Pavel Datsyuk to decide after World Championships; Holland doesn’t expect him back

By @MichaelCaples –

DETROIT – The official word from Pavel Datsyuk is that he will make a decision on returning for another season or retiring after he plays in the World Championship with Russia.

Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said, however, that he would be naive to think that Detroit’s No. 13 is returning.

“His agent told me he’s going to go to the world championship, and then he’s going to give us his decision at that point in time,” Holland said Monday during the Red Wings’ locker room clean-out day. “Given my past conversations with Pav and Dan Milstein (his agent) over the last year, given the article that came out with Mitch Albom on the Sunday just before the playoffs started, given what’s going on back there, with his teammates – taking pictures and doing things with them – I guess I would probably expect the news that he’s not coming back.”

Holland said he will enter the offseason creating two plans – one with ‘The Magic Man’ and one without.

“I’m going to give him all the time he needs,” Holland said. “Plan to go to the World Championships. I’m hoping he’s coming back, but I probably would be a little naïve to sit here and say oh life’s going to go on, Pav’s going to be back. Certainly, as we head into the summer time, I’m kind of formulating two plans – a plan with Pav and a plan without Pav.”

However, if Datsyuk does leave, Holland will be weighing whether one year of salary cap frustrations – Datsyuk’s $7.5 million would stay on the books whether he plays or not – is worth giving up prospects or draft picks. The Red Wings could hypothetically trade Datsyuk to another NHL club to get rid of his salary cap hit, but it would certainly come at a cost – no team would take on that amount of money just to help Holland out of a sticky situation.

“If you don’t have Pav, what do you do about the cap space?” Holland said. “That’s certainly going to be a problem, a concern, something to deal with. If he’s not here, certainly you’d like to move the cap space, but if the price is going to be lots of futures, it doesn’t make any sense. … It doesn’t make any sense when Pav has one year on his contract to pay prime prospects or prime draft picks to free up one year of cap space, given where this franchise is, because of the 25 years of being in the playoffs, and not picking very high. We’ll see.”