Anthony Mantha came close to staying in Detroit, and the timing of what happened next makes the whole thing stranger.
Per Ansar Khan of MLive, Mantha nearly accepted a one year deal worth $5,000,000 from the Red Wings before ultimately signing with the New Jersey Devils instead.
Two days after that decision, Steve Yzerman was out as Detroit's general manager.
Daily Faceoff shared that timeline Monday, and it's the kind of detail that reframes a routine free agency move into something with real weight behind it.
Mantha landed with New Jersey at a $2,500,000 cap hit, a discount compared to what Detroit was reportedly offering.
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Yzerman's exit adds a strange footnote to Mantha's decision
A few other teams were reportedly circling Mantha around the $4,000,000 mark before he made his choice, including two Canadian clubs.
None of those offers matched Detroit's number, and Mantha still walked away from the higher bid.
That's the part worth sitting with. He turned down more money in a market that badly needed his scoring, and the front office pushing that offer didn't even survive the week.
Would Mantha have made the same call if he'd known Yzerman's exit was two days away? There's no way to answer that now, and it probably wouldn't have changed much regardless.
Detroit finished 41-31-10 for 92 points last season, 16th overall, a team that could have used a proven scorer like Mantha in that top six.
Instead New Jersey got him at a bargain price, and Detroit is left explaining both a missed re-signing and a front office change in the same week of headlines.
Sometimes a transaction only becomes interesting in hindsight, and this is exactly that kind of story, a modest one year offer that turned into a footnote on a much bigger organizational shakeup.
Did the Red Wings dodge a bullet by not signing Anthony Mantha to that deal?
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