The board of the officially announced Detroit Red Wings has now agreed to sign another highly experienced player to an eight-year contract.
Today has proven to be fruitful for the Detroit Red Wings.
The Red Wings have announced that they have signed winger Lucas Raymond to an eight-year contract with a $8.075 million budget hit, after the signing of restricted free agent winger Jonatan Berggren to a one-year deal earlier on Monday.
Following the expiration of his three-year, entry-level deal with a $925,000 cap cost, Raymond became a restricted free agent. He is given an annual rise in excess of $7 million, and his new deal clearly has the greatest average annual salary of his career. The Red Wings have locked him up for 30 years at 9.18% of the 2024–25 salary ceiling under their new contract.
As of right now, nothing is known about this contract’s signing bonuses or no-move/no-trade restrictions.
Raymond’s new contract will put his cap hit among forwards at 46th place come playoff time. The forwards Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou of the St. Louis Blues, who are each guaranteed $8.125 million in cap hits for the following seven seasons, are the closest comparisons for his salary hit.
With 31 goals and 41 assists for 72 points in 82 games, Raymond enjoyed a breakthrough season for the Red Wings in 2023–24. Compared to his rookie season in 2021–22, which was his previous career high in both categories, he ended with eight more goals and fifteen more points.
After spending one more season with Frolunda HC, Raymond was selected by the Red Wings with the fourth overall choice in the 2020 NHL Draft from the Swedish Hockey League. He made his NHL debut with Detroit in 2021 and has been a member of the team for the last three seasons.
In order to finally lock up some of their RFAs, the Red Wings have signed two players today: Raymond and Berggren. Star defenseman Moritz Seider is the last remaining RFA for Detroit, and they still have more than $8.7 million in salary space to use to lock him up. In addition to their RFAs, the Red Wings added Tyler Motte, Erik Gustafsson, Cam Talbot, and Vladimir Tarasenko during the summer transfer window.
