Alfredsson Looks to Return for 19th Season

The Detroit Red Wings are working hard in the front office to solidify a roster that would guarantee a playoff appearance in the 2014-2015 season.

Throughout most of this offseason, general manager Ken Holland has been waiting to hear from Daniel Alfredsson on whether or not he wants to return for a 19th season in the NHL. On Monday, Holland told the Free Press that Alfredsson called him and said, “He wants to play again.”

The 41-year old right-handed forward played in only 68 games in the previous regular season because of a recurrent back issue that eventually held him out of Games 3-5 of the Red Wings’ first and only playoff series.

Although he was injured for 14 games of the regular season and three in the postseason, Alfredsson was an influential piece of the puzzle in the development of the Red Wings’ first wave of AHL prospects.

Coming off of a career filled of locker room leadership, including being the Ottawa Senators’ captain from 1999-2013, Alfredsson was key in the wake of injuries to fellow veterans, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg for almost half of the season.

Alfredsson collected 18 goals and 31 assists last season and looks to continue his career wearing a winged-wheel for the second of what is going to be 19 seasons in the NHL.

Contract specifics will be talked about next week when free agency is at a forefront. The contract will assumedly be for $2 million, one-year, which will be a low base, but will include a large amount of production bonuses.

Right now though, the Red Wings are looking to the upcoming NHL Draft that is to be held in Philadelphia on Friday, June 27 and Saturday, June 28.

If the deal goes through, the Red Wings will have Zetterberg, Datsyuk and Alfredsson returning as the veteran core of forwards alongside veteran defenseman Niklas Kronwall.

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Information from the Detroit Red Wings was used in this report

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Austin Goodman is the host of Octopi Hockeytown at Impact Sports.