Per Malik's translated interview between Nicklas Lidstrom and Swedish Aftonbladet:Q: How far ahead do you look? Your contract expires after this season?
Lidstrom: "I'm looking that far as well. We shall see what happens next summer. But if I feel motivated and injury-free, in that case I would continue."
Q: Is there a chance for Swedish clubs to entice you home?
Lidstrom: "Right now neither the Eliteserien or KHL entice me. When I'm finished with the NHL, I'll be finished with hockey, too."
Lidstrom’s $7.45 mil comes off the books after this season. It appears that if he remains healthy, that he will be returning to Red Wings line-up for probably a short term deal. We all expect Lidstrom to take a large pay cut at this point which would in all likelihood, save the Wings about a $5 million dollar cap hit while keeping the game’s greatest defenseman.
It’s nice to hear that he plans on spending his entire career in the NHL. And one can only assume that when he says; “finished with the NHL” he actually means, “finished with the Detroit Red Wings”.
Lidstrom also talks about his multiple injuries during the play-offs and how he hurt in “several places”…we know all about it Nick. You played through a pain most of us guys don’t even want to imagine.
Our captain’s body is seemingly getting more and more prone to injury as he ages, which is to be expected. Teams in the play-offs were starting to key in on this and taking runs at him whenever they had the chance…just a different aspect in today’s game.
In my opinion, the Wings need to convince Aaron Downey to come back for one more year at half a million dollars or sign some other bruiser whose over-riding priority is to make sure that anyone running our stars will be paying the price for it. Keeping Lidstrom, Zetterberg, Datsyuk and the like healthy by deterrent.
There will be blood.
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