Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Yzerman gets permission to speak with Wings salary cap guru

Steve Yzerman

Tampa Bay Lightning’s new vice president and general manager Steve Yzerman answers questions during a hockey news conference Tuesday, May 25, 2010, in Tampa, Fla. Yzerman has spent the last 27 years as a player, captain, and executive with the Detroit Red Wings. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

AP

Steve Yzerman is new to the general manager’s job in Tampa Bay and while he’s still on the hunt for a head coach, there’s other positions to fill in Florida as well, one being the numbers man for Yzerman when it comes to contracts and Yzerman wants to stick with someone he knows.

The Windsor Star reported Tuesday that Red Wings GM Ken Holland said Yzerman has asked to speak to Ryan Martin, who is the team’s director of hockey administration and who handles the ins and outs of the salary cap. Martin is known to be close to Yzerman.

Ryan Martin will be better known as the guy who made long-term contracts for Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk and Johan Franzen all the rage for GMs across the NHL for being financially flexible and all the reason for commissioner Gary Bettman to wig out when it comes to the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

After all, if there’s something a team that has Vincent Lecavalier on board for a cap hit of nearly $8 million a year until the year 2020 needs it’s a guy who can make big money disappear over a lot of years rather than sit there in salary purgatory because a guy wants to make $10 million a year. Oh yeah, and Steven Stamkos is a restricted free agent after next season, that might cost a few bucks.

Then again, it could be Steve Yzerman’s job to make that Lecavalier contract disappear completely by shuttling him off somewhere else entirely. If he can do that, he may just be the best general manager we’ll ever see in that position... Or he’ll just have made a call to Glen Sather.