Evan Gold just took himself off the board, and that's genuinely bad news for the Detroit Red Wings' search for a new hockey boss.
It's been nearly three weeks since Detroit announced Steve Yzerman was stepping away from his role, moving into a senior advisor position under Governor and CEO Chris Ilitch.
Yzerman is still overseeing day-to-day hockey operations during the transition, and Detroit has said both internal and external candidates are on the table.
No specific names have been publicly floated by the organization itself, but Gold was widely considered one of the more logical external options.
That option is officially gone now. Gold spent the last 12 years with the Boston Bruins, and he's just been hired by the New York Islanders as assistant general manager.
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He'll also run the AHL affiliate Hamilton Hammers as GM, working under Mathieu Darche's hockey operations staff on every facet of the club's business.
His background lines up almost perfectly with what a rebuilding franchise like Detroit would want, cap management, contract negotiations, roster strategy, arbitration prep, CBA matters, and professional scouting.
Who's left in Detroit's GM search now?
Losing a candidate with that specific skill set stings, especially with no clear frontrunner emerging publicly in the weeks since Yzerman's announcement.
Detroit still has real internal options though. Assistant GM Shawn Horcoff and Assistant GM and Director of Amateur Scouting Kris Draper both remain logical choices already inside the building.
On the external side, Dallas Stars assistant GM Scott White and New York Rangers associate GM Ryan Martin are reportedly still in the mix.
White in particular keeps coming up in searches around the league this offseason, the kind of name that gets interviewed almost everywhere a GM job opens.
Detroit doesn't have to rush this. Yzerman staying on to run hockey operations day-to-day buys the organization real time to get this hire right instead of settling out of urgency.
But every candidate who takes another job elsewhere narrows the field a little further, and Gold was a real name on that list before Sunday.
For a franchise trying to figure out its next era, watching a legitimate option walk into a division rival's front office isn't the start anyone in Detroit wanted to this search.
Should the Red Wings hire an internal candidate like Kris Draper for GM?
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