With the Red Wings having an agreement to sign in hand with forward Andreas Athanasiou that couldn’t be signed until the team made the cap space necessary to fit Athanasiou’s $1.3875M contract under the salary cap, they made a couple moves announced today:
The Sproul-for-Puempel deal isn’t the bigger part, but it moves a kid out of the logjam to get a guy who’s basically in the same position career-wise back but who isn’t a defenseman.
Puempel will turn 25 this season and carries a cap hit of $725,000. He cleared waivers this summer and is on a one-year deal that will expire with him being an arbitration-eligible RFA.