his deal. A team acquiring him would likely need to retain the full deal, which is a risky bet on a small sample size of Vrana's success early in his career.

A contending team could make a bet on him for depth scoring in the playoffs, and even use a third team to broker cap space in a trade. But also, it's plausible a rebuilding team with the cap space could make the same bet, with less risk of losing cap space in a contending window. It'll be interesting to see what the Wings do with the talented young forward.